Don’t parrot… A short guide to avoiding common communication pitfalls

June 6, 2019

This article by Ralph Underhill, PIRC Associate and Director of Framing Matters was published by the Public Interest Research Center:

President Nixon famously said, “I am not a crook”.

With those 5 words, he managed to reinforce the idea, in the minds of millions of Americans, that he was, in fact, a crook. What he should have said is “I am an honest man”. When he used the word ‘crook’, he was parroting the language of his opponents, and simply reinforcing that negative association in people’s minds.

This is the first communications trap, which I call the…

Parrot, or the refutation trap.

So instead of environmental groups saying “wind turbines are not noisy eye sores”, they should be saying “the majority of people support renewables”. As George Lakoff has long argued, getting involved in denying things just gets you caught up in language that ends up associating your cause with unhelpful ideas. Here is a classic example of the parrot:

David Davis: “Brexit Britain will not be a ‘Mad Max’ dystopian world.”

Fig 1: The UK in 2020.

The point is, when we use words together – like ‘Brexit’ and ‘Mad Max’ – we are making associations in people’s minds and these can be unhelpful.

The second communications trap is the:

Chameleon, or the sanitising trap.

The chameleon (they are so awesome) is when we use jargon or euphemisms that make something we see as bad seem less terrible.

For example, why would a group campaigning on international issues ever use a term like ‘collateral damage’? It is a term created by the US military in order to make killing civilians sound more acceptable. ‘Collateral damage’ is a classic sanitising frame. Let’s call it ‘killing civilians’, because that is what it is. Likewise, ‘outsourcing’ or ‘down-sizing’ are other examples: they usually just mean ‘firing people’.

Fig 2: The original title ‘Killing Civilians’ didn’t play well with audiences.

The third communications trap is the…

Shark, or contaminated language trap.

While people didn’t go around hugging great white sharks before the 1970s, their image was certainly not as tainted by violence as it is now. The film ‘Jaws’ created huge negative associations with these majestic creatures, forever painting them in the public mind as man-eaters.

Fig 3: Woman saved from shark attack by giant lettering.

All words conjure up beliefs and associations in people and when we use terms with too many negative associations we can damage our cause. The shark trap comes in two forms, the contested term and the contaminated term.

A contested term might be something like ‘refugee’ which the right wing press have spent a long time trying to create negative associations with, but still resonates with many as people fleeing persecution. With a contested frame, we can still use it, and we might even be able to reclaim it, but we must tread carefully in order not to reinforce associations that are unhelpful. A contaminated term is one that we should avoid using at all costs, as we can no longer win it back. This might be something like “Make America Great Again”, where the negative associations are so strongly negative that the term cannot be repurposed for a different use.

The final communications trap is the…

Robin, or rose-tinted trap.

Robins are famous for looking cute, you will see them on Christmas cards looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. But this is a lie, they are the Begbies of the animal world! If you have ever had two of them near you when picnicking you will know what I mean.

Fig 4: Begbie, exactly as he appeared in the original Trainspotting.

In communications terms, sometimes we seek to criticise something but the term used to describe it has overwhelming positive associations – like a robin. This means that when we use the term people see it as something positive that we are criticising. Let me explain. ‘Jobs’ are nearly always seen as a good thing: “you are lucky to have a job”, “this development will create jobs”. Talking about good and bad jobs just brings in the positive associations of having a job, because people don’t readily think of jobs as being bad. Instead, we must look at bringing up the issue another way, in terms of workers rights or working conditions, and sometimes that might mean avoiding the term ‘jobs’ itself.

A summary of the animal traps in poster form can also be found here.

Story or Narrative: what’s the difference?

June 6, 2019

We know that the world views of everyone are shaped by what “narratives” are out there. But what does this mean? and how does STORY-telling come into the picture.

This easy set of definitions developed by the Narrative Initiative brings a useful clarification:

Narrative Concepts

These core concepts articulate the different levels at which we engage with narrative specifically in the context of social change. Each category has discrete functions, expressions, and modes of transmission.

Story

Simply put: “In a story, something happens to someone or something. Typically, a story has a beginning, middle and end.”

Narrative

Narratives permeate collections or systems of related stories. They have no standard structure, but instead are articulated and refined repeatedly as they are instantiated in a variety of stories and messages. (Toward New Gravity)

Deep Narrative

Deep narratives are characterized by pervasiveness and intractability. They provide a foundational framework for understanding both history and current events, and inform our basic concepts of identity, community and belonging. Just as narratives permeate collections of related stories, so too do deep narratives permeate collections of related narratives. In Toward New Gravity, we used the term meta-narrative. Over two years of dialogue with peers in the field, we’ve evolved to a preference for the term deep narrative. We see that deep narrative lends itself to more illustrative uses.

These foundational terms are interconnected and reinforce each other over time. We find the concepts much easier to hold onto through an example:

The movie Jaws is a story about an insatiable man-eating shark
All the stories about insatiable, man-eating sharks add up to a broader narrative of sharks being dangerous and predatory creatures
The narrative and stories about sharks rest on powerful deep narratives about the human relationship to nature and a fear of the unknown

So when we are telling our stories of LGBQI+ struggles and/or liberation, how much attention do we pay to broader narratives and, most importantly, to deep narratives?

Sometimes our stories reinforce deep narratives which are broadly unhelpful, like the idea that there are two genders only.

The “screening” for deep narratives should be an essential part of message development.

Hope counters hate in polarized and populist narratives

June 3, 2019

This article appeared in OpenGlobalRights

Giving people a sense of optimism about and control over their future is the best way to stop populist narratives from taking root.

With the global rise of populism, and far-right narratives increasingly seeping into the mainstream, the most powerful way to challenge hatred is not shouting people down—it is empowering them.

When people feel in control of their own lives, they are more likely to show resistance to hostile narratives, and are more likely to share a positive vision of diversity and multiculturalism. People need to feel listened to and understood, to feel empathy, and to know there is a positive alternative.

Hope not Hate was founded on the very principle that if we are to counter narratives of hate, we must offer hope. Hate is often a response to loss and an articulation of despair. But when given an alternative that understands and addresses their anger, most people will choose hope.

Hope starts with understanding

In the polarised immigration debate, with advocates for migrant rights and open borders pitted against aggressive and sometimes violent opposition, it is easy to overlook the majority of people who sit in the middle, holding more moderate and balanced views on migration. Public opinion is not static, but it can move in any direction. If activists fail to engage with these people in the middle, who will not necessarily think the same way and hold anxieties about migration, the only people speaking to them will be those who exploit and amplify these fears.

These conversations are not about tolerating prejudice, and can take on a very different meaning for people of colour than for white allies. There is also a section of the population who hold engrained hostile attitudes towards others—it is simply not possible to change everyone’s mind. But for many of us in the human rights community, fear around having “difficult conversations” is holding us back.

Recently, our organization together with British Future, ran the largest ever public engagement on immigration hearing from almost 20,000 people and travelling to 60 towns and cities across the United Kingdom, from Shetland to Penzance, to talk about migration with normal people.

We found that it was possible to meet a consensus on immigration, and although the conversations we had were primarily for research, the conversations in themselves worked to change attitudes. Through deliberative discussion, and removing the fear of being shouted down, participants developed often left with more positive and nuanced views on migration issues.

We also found that when people talk about immigration, they project national narratives through what they see in day-to-day life. These conversations were often about so much more than immigration but about people’s kids, and their friends, about their problems and frustrations. They were about opportunity, identity and hope, and about where these things had been lost.

Changing attitudes means changing the atmosphere in which they develop

The differences we found in the way that people developed their views on immigration often reflected a broader story about dissatisfaction with participants’ own lives.

In Kidderminster, a market town in the West Midlands, we were told that “the good times have gone”. Lost industry and changing work, local decline, alongside changing neighbourhoods and increased diversity, meant that identity issues and people’s standard of living became intertwined.

To share positive narratives, make people feel good

Having spoken to people up and down the United Kingdom, I found that where people feel in control of their own lives, they are more likely to show resistance to hostile narratives, and are more likely to share a positive vision of diversity and multiculturalism.

Our recent report, Fear, Hope and Loss, pulls together six years of polling from 43,000 people and maps political and cultural attitudes in England and Wales to neighbourhoods of 1,000 houses. Unsurprisingly, we find that it is areas which have lost most through industrial decline, places with little diversity or opportunity, where the greatest enmity toward immigration is concentrated. These are places where up to 61% of over-16s do not have a single educational qualification, where jobs are few and far between, and when work is available, it is precarious and badly paid.

In contrast, we find those who hold the most positive outlook on immigration and multiculturalism are mostly in core cities or elite university towns, prosperous areas where there is ample opportunity.

Resistance to change is not only about a decline in welfare and opportunity, but these anxieties trigger a defensive instinct to protect and reassert a social position. In our conversations, we found that a sense of unfairness underpinned much hostility towards migrants and minorities. A sense that British or English identity is waning becomes more pronounced for those who feel that something has unfairly been taken away. A view that things are working better elsewhere, for other people, for migrants, offered a direction for broader resentment.

Understanding why people feel like they do about immigration is not about pandering to prejudice, but about genuinely understanding what lies underneath, and working to rebuild the communities which have lost the most.

The shock and despair many felt when Britain voted to leave the EU offers lessons on communicating hope. The effectiveness of the Leave campaign was about offering something more, about taking back control. Predicted economic damage of leaving the EU is staggering, but those who want to remain in the EU will not win by projecting doomsday scenarios. The pessimism felt by remainers just does not resonate with people who desperately want change. In a National Conversation discussion in Grimsby, a woman told me that of course things will get better after Britain leaves the EU, because “it could hardly get any worse”. If remainers really want Britain to stay in the EU, then they need to show how things will be better, fairer, and more hopeful than they currently are.

Campaigning with hope

Hope, an optimism based on an expectation of positive outcomes in our personal circumstances, is the best resilience to hate. What gives us hope means many different things to different people, but for many, hope has an economic element. As someone on Grimsby, a fishing town with high level deprivation, told me, hope is knowing “there’s a buffer between you and abject poverty”. While this may not seem to be asking for much, this is not a hope that exists everywhere.

Campaigning with hope means we need to understand what hope means to people, and where it is missing. We need to create the conditions where hope is possible for everyone.

The growing polarisation we see stems from growing divides in our society. But optimism is the best resilience to hate. If we want to shift the debate, we have to start by understanding where these perspectives come from, by engaging in meaningful ways, and by offering hope.

How LGBT activists infiltrated the Film industry, and why we have to keep doing it

May 29, 2019

Why We’re Seeing More Realistic Depictions of Abortion in TV and Film

This article was published on yesmagazine.com

Planned Parenthood has partnered with the entertainment industry to combat misrepresentations of women’s reproductive health.

Jonita Davis posted Mar 28, 2019

Over 8 million viewers last year watched while Scandal’s Olivia Pope, played by actor Kerri Washington, lay on a clinic table as she had an abortion. There was no dialogue about Pope’s pregnancy or the procedure, before or after. Simultaneously, Republican Sen. (and former first lady) Mellie Grant, played by Bellamy Young, filibusters to protect funding for Planned Parenthood.

The episode was reflective of a partnership between the entertainment industry and the nonprofit health care provider Planned Parenthood to combat bad data on reproductive health.

Misleading information about women’s health has long informed harmful policy decisions throughout American history. From the colonial belief that women are too delicate to govern to misinformation about abortion and the restrictions placed on reproductive health, these notions have been challenged by advocates for women’s rights and reproductive rights.

Since 2016, Planned Parenthood has collaborated with television and film creators to normalize sexual and reproductive health through storytelling. Involved are directors, writers, producers, publicists, and others, who participate in film festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, and Toronto International Film Festival. These collaborations include providing set materials, sexual and reproductive health care information, as well as staff members to consult on scripts (to ensure information is accurate and offer suggests on where information can be comfortably placed), in addition to allowing tours of their facilities to help creators provide a more realistic depiction of women’s health care.

Through panels, brunches, and event partnerships, Planned Parenthood distributes statistics on reproductive health, including but not limited to birth control, abortion, teen pregnancy, and how abstinence-only programs fail teens. They also provide sex education materials that include the proper terminology for procedures and body parts.

Their project was inspired by the LGBT (the “Q” was added in 1996) community. In the late 1980s, the Human Rights Campaign and other organizations came together to directly respond to misinformation and attacks on LGBT people. Recognizing the influence of media—particularly film and television—they slowly began a campaign to normalize queer culture.

Alencia Johnson, director of public engagement at Planned Parenthood, said that television and film’s impact on the public, and subsequently public policy, propelled them.

“The arts are a way to shift policy, mainly because we’re shifting culture. Over 50 percent of people actually believe that the health care information they see on TV and film is accurate,” Johnson said. “Therefore, we need to make sure that abortion storylines—storylines about sexuality, love, relationships, birth control, whatever it may be—related to gender and reproductive rights are accurate.”

Johnson and the Planned Parenthood team are not working without some good intel. Americans watch a lot of television. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey found that more than 80 percent of the population watch TV as their leisure activity. And, they use about half of their total daily free time to watch TV shows and movies. This creates a captive audience of sorts that is receptive, but only if the content is subtle and in some way connected to some part of the viewer’s own lived experience.

For example, in the aforementioned Scandal episode, very little if any dialogue included the word abortion. But women in that situation could relate. They could also relate to the information about women and reproductive rights spoken by Young’s character.

According to Caron Spruch, director of arts and entertainment engagement at Planned Parenthood, the key is to make the information as normal and easily digestible as possible for older and younger viewers.

“I believe art is supposed to instigate change and move the conversation forward.”

“Film, TV, and video do so much to normalize sexual and reproductive health and erase the shame that often surrounds it. It’s one of our most important tools for educating people, especially young people,” she said.

Spruch and Johnson are confident in the approach because they’ve seen the gains around LGBTQ rights.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s spawned even more fear of gay people—men, especially. The Human Rights Council worked hard to help people who were discriminated against for their sexual orientation. But something more had to be done.

Slowly gay characters began to appear on television. Same-sex storylines cropped up like the one on Roseanne, which not only introduced a lesbian character but featured main character Roseanne Conner (Roseane Barr) kissing her. These small steps in individual stories and roles continued into the ’90s until the pivotal coming-out episode on Ellen, a sitcom starring comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

“[Ellen] brought into people’s homes someone [who families] can identify with, someone that they love, having an experience that they weren’t identified with,” Johnson said.

It would be years, decades, until same-sex marriage was legalized. However, that is part of the plan.

“You look at this model, and how the LBGTQ movement did this work with the entertainment industry and major corporations. That’s the work that Planned Parenthood is embarking on,” Johnson said.

“We’ve been around over a hundred years. People see us as the voice for reproductive health care, women’s health care, women’s rights more broadly. And we do see that there will be a shift in culture if we normalize people’s experiences.”

“As a filmmaker, I know how important it is to center storylines about LGBTQ characters and sexual and reproductive health in my work.”

And not only normalize them, but also “humanize them,” she said.

Johnson said she is thankful for shows like Claws and Dear White People that have taken on these issues boldly and normally beyond abortion to include birth control, breast cancer, and consent. And shows Broad City,Shameless, and Orphan Black, and Netflix’s Big Mouth, which often discusses sexual topics targeted at younger audiences. Following a visit to a facility, creators Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett included a Planned Parenthood-themed episode for the show’s second season.

Other creators have also been eager to get on board.

“I believe art is supposed to instigate change and move the conversation forward,” said Chinonye Chukwu, writer-director of the film Clemency, featuring Alfre Woodard and Danielle Brooks, which premiered at Sundance. Chukwu went on to suggest that there’s a need to center Black women in these stories around reproductive justice issues. “I’m interested in creating unique, engaging stories with Black women at the center [who] are navigating stories and arcs that are about more than just their race and gender.”

Filmmaker Dawn Porter echos Chukwu’s position.

“I’ve always been concerned with Black women and reproductive rights,” Porter said. “I’m also interested in voting rights and immigration—these issues are all intertwined. It was important to me to humanize the experience of Black women as well as low-income women seeking reproductive health care while filming Trapped. As a filmmaker, you’re the vehicle from which that truth emerges.”

Filmmaker Desiree Akhaven said she’s proud to stand with Planned Parenthood and appreciates the work they do “to ensure that people have the information and health care they need to stay healthy.”

“As a filmmaker, I know how important it is to center storylines about LGBTQ characters and sexual and reproductive health in my work,” Akhaven said. “These stories need to be told to help shift the conversation in this country and remove the stigma around these issues.” Akhaven said she encourages more filmmakers to join them.

But Johnson wants their joining to be more than symbolic.

“[I’m] not just asking someone to stand up for Planned Parenthood by wearing a pin, or making a statement on the red carpet, which is just as important. But really getting into the fabric of the culture. And that’s through [the storytelling content of] film and TV.”

Learning to Listen

April 12, 2019

My grandmother used to say that “if you have one mouth and two ears it’s because you should listen twice as much as you speak”.

Today I know this is a bare minimum.

But listening is easier said than done. This article published by ActBuildChange.org provides useful advice on how to listen better, so we can win over people’s hearts and minds.

When every conversation can spin into an argument, we are retreating to spaces occupied by people who only affirm us. We are losing our ability to listen to difference.

This is a serious problem for the state of our world. Once we stop listening, we stop learning and we lose our ability to empathise. This helps grow difference and division, them and us, hate and fear. This fire is spreading across our world and we will all burn if we are not willing to engage.

Here are some ways to help you find your ears again.

1. We need to get close

If you want to change the world you must get close to it.

As well as getting close to the people we serve and love, we need to get close to the people who are against what we stand for and those who stand still. You can not change the world at a distance. Working on issues of immigration, it was only when I got close to young people with irregular status did the work take on new urgency and meaning. It was only by getting close to political power, could I understand their agendas, limitations and struggles.

2. Be willing to get uncomfortable

Change comes through uncomfortable conversations. Where there is tension between two people and it is not all smiles and nodding. For example, that uncomfortable talk you are avoiding with your boss. You need to have it. Or the neighbour who stares at your headscarf. You need to address that. The local shopkeeper who looks at school kids like thieves, rather than children. Sit down with that shopkeeper. Lasting change comes through uncomfortable dialogue.

Not only do I believe you can speak with these folks, you can have good conversations with them. You can walk away feeling energised, inspired, understood – if you’re willing to listen.

3. Be Present

You don’t need to fake paying attention if you are in fact paying attention. Don’t multitask. Put your phone out of reach and be present in that moment. If you do not want to be in the conversation get out of it. Do not disrespect that person’s story, vulnerability and time by not giving them anything but complete focus.

4. Everyone is an expert in something

If your mouth is open you are not learning.
Buddha

Approach every conversation with child-like curiosity. Always be prepared to be amazed and you will not be disappointed. Never assume because of someone’s class, race, faith or job, that you can’t work and learn from each other. We need curiosity and hope in all human potential.

5. Keep your assumptions at home

Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand. Most of us listen with the intent to reply.
Stephen R. Covey

Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

When talking to people who vote differently to you, worship differently to you, have more or less money; share your story. Ask them to share theirs. Allow yourself to see what you do have in common. It’s likely that you both have been through struggle and joy. You both love your brothers, sisters, partners, more than anything else in the whole world.

Use open-ended questions: who, what, why, when and how.

If you ask a complicated question expect a simple answer. If you ask a simple open question, you allow that person to describe how they really feel. Simple, open questions will give a much more interesting response.

6. Your opinion comes last

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Rumi

We seem to be much more concerned with personally broadcasting our opinions, than conversing with people different to us. All this loudness stops us from hearing the quiet, the nuanced and the subtle.

Put your opinions last. When you do that, people become less defensive and more open. They are likely to speak with greater honesty and a will to understand you too.

7. Speak to people on the other side

Ubuntu… speaks of the very essence of being human…My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.
Desmond Tutu

If you take anything away from this post, act on this. Think in your mind to someone who you see as different to you, morally superior, young or old, fill-in-the-blank. Find out more about that person you may have negatively stereotyped. Ask them for a tea. Together make it your intention to understand each other. Don’t persuade, defend, interrupt – just listen.

In South Africa this is called Ubuntu.

We are all part of a much bigger whole. Through understanding and empathy, we will no longer feel threatened. By talking and listening and getting that balance of conversation right, we can drop our swords and reach out towards each other. It is slow and challenging work, but it is our only hope of healing our world and building peace.

Getting Hope back into the picture

April 1, 2019

This paper appeared in Open Global Rights

Its authors advocate for a change in mindset of campaigners for Human Rights.

While some of their points are specific to “mainstream” Human Rights issues, that is issues with which a majority of people are theoretically OK but don’t actively support (like Freedom of Expression), some lessons hold true for campaigners for minority issues (i.e. issues that a majority of people does not support, like homosexuality in conservative countries)

Lesson 1

Talk about solutions, not problems. People want to be paired with positive stories and results, not stories of loosing victims. And by talking about problems, you reinforce their presence in people’s minds, making them sound more and more “natural”

Lesson 2

Talk about what you stand for, not what you oppose. People need a vision for the future. People need to see that we share a common vision. This is what will make them support your cause.

Lesson 3

Be part of the solution, not the problem: People need to see you as someone who brings an answer, not someone who brings trouble. It can be an answer to the conflicts they feel as several of their values are opposing each other. Or an answer to a grim society, etc.

Full article

For a human rights movement dedicated to exposing abuses, positive communication does not come naturally. But to make the case for human rights, we cannot rely on fear of a return to the dark past, we need to promise a brighter future.

Hope is a pragmatic strategy, informed by history, communications experts, organizers neuroscience and cognitive linguistics. It can be applied to any strategy or campaign. By grounding your communications from the values you stand for and a vision of the world you want to see, hope-based communications is an antidote to debates that seem constantly framed to favour your opponents, so that you can design actions that set the agenda rather than constantly reacting to external events.

A hope-based communications strategy involves making five basic shifts in the way we talk about human rights. This guide has been produced in collaboration with Thomas Coombes (@T_Coombes) to help you apply to any aspect of your daily work.

Shift 1: Talk about solutions, not problems

While the human rights movement will always have to expose abuses, we also need to show how to fix them. Positive communications are about talking about what we want to see, not just what other people are doing. It is much harder for leaders to excuse not tackling problems than it is to justify failing to implement solutions.

The danger of focusing all our attention on the worst crises is that people become inured to it. When we focus on the problem, we reinforce it in the mind of our audience. Or as George Lakoff wrote, “People tend to adapt to a new state and take it as a new reference point.”

The sense of a world in crisis pushes people into the hands of populists who offer them security, and a return to some imagined idealised past.

Caption: In India, the BJP’s 2014 Achche din election campaign promised that “Good Days are Coming”. If populist leaders are able to promise a happy future, why can’t human rights groups?

We need to convince people that another world is possible. Visionary ideas change the world, and people who put them forward set the agenda instead of being on the defensive. Campaigning against austerity measures, for example, are unlikely to make decision-makers act differently unless they make the case for a viable alternative, be it greater public investment or thought-provoking initiatives like Universal Basic Income.

The environmental movement made this shift when it realized that stories of impending doom created despondency instead of urgency. The LGBT movement shifted from campaigns against discrimination to shared values by focusing on one of many possible policy solutions: equal marriage, a call rooted in love and compassion that everyone could relate to. If we want something to change, we need to stop just saying “no” to the problem, but give governments something to say “yes” to, by putting forward bold policies: smart human rights solutions that trigger debate, and showing what the desired transformation will achieve. Even in the darkest crisis, we can always focus on the first step towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

Shift 2. Highlight what we stand for, not what we oppose

The human rights movement should show how human rights is a practical application of universal shared values like compassion, solidarity and dignity, rather than defining rights by the absence of their violations (“a world without torture”, “protection from harm”).

The movement’s favourite expression today is “not a crime”. Journalism is not a crime. Refugees are not criminals. This fuses together the concepts of criminality and human rights in the minds of our audience, invites a debate about whether or not journalists are criminals. It’s no surprise, then, that surveys constantly show people think human rights protect criminals (nearly four in ten globally, according to a 2018 IPSOS survey). But worse still, it misses the chance to tell our audience what journalism brings to our society and propose measures to give us more of it.

Human rights advocates tend to do this because we believe that raising awareness is enough, that if we just let people know that journalists are being treated like criminals, we will trigger outrage and shame. Instead of name and shame, we need to name and frame. We need to call for what we want to see and spell out the shared values at stake.

Talk about the policy you want, explain how the government could do it, and explain what values it would be living by if it implemented them. Tell stories that build up our way of seeing the world without necessarily directly dealing with the issues we work on every time.

When human rights organizations talk about values, they tend to find justification for human rights in national values. But to find things that unite people around the cause of human rights, we should look beyond narrow national frames. Most “tribes” are “imagined communities” that require a common enemy to exist, something today’s populists are adept at exploiting. Human rights, as opposed to rights that accrue to national citizenship, require that people feel like they belong to a common human family. That cannot be constructed with any common enemy. We need frames that focus on the things that unite human beings, not those that keep us apart.

In new human rights messaging guidance, Anat Shenker-Osorio warns that “Evoking national identity brings ‘us/them’ top of mind and makes respondents less receptive to others’ rights”. Instead of saying “As Indians/Europeans/Christians, we believe in treating each other fairly”, Anat invites us to say “as caring people”. This bigger “we” cultivates a sense of belonging to a different, more universal identity: our common humanity.

If the human rights movement were to stop speaking within the frames of our opponents (security, the economy or other, national interests), what narrative would we shift to? What is the ideal human rights frame?

The human rights movement needs a new narrative. Today we operate in issue silos, tackling each right one by one on the merits specific to that case. As a result, wider audiences understand human rights as something that protects us, that we are “entitled to”, rather than something we can all use to make things better.

We tend to visualise what we are against, not what we are for: hands grasping bars illustrate injustice, but what does justice look like?

We should instead talk about a common, universal world view, a society where people take care of each other. A common world view that we can strengthen in the minds of the public day by day, story by story, tweet by tweet.

If we do not make the case for the world we want to see, who will?

Shift 3. Create opportunities, drop threats

When we talk about solutions, we give people an opportunity to be part of making things better, instead of using threats or guilt to make them act.

We need to reflect on the experience of being part of the human rights movement. We want to build, we want to take society on a journey to a better place, but when we talk we lean heavily on the language of conflict, which is divisive. Do we want people to think of us as fighters, radical and divided, defending the interests of the few, or builders, constructing something for all?

When we talk about human rights as protection from harm, our implicit message is based on fear and self-interest. These could be your rights. Imagine if your rights were taken away. One day it could be you.

But there is another way. We can appeal to the better angles of our nature. Human rights can connect people in solidarity. It can offer a chance to act on the human desire to be a good person, do the right thing, and help other people.

Successful movements are propelled forward by enthusiasm and passion. While Donald Trump united his base with the simple red baseball cap, ordinary people demanding women’s rights queued for hours to buy “Together for Yes” buttons in Ireland and thronged the streets wearing green scarves in Argentina. Symbols of belonging are not just about fundraising or powerful images, they create a shared sense of belonging that elevates a cause to something historical, momentous and inevitable.

But we cannot generate lasting passion and enthusiasm that pressures leaders purely through outrage and disgust: we must celebrate what we stand for. Joyful, inspiring content like Planned Parenthood’s Unstoppable campaign serves not just to inspire, it creates political momentum:

For people to hear our messages they need to see us as unifiers, people who build constructive solutions, people who will take them on a journey instead of fighters. We also need them to feel like they live in a less polarised culture, by contributing to a popular mood of togetherness and community—the ideal breeding ground for human rights friendly policies.

Indeed, more and more research points to the fact that fear and pessimism triggers conservative and suspicious views, while, hope and optimism tend to more liberal views. New research from Hope not Hate, for example, says:

“Where people are more likely to feel in control of their own lives, they are more likely to show resistance to hostile narratives, and are more likely to share a positive vision of diversity and multiculturalism.”

In Hidden Tribes, a 2018 report from More in Common, insists that the media landscape accentuates the conflicts but downplays the solidarity in our society. It advises us to find common ground to counteract the divisions magnified on our screens with stories of human contact and respectful engagement that “spotlight the extraordinary ways in which [people] in local communities build bridges and not walls, every day.”

Shift 4. Emphasize support for heroes, not pity for victims

Instead of inducing pity for victims, offer people an opportunity to side with heroes, and be a part of making change happen. Show them ordinary people who show extraordinary perseverance, determination and courage. Help your audience make connection to individuals, not groups, by highlighting the little details that everyone can relate to.

If we want people to be compassionate, show them other people being compassionate. Presenting people in a way that induces fear, pity and anger may also inadvertently contribute to dehumanisation. If a politician calls a group of people animals, do pictures of those people in cages reinforce that metaphor? Faced with dehumanizing politics, human rights must do everything it can to re-humanize people.

A focus on re-humanizing people as an end in it itself opens up a whole new avenue of potential strategic operation for human rights campaigns, in which organizations pursue attitudinal change that would make possible a raft of policy improvements. We can focus on telling positive stories that will change attitudes towards the people we are trying to help.

More in Common research in Italy identifies not only fear of migrants but also a sense of solidarity and a disgust with racism, arguing for the need to strengthen values of hospitality and empathy, demonstrating “the real-world integration stories of migrants into Italian cultural life—in areas such as language, sport, food, community activities and entertainment.”

These kind of insights can be the basis for targeted content that tells humanising stories to specific audiences based on their values and interests, like the Swiss NGO that served up YouTube ads introducing refugees to people before they could watch racist videos.

Much of our audience has in-built stereotypes about “other” people, that sometimes will not be changed by hearing their story. But, as the HeartWired guide for change-makers written by communication strategists Amy Simon and Robert Perez notes, we can open them up to change by showing them someone like them engaging with the “other” and changing their mind.

The HeartWired approach’s focus on changing mindsets offers a new long-term strategic goal for human rights communicators – focus on campaigns that bring about long-term shifts in attitude towards other groups of people.

People who change their minds and decide to help are also heroes, as in this powerful for add for marriage equality in Ireland where the heroes are traditional parents supporting their children.

These are also stories of a changing society, stories that show how change happens, and offer a glimpse of the world we want to see.

Practically, this means creating social media moments based on interactions between people, that organizations can package as b-roll and images and send to digital news organizations like AJ+ and NowThis News, changing the narrative from “us vs them” to one of humanity. A Danish travel agent used DNA to show a group of people how much they had in common, Heineken asked people who were very different to build a bar together, and Amnesty International Poland asked refugees and Europeans to look in each other’s eyes for four minutes.

We are in a world where the majority of people want to do the right thing. But crisis and conflict-driven media narratives paint a different picture. We need to tell stories that reinforce the human rights worldview—where people take care of each other, and stand up for the rights of people far away just because they are all human.

Above all, we need to tell stories of humanity and compassion, thus reinforcing the idea that human rights are about people standing up for each other. We need stories that put the human in human rights.

Shift 5: Show that “we got this”!

Political strategist Mark McKinnon says all campaigns are either a narrative of hope, fear, threat or opportunity. How do we talk about hope and opportunity when human rights defenders are under attack and we need to defend ourselves, to fight back?

We need to stop talking about human rights under attack. That makes us seem like a losing cause and who wants to get on a train going in the wrong direction?

You light a candle when its dark, and you need human rights most when they are absent. Human rights defenders have “long been on the front line”, but frames of crisis and peril can inadvertently harm perceptions of the movement’s effectiveness, as Kathryn Sikkinkrecently argued.

People want to be part of something successful. Amnesty International France are running a “Thrill of Victory” campaign to associate the words “Human Rights” with “victory” instead of “problem” or “violation”.

In her pioneering study of human rights language, Anat Shenker Osorio urges the movement to display a quiet confidence:

“Where white nationalism offers an explanation and antidote for what feels like the world spinning out of control, human rights often provide a storyline that cements the feeling of unrelenting and accelerating change. Although the human rights paradigm is, by many measures, about order and known outcomes, the sense that “we got this” or there could be some steady, reliable, normalcy rarely comes from human rights.”

To show that “we got this”, we need to show more human rights in action. What does it really mean to do human rights and what does this look like? What is the picture we want people to have in their head when they think of human rights, human rights defenders and human rights activism? For some, this might mean holding protests, calling up politicians and writing letters to political prisoners for others it could be people coming together at community events or cultural moments.

Whatever they are, the activities the human rights movement undertakes need to tell a story of change, and show that human rights are not just a thing that we are born with or passively receive from governments, but something we do: a tool for making our societies better or a way of living together. Describing human rights as actions helps indicate that we must constantly make choices to cultivate and grow them.

Moreover, we need to change the expectations and associations with the very words “human rights”, explaining them as a metaphorical “tool” that we put in the hands of ordinary people to make change. Anat Shenker-Osorio’s research provides several avenues for further testing: Is human rights a shield or insurance policy that protects people from harm, a map or compass that points us in the right direction, or string or glue that binds us together in our common humanity? This way of thinking about human rights can not only inform our messaging, it can revolutionise the way we human rights and other organizations carry out their mission.

There is hope for human rights. People share our values and they want to do what is right. We just have to get better at activating those values, and talking to people about them.

These shifts will feel unnatural to many in the human rights movement. But the evidence shows they are the path to victory. And human rights is too important not to do whatever it takes to win.

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