This article first appeared at PR Daily
The format has grown even more popular despite fewer commuters during WFH. Here’s how communicators can make the most of it.
However, as routines shifted and the world acclimated to the “new normal,” this has changed. In the U.S., 18 percent of adults said they are listening to more podcasts since they started isolating and social distancing, according to Morning Consult, and Gen Z has increased podcast use by 31 percent since they started social distancing.
Spotify has reportedly seen an increase in podcast listening during activities such as cooking, doing chores and family time, Ostroff said, and the top 10 publishers reported a 52 percent increase in unique live streams in May 2020, over May 2019.
Among the thousands of podcasts launched during quarantine are:
The ‘new normal’ for podcasts
What does this mean for PR pros?
If pitching podcasts isn’t already a central component of every media relations campaign, now is the time to start making this tactic a bigger priority.
Podcasts offer exceptional opportunities for executives to conduct long-form interviews during which they can convey multiple key messages, the company’s brand values, and their “hot takes” as thought leaders. They also empower companies to connect in a meaningful way with niche audiences, who are often devout listeners of the podcast, and who may truly move the needle for them. In addition, podcasts present an exceptional platform for exploring contemporary and complex social justice topics, if doing so is on-brand and appropriate.
However, effective podcast outreach isn’t as easy as doing a simple Google search to see what articles have been written on which topics and by whom. Becoming familiar with a podcast requires listening to several episodes—yes, each entire show, from beginning to end—to research the recurring segments, themes and types of guests the show invites on.
Still think podcasts don’t have a large enough reach to warrant the effort? Consider this: “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast gets an estimated 200 million monthly listens, which is over four times the reach of The New York Times online, at 43 million unique viewers per month.
Here are the top 10 podcasts in the U.S., by ratings:
Podcasts are the new blogs
Podcasts are replacing blogs as the premier outlet for thought leadership content.
If PR pros don’t already have the capabilities to create a podcast, now is also the time to get in the game. This includes learning how to secure and use the right equipment, record the podcast audio (including backup audio and possibly video recordings), generate a run-of-show and content calendar, secure guests, create structure, create introductions and upload the podcast for syndication.
The upside of producing podcasts over blogs is that they present an opportunity to exponentially expand brand awareness.
If podcast guests are invited to speak on the podcast each week, and every podcast is shared by the guests via their social media channels, the podcast audience can grow organically. This presents a phenomenal opportunity for brands to expand their footprint by inviting synergistic brand representatives to be guests on the show.
The downside of producing podcasts, from a PR perspective, is that the executives have to do more of the work themselves. In other words, no one can ghostwrite a podcast, even if a team can help with the production end of things. It requires a serious, ongoing commitment from the leaders within the organization, who must then show up (often on camera) and feel comfortable sharing their thoughts on various topics publicly, which can veer into political waters quickly, without warning—and without any intention to go there.
It could be especially worth it for brands in the top five categories currently demonstrating increased listenership:
The future of podcasting
Regardless of whether PR pros decide to dive into pitching or producing podcasts during the pandemic, one thing is certain: Those once odd little audio programs that seemed like fringe mediums are not so little, odd or fringe anymore.
In fact, at the start of 2020, 75 percent of Americans were familiar with podcasts—up 10 million from the year before, according to Convince and Convert—and 55 percent of Americans have now listened to a podcast, up 51 percent in 2019.
Since the first podcast was recorded in 2004, this medium has grown exponentially, and today podcasts actively competing for serious advertising dollars. Experts predict podcast advertising will surpass $1 billion by 2021.
Since most of the nation is still quarantined, this seems like the perfect moment for PR pros to research and invest more in this growing medium—while there’s still time to get ahead of the rising curve
.
Article appeared first at Teen Vogue
A lot of stereotypes exist about what it means or looks like to be bisexual or identify under the umbrella of bi+. Ultimately, to be bi+ means to have an attraction to more than one gender. Misconceptions about bi+ people stereotype us as greedy, confused, or going through a phase. That biphobia can also be internalized personally by people who do experience attraction to and relationships with people of different genders, and affect how bi+ people feel about their identities.
Whatever you think you know or understand about bisexuality from tropes in pop culture, TV, movies, or even conversations with people might not necessarily be correct. To set the record right, the best thing we can do is listen to bi+ folks themselves, because it’s clear there are many ways to own your identity and experience bisexuality, pansexuality, or queerness.
Here are 11 people on what being bi+ looks like and means to them.
Raksha, 23, bisexual Indian woman
“Love is something I give easily and often. It’s a privilege to experience any sort of relationship with another human being and, to me, being bi simply means having an open heart and mind to letting all relationships grow without imposing an artificial upper limit on their intimacy. I’m proud to be fearless in love, growing from the pain and joy it brings time and time again. In short, being bi feels like the radical act of loving love.”
Matthew, 28, non-binary bisexual person
“Being openly bisexual is only something I’ve come into in the last few years. After many years of knowing I was bi but only sharing that with close friends, I began to see more and more discussion about bisexual erasure and invisibility. I realized in 2017 that I could use my privilege as a white, assigned male at birth person with supportive family and friends and a stable career to make myself more visible as a bisexual person by coming out online.
Today, my visibility looks like a line in my Twitter location field that says I’m bi, showing up to LGBTQ+ events and spaces in the city and beyond, and sharing bisexuality news and memes on my social media.
[I want people to know that] bisexuality is trans-inclusive. This is incredibly important and widely misunderstood. Being bisexual means that I am attracted to people of all genders, but that gender can play a role in that attraction. Identifying as bisexual doesn’t mean you’re a slut, it doesn’t mean you can’t make up your mind, it doesn’t mean you’re in a ‘phase.’ Your sexual orientation is something to be celebrated, not denigrated. Also, if a bisexual person is dating or having sex with someone of a different gender, it doesn’t make them any less bisexual.”
Maria, 23, bisexual person
“I first had feelings for the same sex at 5 years old and questioned my sexuality well into adulthood. Even at 23, I’m still not 100% sure where I stand. You’re allowed to love who you want and express yourself however you want and are under no pressure to proudly wear the bi+ label. Some people are visibly bi activists, and some people prefer to keep it on the DL. Both are okay! Due to the prominence of bi erasure, people tend to pick gay or straight as it’s just easier to navigate the world that way. That’s why being visibly bi is an act of education and resistance. You’re showing people, ‘Yes, you can be bi. You don’t have to choose. Whatever you feel internally, you can express externally.’”
Lizet, 24, bisexual Black woman
“Being visibly bi means not looking visibly bi or queer for me, because I’m in a long term relationship with a cis man and people assume we’re straight. It’s frustrating, and has taken years for me to stop internalizing biphobic messaging that invalidates my identity because I’ve ‘picked a side.’ It’s a constant struggle between wanting people to understand my identity and picking my battles with ignorant people. Bisexuality doesn’t look a specific way. It doesn’t matter if someone is with someone of their same gender or another, it doesn’t change their identity. We’re also not more likely to cheat or more likely to have STDs/STIs because we’re bisexual.”
Rachael, 31, bisexual sex educator
“I spent my late teens and 20’s in a long-term relationship with a cis man, and I thought my attraction to other genders ‘didn’t count’ since I’d only dated men. A few years ago we decided to open up our relationship, and it’s been really wonderful to get to explore my attraction and the connections I have with people of all genders.
There’s some bi-erasure, too, since people still often assume I’m straight because I’m married to a man, but society slowly seems to be catching on that the relationships we’re in don’t dictate our orientation. I think there’s this cultural idea that while we’re all assumed straight as a default, we somehow have to ‘qualify’ to call ourselves bi/queer/etc. It took me a long time to realize that there are no qualifications—your feelings about yourself and your identity are valid. It’s also okay to explore those feelings even if you’re not sure, and if you feel comfortable identifying one way now and feel you want to identify differently in the future, that’s okay too. I think sexuality is, and can be, fluid.”
Maddie, 26, non-binary bisexual person
“I have been openly bisexual for many years with all of the struggles and joys that come along with it. Every year I grow to understand myself, my desires, my needs and my dreams in a relationship a little more. Being bisexual and non-binary means being able to shed all of the gendered preconceptions I grew up with about what relationships and sex are supposed to look and instead get to know each cutie I meet as a person who I can connect with in a new way.”
Sasha, 24, bisexual woman
“My journey to owning my bisexuality involved a lot of challenging self reflection, but has ultimately brought me a lot of inner peace! I went through a period in high school when I was incredibly confused about my sexuality. I was president of my high school’s Gay Trans Straight Alliance, while also hooking up with a girlfriend of mine, yet I was somehow still convinced that I was straight. It’s important for me to be loud and proud about my bisexual identity today, because I didn’t have any bisexual role models growing up.
The more I’ve immersed myself in the bi+ community, the more experiences I realize I have in common with other bi+ folks that I don’t have with people of other sexualities.
Some of my favorite experiences this year were weekly Friday nights with my bi+ girlfriends at San Francisco’s new and only queer/lesbian bar Jolene’s, watch parties of our favorite new bi reality TV show Are You The One, and checking out the growing meetups in San Francisco specifically for the bi+ community! Bi+ people are the biggest subset of the LGBTQ+ community, which means there’s a huge community here ready to welcome you.”
Ry, 18, genderqueer bi+ person
“To me, being openly and visibly bi+ is simply unashamedly talking about being bi+. That said, I don’t think there’s any one way to be, and you can be confident and settled in your bi+ identity without being open and without being a symbol of visibility. What I want the world to know about being bi+ is that, just as it is with all things, it happens on a spectrum. Not everyone’s bi+ identity is the same.”
Olivia, 22, bisexual woman
“For me, being openly and visibly bisexual is about actively dismantling our ideas of what love, romance, gender, and sexuality look like. It’s about disrupting our ideas of what relationships can and should look like. As a bisexual high femme woman, it’s also about disrupting what queerness looks like. Queerness looks like me in a floral dress and a full face of makeup, just as much as it looks like me in Doc Martens and black lipstick. Queerness looks different for everyone, and that doesn’t make any of us less queer.”
Eva, 23, bisexual woman
“I’m pretty online about my bisexuality. I came out on my YouTube channel about a week after I came out to a lot of important people in my life. While I don’t talk about my own sex life on my sex ed channel, I’ve been open about my bisexuality, talking about struggling with internalized biphobia, sexual fluidity, and my journey finding my own queer community. Besides that, I’ve had the opportunity to work in queer-positive spaces and live in pretty accepting cities, so flagging as queer in order to be visible for myself and others is important to me. For me, that’s wearing pride pins, combat boots, my nose ring, etc.
What I want people to understand about bisexuality is we aren’t ‘gay lite.’ Bi+ people have a unique experience and our own unique struggles. Don’t create gay events or supports and just assume they’ll work for bi+ folks in the same way, and please see bisexuality as a full identity.”
Helen, 26, queer woman
“Being bi+ is a beautiful thing. It means opening yourself up to a world of beautiful human beings and releasing expectations built around partnering. It means it is easier to see good qualities in people — even if you aren’t interested in dating them — because your natural state is to be open to everyone.”
The Article appeared first at The Indian Express
Hindu mythology, through evolved heroes and instances, has displayed elements of gender variance and non-heterosexual sexuality. When we see it in the context of the current laws against homosexuality, based on colonial laws, it shows that it resisted sexual norms and the commonly perceived gender binary. Spoken more subtly than directly, changes of sex, homoerotic encounters, and intersex or third gender characters are very often found in the epics, the Puranas and regional folklore.
While the reproductive connection between man and woman has always been honoured, homosexuality and LGBT themes have been documented through ancient literature and folk tales, art and performing arts alike. Essentially because gender is often seen as an idea, a belief, a conviction, the sweep and scale of which can be seen through the diverse characters, each extraordinary and unusual.
Mohini is the only female avtaar of Vishnu, who exhibits gender variability, in one case even becoming pregnant (Vishnu as Mohini and the Preserver even procreates with Shiva, the designated Destroyer to give birth to Lord Ayyappa). Each time Vishnu, in his role as the protector of the universe, took the feminine form of the divine enchantress Mohini, the world got saved. Vishnu becomes Mohini when gender-adaptability (here it’s not masculinity but femininity) is called for, to solve a problem. Beyond the role of the saviour, the implications in dual-genderism and fluid sexuality is more analogical, wherein in each person lies in the male and the female.
Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna in the Mahabharata, becomes Mohini to marry Aravan/Iravan, son of Arjun and the Naga princess Uloopi. Selected to be sacrificed for the Pandavas’ victory in the Kurukshetra war, Aravan has one last request, that of not wishing to die unmarried. As no woman comes forward to marry him, Krishna takes the form of Mohini, weds him and after Iranvan’s death, is seen as a hero’s widow. This folk tale expands where Aravan is considered a patron god of some transgender communities in the country today.
Shiva has often been held as the ultimate embodiment of masculinity, but his Ardhanarishvara form is an androgynous composite of Shiva and goddess Parvati, his wife. Parvati wished to share Shiva’s experiences, and thus wanted their physical forms literally to be joined to show that the inner masculine and feminine coexist and can coalesce.
A similar union occurs between Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity and Vishnu, her husband Vishnu, forming the hermaphroditic or androgynous Lakshmi-Narayan.
Shikhandi, the warrior in the Kurukshetra war was born Shikhandini, the daughter of King Drupada. Said to be Amba reborn to exact her revenge on Bhishma, she is raised as a son by Drupada. In one story, Shikhandini as a girl discovers the garland of ever-blooming blue lotuses hung on the palace gate and puts it around her neck. Drupada panics and banishes his daughter, out of fear that he would earn Bhishma’s wrath and become his enemy. She performs austerities in the forest and is transformed into a male named Shikhandi.
In another story, she gets married to the princess of Dasharna who upon discovery, complaints to her father that her husband is a woman. Shikhandini flees to the forest and meets a Yaksha who exchanges genders. Taking the name Shikhandi, he remained a man until his death at the battle of Mahabharata. In some versions of the story, the sex swap results in Shikhandi being a eunuch. But whatever the gender, Shikhandi is seen as a brave warrior responsible for the death of Bhishma.
There are several instances of homosexual or bisexual activity not always for deriving sexual pleasure. Agni, the god of fire is married both to the goddess Svaha and the male Moon god Soma with Agni having a receptive role in this relationship. Interestingly, another aspect of this story as advocated by ancient rishis was that there were two elements, fire (agni for sun) and water (soma for moon), determining the gender of a child.
Similarly, Mitra and Varuna, are gods of intimacy are often mentioned together, both presiding over the universal waters: while Mitra controls the ocean depths, Varuna rules over the rivers and shores. Portrayed as icons of male affection, they are depicted riding a shark or crocodile together or sometimes seated close on a golden chariot drawn by seven swans. Metaphorically, they are associated with the two lunar phases with Varun, as the waxing one and the waning one is Mitra symbolising the same sex relations. They are said to have children (Rishi Agastya and Rishi Vashisth) through a yoni with the apsara Urvashi, something akin to having children through surrogacy.
Besides holding a prominent position in Hindu astrology as the planet Mercury, Budh also represents a prototype of gender roles. Rishi Briahspati, when he discovers his wife Tara pregnant with the child of her lover Chandra, curses the child Budh to be neither male nor female. Budh later on marries Ila, also cursed to switch genders every month because she trespassed into the forbidden Sharavana grove of Parvati and Shiva. Their children later established the lunar Chandra-vamsa, dynasty of kings in the Mahabharata.
Arjuna, too, receives a curse from the apsara Urvashi when he spurns her and the Pandava prince has to live his exile for a year as the eunuch Brihannala, the dance tutor to Princess Uttara of the Matsya kingdom. King Bhagiratha is said to be responsible in bringing Ganga from heaven as a river on Earth. Born to two mothers, the widowed queens of King Dilipa, his birth is considered a blessing and was socially approved.
The homoerotic subtext and other abovementioned instances and characters, operate within a distinct worldview yet accommodating gender and sexual variance, generally accepted and woven into the narrative of the epics and the ancient texts as typically occurring or done.
The interview conducted by Emma Wickenden appeared first at Charity Comms.
The hunters of the remote Russian tundra must have been surprised to see Sacha Dench drop James-Bond-style out of the sky, with what essentially looked like a giant desk fan strapped to her back.
Sacha, CEO of Conservation without Borders, was on a mission to fly nearly 7,000 km across 11 countries by paramotor to help save the critically endangered Bewick’s swans.
Battling freezing temperatures, enduring injuries and treacherous conditions, Sacha flew along the birds’ migratory route from Arctic Russia to the UK. Dropping in to talk to communities across the route, she sought to understand and reveal, through stunning visual imagery, what was killing the swans and what we could do about it.
While not formally trained in comms, Sacha (AKA the human Swan) has a natural gift for storytelling which she’s used throughout her career to spotlight issues – from the plight of the shark to her latest campaign to save the Ospreys. We caught up with Sacha ahead of our annual Storyfest conference, where she was our keynote speaker, to ask about her unique storytelling techniques.
CC: In a previous life you were a biologist devoted to educating people about sharks. Can you tell us a bit more?
SD: A few people listened to what I had to say, but when I became an internationally recognised freediver, then the media listened, and I was able to really bring attention to the sharks’ cause.
CC: Is that when you realised that being part of the story could be helpful and were you ever worried your extraordinary human story could overshadow the swan’s story?
SD: Yes, the seed was planted. But it turns out, journalists can’t cover the adventure story without asking ‘why?’ And because I’m flying at the same height and altitude as the birds and suffering many of the same threats and challenges, I could talk about it with conviction from the swans’ point of view.
CC: What stories have you found change hearts and minds?
SD: People were interested in my being the human swan. The mystery of the swans’ disappearance and the incredible stories of their journey got people engaged. But the most effective stories for inspiring real-world action were the ones of people living along the flyway, who were doing things to help. For example, the volunteers across Europe counting swans on the same days in every country – made the nomadic reindeer breeders want to help. Or the Nenets [the Samoyedic ethnic group native to arctic Russia] offering to shift what and how they hunt – in already difficult circumstances – made polish fish farmers offer to leave ponds full for longer to be safe havens for birds.
CC: What did you learn about storytelling from this campaign?
SD: Have empathy for your audience, even if they are the problem. Try to get inside their head and imagine a scenario that might make them change their mind (it’s unlikely just giving facts will do that). Allow them to be the ‘hero’ in that scenario, rather than the one in the wrong forced to change. Also, check your assumptions about who these target audiences are. For example, we hadn’t ever imagined that the hunters in remote areas shooting swans, would include nine-year-old kids. In some remote communities (where permafrost limits agriculture) hunting is the contribution of kids to family survival- they shoot on their long walk to and from school.
“Give everyone the chance to be the good guys in the story”
CC: Can you tell us a bit more about making people ‘heroes’ in your campaign narrative?
SD: I kept saying – let’s give everyone the chance to be the good guys in the story. Let’s reframe the situation. For example, with hunters in the field, I would land dramatically from the sky on the paramotor to speak to them over cups of tea and discussions about motor and navigation, a love of the arctic etc. The ones that helped fix my paramotor, showed me where to find edible mushrooms, taught me tundra survival or arranged fuel drops, later became the official ‘champions of the swan’ and are carrying on the work.
CC: You said that scientists already knew many of the things that were killing the swans – so why did your campaign focus on this question?
SD: The scientists didn’t like the idea of posing this question, as it implied that after 30+ years of research they had failed. But I insisted on making this discovery a central premise of the campaign. By letting people have ownership of the mystery, allowing them to identify their part in the situation, would make it more engaging and have longer-term impact than arriving and saying ‘we know swans are being shot here and we need you to stop’ which would have got a lot more doors and minds closed to the issue.
So, I would show images of the threats we were aware of, but the public message was that we were ‘all on a mission to find out what was going wrong for swans’. Telling this story got people’s imaginations going, made it a shareable conversation and a discussion point within communities. We invited people to share stories and photos with us. Start with creativity and questionings and speak to people as equals – their local knowledge is as important as the research data in finding solutions.
“Be radical in your communications because the world needs bold thinking right now.”
CC: This campaign was very brave. Can you offer tips for pitching radical campaign ideas to Senior Management Teams?
SD: When I had the idea for Flight of the Swans I sat on it as I thought my reasonably conservative organisation wouldn’t take it up. But they did. And probably because a few key people I broached it with were brave enough to back me first. I learned that more people are up for radical thinking than you might expect. Be radical in your communications thinking because the world needs bold thinking right now. If your own ideas aren’t exciting enough, encourage or back others’ ideas that are.
CC: Can you tell us about your next campaign – what will you do differently this time?
SD: In our next campaign, I will be flying with the Osprey and meeting people along the route for BBC and global media. Looking at how to bring the osprey back, but also looking at our planet from a birds’-eye-view. This expedition is in the runup to the next Global Climate Change Conference in Glasgow and is the first in our ‘UN 2030 Global Challenge’ series of expeditions that span the globe and keep the world interested and motivated to turn the climate and biodiversity crises around in the next 10 years.
This time I will give people smaller cameras and more practice in how to make cameras invisible – in some communities the camera became the focus. I had better interactions, learnt more, made longer-term friends when I landed with just one small camera. Also, I will tell more stories of what people had agreed to do to help.
By Alice Sachrajda & Thomas Coombes
from “The TILT, Reframing Human Rights for the 21st Century”
How can civil society groups and charities apply narrative work in practice? Based on our work with migration groups in the UK during the pandemic, we believe a crucial step is more narrative synergy between organisations that share the same values. Scroll right to the end for practical steps and more information about how you can get involved in collective narrative change.
Have you ever looked closely at a detailed painting and then slowly stepped back to see the picture take shape and come alive before your eyes? It’s a magical feeling when the smaller component parts complement each other and align to create a unified whole. This is what happens with an intricate mosaic, where small individual tiles collectively merge to create an image that is striking to behold.
The same synergistic principle applies to narratives. We communicate by sharing our messages and stories, but it is their accumulation over time that form lasting, memorable narratives. When we communicate strategically we need to think not just about how we craft our own message, but also how we are adding to a greater whole and strengthening shared narratives in the process. In short: to be strategic we need to be synergistic.
As the Narrative Initiative writes:
“What tiles are to mosaics, stories are to narratives. The relationship is symbiotic; stories bring narratives to life by making them relatable and accessible, while narratives infuse stories with deeper meaning.”
Elena Blackmore, writing for PIRC, has also used this metaphor to powerful effect where she writes perceptively about #BlackLivesMatter and the response that is required to change harmful narrative mosaics:
“This is the narrative mosaic of white supremacy and it comprises hundreds of years’ worth of tiles of violent history. We can understand a narrative in this way: as a ‘coherent system of stories’.”
If communications work is about crafting the right kinds of words, visuals and feelings to get a message across, then strategic communications is about stepping back and thinking about the big ideas, attitudes and behaviours we want to shift. This means thinking not just about promoting the work of our own organisation, but choosing the right stories to tell about what is happening in the world today. This means communications based more around moments than on campaigns.
These reflections are based on recent work with Unbound Philanthropy and Migration Exchange during the pandemic. We have been working to help activist groups apply narrative messaging around Covid-19 produced by communications experts such as Anat Shenker-Osorio, PIRC, Frameworks Institute and IMIX to their daily work. And we have been having deep conversations about narrative change through our Narrative Working Group (NARWHAL) convenings, curated by Phoebe Tickell.
If a narrative is a mosaic, our communications must build it up tile by tile.
Every day is a new opportunity to find new tiles to add. These tiles can be planned and created by your organisation. They might also come from an ally or from grass-roots supporters.
Creating new, striking narrative mosaics requires as many people as possible offering up the same sorts of ideas, creating images that bring to life our shared values and exchanging stories that reflect our worldview.
We have designed a messaging house to help guide this process, drawing on the idea of a Larger Us developed by Alex Evans at the Collective Psychology Project as a way of articulating what unites groups working on human rights, environment, poverty, racial justice and others in common cause.
This messaging house contains simple “common sense” ideas that we can all repeat over and over again, and bring to life in stories, videos, drawings and graphics (find out more about the messaging house by scrolling down to the practical steps below).
We use a messaging house applies the mosaic principle because rather than asking every group to use shared branding or slogans, we instead invite everyone to inject a little bit of the spirit of our shared worldview into their work.
Applying mosaics-thinking to our communications strategies is crucial if we want to change narratives.
Getting the wording of our messages right is important, but communications is often about more than words: it is about images, stories and emotions stirred by cultural products.
There are five principles we’ve learnt from mosaic-making that help us to get to the heart and soul of strategic communications. We explore and unpack each of these principles in more detail, below:
Andamento is the ability to capture the mood and ‘feel’ of the overall piece, described as follows by one mosaic expert:
“Never mind the design — a design is a design — but pay attention to what is going on in the background of a mosaic and it is there that you will find the melody, the choreography, the spirit of a mosaic.”
The same applies in our strategic communications: Messages are important, just as the design helps to create the overall picture; but it is also vital to capture the ‘andamento’ i.e. the spirit or the overall ‘feel’ of the piece. This is about more than just crafting and framing our words and projecting them out to all who will listen. Instead, it’s about working together, collectively, to achieve a bigger, shared objective: It’s about making our communication fizz with energy and sing out in symphony.
Many campaigns start from a ‘them and us’ frame, and there is power in mobilising people to join a side who share a common enemy or opponent. But we are not as polarised as we might think. The vast majority of us are kind, well-meaning individuals who can unite around shared, transcendental values built on love, kindness and care that need to be at the heart of all our messaging if we want them to be more powerful factors in our politics.
The team at PIRC has done tests showing that thinking the best of human nature helps support for social change. Rutger Bregman, author of HumanKind, reminds us of the goodness of human nature and warns us that pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy:
If you look at empirical evidence then you find that assuming the best in other people gets you the best results.”
Covid-19 has taught us that we are all in this together. If we want to highlight just how marginal extremists really are, we must proportionately balance stories of extremism with those that show we are part of a Larger Us, rather than a ‘them and us’.
While we have to counter the threat of extremists, calling them ‘the opposition’ or ‘the other side’ gives credence to what is a minority view, worthy neither of these terms, nor of a dominant place in our mosaic.
Elevating the voices of those who share and express the message that we are united, connected and hopeful is kryptonite to extremists who seek to divide us.
Signature campaigns are one way to change narratives, but small, daily stories that capture people’s attention and create a “word of mouth” buzz are vital tiles that add to narrative mosaic. Rather than international theme days and other planned events, these stories and content are relevant to the spirit of the times. On social media these are known as “moments”.
Moments have the added benefit of authenticity. Moments are not just a condensed part of a news cycle, they are something happening in people’s lives. Campaigns, by contrast, are something we plan inside our organisations. Moments can be an influential figure like the footballer Marcus Rashford taking a stand on a principle like free meals for children from poor families over the summer holidays or K-Pop stars ruining a Trump rally. Or everyday people doing something that gets people talking, like banging plates on their balconies during Covid_19. These moments tend to capture the zeitgeist of a particular time, and reveal something we already know or feel about ourselves and our societies.
The significance of moments is that they act like a spark in a tinderbox. They ignite passion in people and can often be the precursor to political or policy change, and in some cases can go on to create powerful movements, as we saw with #MeToo, #TimesUp and more recently with #BlackLivesMatter. We need to be ready to spot and amplify these moments when they arise. This means finding unusual allies, acknowledging the power and influence of public figures and recognising the significance of popular culture in catalysing social change.
We also need to sustain these moments and make sure that changes are woven into the fabric of our systems and structures. In particular, we each have a a duty to ensure that racial justice is woven into our conversations about narrative change.
Behavioural scientists often remind us of the intense power of reciprocity. It is one of the strongest social norms we have in our society. As Matthew D. Lieberman, author of Social: Why our brains are wired to connect, reminds us:
“If someone does you a favor, you feel obligated to return the favor at some point, and with strangers we actually feel a bit anxious until we have repaid this debt. This is why car salesmen will always offer you a cup of coffee.”
We can use this intuitive need to reciprocate with one another in our communications. If you want others to elevate and share your work, start by doing the same for others.
No one organisation can make a narrative salient by itself.
Even if you can secure coverage in a big news outlet, or the support of a celebrity influencer, it takes sustained repetition of ideas across multiple channels and platforms to achieve salience. We all need to share each other’s stories and content for it to have a chance of impacting how people think, feel and behave.
Organisations, activists, artists and other people who share common causes can together create and source content that contributes to our narrative mosaics. This is about reciprocity: we all need to repeat each other’s ideas for them to become “common sense” narratives that people internalise and share. No organisation can, or should, try to produce this flow of content themselves, nor should they think they can distribute that content wide enough on their own. When we see something that reinforces our shared ‘Larger Us’ worldview from another messenger, we should flex every comms muscle we have to make it seen and talked about.
Fortunately, myriad NGOs, charities and movements do not need to agree to the exact same talking points, slogans and hashtags. But they can articulate a shared vision and basic values they are working towards. All the different stories, reports and other outputs can then reinforce our shared idea of how the world works and should be. In other words, we can agree what we want the mosaic to look like, and then create tiles of our own that contribute to it, in our own different ways.
Artists often work to a ‘rule of thirds’ principle, and mosaics are no exception. The act of off-setting the subject paradoxically helps to give it greater prominence. We can learn from this principle in our communications work. By off-setting we give our subject room to breathe.
Mosaic-makers create impact by moving the main focus of the design at least one third of the way towards the edge. Communicators can learn from that by not always pushing political divisions and social problems to the fore, but letting them sit slightly to the side of more personal and multi-faceted stories, in which the people affected by problems are not defined solely by them. This draws the audience in, touches them on a more emotional level and allows them to feel empathy, rather than pity, for the people we want to support. People who have moved to a country generally want to be seen as people, not as migrants or refugees. Make the audience care about the person first, and then invite them to relate to the situation.
In the new series New Neighbours about newcomers to Europe and the people who welcome them, the story is about the emerging relationships. The issues are there but they are not foregrounded, allowing alternative possibilities to become apparent.
As George Lakoff teaches us, if your communication is based on narratives you disagree with, you risk reinforcing these negative narratives. He encourages us to make the moral case for our positions with the same values that we want to activate in all audiences, built on empathy, responsibility and hope. We know that critiquing stereotypical stories only reinforces them, that we need a flow of surprising stories that create a mosaic of tolerance and appreciation for others. In today’s media environment we can elevate myriad voices and empower people to tell their story, their way.
It’s the accumulation of different stories that makes a narrative. We should think of our communications outputs as tiles that need to be true to the spirit of the mosaic that is our narrative and our values, rather than a single canvas that needs to be perfected like a masterpiece. You cannot fit the whole mosaic on one tile, and not every story needs to capture every aspect of an issue.
We can share one story of a successful refugee, one story of a migrant who is helping out, just getting by with help from the community, and another who is grateful, if that is the emotion they themselves want to express. We also need stories of people who are not on the move, but are welcoming to those who are. Just as individual tiles need to be true to the spirit of a mosaic, we can be guided in selecting these stories by our own values, basic ethical guidelines and a desire to let people speak for themselves.
That is why we designed a simple messaging house to describe the ‘Larger Us’ messaging that ties together the values underlying migration work with other causes like climate change, social and racial justice and equality and inclusion.
We find this format of the messaging house helpful because it focuses attention on one, predominant umbrella message (in this case a Larger Us) and then explores three sub-messages that help to strengthen the overall proposition.
A messaging house focuses your communications on the ideas you want to get to get across, rather than reacting to the loudest voices or being derailed by cynical questions. It is built around our values so it can be applied to any issue or situation, keeping you “on-message”, as well as “on-narrative”. The fact that we are all connected to one another as human beings is just as important a principle to climate change as it is to migration and racial justice.
Do take a look at the messaging house and see how you can apply it to your work. There is even a blank version you can use to adapt and apply the ‘Larger Us’ messaging to your own communications. We are happy for it to be an iterative tool and we welcome you to use it and add your comments, adjustments and input.
Messaging is the starting point, but we need more than words to reach a mass audience. We need to elevate the actual stories happening in the world today that illustrate our messages without needing to use our jargon.
To that end, we can organise our supporters to be our chief storytellers. You can send them this simple cheat sheet to explain what kind of stories they can tell. That way, when they see a moment, for example, of cooperation between communities, they can take out their phone and tell the story themselves on social media. You can then elevate the best ones.
Creative artistic content can also bring our messages to life in emotive ways that may resonate with people the way political messages do not. A creative brief for cultural creators can inspire the people who can paint more beautiful tiles for our shared mosaic. For example, you can give artists and designers who want to support our cause this creative brief to articulate what you stand for, but leave them the creativity to bring those values to life in their own authentic way.
During the pandemic, for example, Fine Acts commissioned artists around the world to create small, simple works of art that would inspire hope, inviting people to print them into posters and sharing on social media. They are now curating works in support of Black Lives Matter.
Dancing Fox has a new project called “We were made for these times” combining art and stories that help us imagine a better world. To make people believe in the things we are calling for, we need the help of creative people to help them visualise what society will look like after our solutions are in place.
When we see a moment that reinforces our shared narrative, we need to get people talking about it. And we also need to ensure that we have a diverse range of people telling and sharing their stories. Getting news media to cover those stories is a crucial step, reaching new audiences and giving them credibility. But once we secure that coverage, we need people to share that news story. Getting the media hit is only half the work, we have to push it out on social media to drive “word of mouth” buzz around it if it is to become a salient “moment” that grows our narrative mosaic.
You can add stories you think will build up the ‘Larger Us’ mosaic in this story bank, whether you see them in the news or hear about them happening at grass-roots level.
For example, the Relationships Project has created the Spirit of Lockdown storybook to gather “the moments when we’ve noticed one another, as we have seldom noticed before.”
You can share stories that are already in the story bank, as well as stories you see from other activists and organisations, through your personal and organisational social media channels. You can use this messaging.
We want as many people as possible to see the videos produced for the Britain Connects and New Neighbours series because they encapsulate the idea of ‘a Larger Us’. We should be sharing them through organic social media posts, sending it to others to ask them to share as well and even buying ads of our own to make sure more people who are likely to share them further also see them. That is how positive narratives around migration will become salient.
If you have the resources, you can also run social media adverts to make sure people see and share the stories, running ads to these audiences we feel are most likely to share positive migration stories. Erica Chenoweth has written that successful non-violent civil disobedience requires activating only 3.5% of the population. We can use that same principle in trying to target the stories we want shared to those most likely to spread the word.
Ask your supporters, friends and allies to add tiles of their own. You can use mail-outs and whatsapp groups to ask them to share on-message stories with their friends. We can have a greater impact encouraging a wide community of people to share the same sorts of stories. The smallest, simplest small stories from their daily lives are all small stones that make up the mosaic.
An implication of this approach is that we also focus audience research on our closest supporters, not just persuadables or extremists. Our base, after all, are the people most likely to articulate our narrative to other people and bring it to life through their actions.
In summary, civil society and charities need to be better at working together to make the most of the resources we have at our disposal to get the message out. In the words of The Narrative Initiative we need to “connect a narrative “nervous system” of collaborators.”
Are the press releases, tweets and videos we put out every day contributing to a shared mosaic, or are we simply all tiling our own bathrooms? If we want to change narratives, we can start by working together, particularly at the level of communications team. For example, the network of the people who actually run the social media accounts of the world’s biggest international NGOs set up earlier this year by Valeriia Voshchevska and Dante Licona is a perfect space to achieve reciprocity in our communications.
We can all work together to share values of empathy, kindness, equality, inclusion and solidarity. We can do this through a list of ‘Larger Us’ social media influencers who all agree to regularly share stories that are on-message. We can funnel stories to this list by getting grass roots organisations and cultural groups to see this as a resource when they want to elevate their work.
As a first step for building narrative reciprocity, we have created a common global space for anyone who wants to build ‘Larger Us’ narratives. If you are interested in our ideas, please share your thoughts below or get in touch here. We look forward to hearing from you!