Stop preaching the converted: Talking feminism in online video gaming!

January 11, 2019

This article which first appeared on creativetimesreport may seem irrelevant at first sight, but it’s actually a VERY IMPORTANT one! It is a great example of someone who went out of her “comfort zone” and stopped preaching the converted. A strategy at the heart of all good campaigning work. Her example, and the lessons she shares, are enlightening!

Angela Washko, The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, 2012.

[Chastity]:Abortion is wrong and any woman who gets one should be sterilized for life.
[Purpwhiteowl]: should i mention the rape theory?
[Snuh]: What if they don’t have the means to pay for the child and got raped?
[Xentrist]: clearly Chastity in sick
[Snuh]: What if they are 14 years old and were raped?
[Chastity]: I was raped growing up. Repeatedly. By a family member. If i had gotten pregnant i wouldnt have murdered the poor child. because THE CHILD did not rape me.

This intense and personal discussion regarding the ethics of abortion unfolded in the lively city of Orgrimmar, one of the capitals of an online universe populated by more than 7 million players: World of Warcraft (WoW). After several years of raiding dungeons with guilds, slaying goblins and sorcerers, wearing spiked shoulder pads with eyeballs embedded in them and flying on dragons over flaming volcanic ruins, I decided to abandon playing the game as directed. Fed up with the casual sexism exhibited by players on my servers, in 2012 I founded the Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft to facilitate discussions about the misogynistic, homophobic, racist and otherwise discriminatory language used within the game space.

As a gamer who is also an artist and a feminist, I consider it my responsibility to dispel stereotypes about gamers—especially WoW players—who have been mislabeled as unattractive, mean-spirited losers. At the same time, I question my fellow gamers’ propagation of the hateful speech that earns them those epithets. The incredible social spaces designed by game developers suggest that things could have been otherwise; in WoW’s guilds, teams come together for hours to discuss strategy, forming intimate bonds as they exercise problem-solving and leadership skills. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, this promising communication system bred codes to let women and minorities know that they didn’t belong.

Angela Washko,The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness: Red Shirts and Blue Shirts (The Gay Agenda), 2014 (excerpt).

Trying to explain to someone who has never played WoW (or any similar game) that the orcs and elves riding flying dragons are engaging in meaningful long-term relationships and collaborative team-building experiences can be a little difficult. Typical Urban Dictionary entries for WoW define the game as “crack in CD-ROM form” and note, “players are widely stereotyped as fat guys living in there parents basements with out a life or a job or a girl friend [sic].” One only needs to look into the ongoing saga of #gamergate—an online social movement orchestrated by thousands of gamers to silence women and minorities who have raised questions about their representation and treatment within the gaming community—to see how certain individuals play directly into the hands of this stereotype by attempting to lay exclusive claim to the “gamer” identity. But gamers, increasingly, are not a homogeneous social group.

World of Warcraft is a perfect Petri dish for conversations about feminism with people who are uninhibited by IRL accountability

When women and minorities who love games question why they are abused, poorly represented or made to feel out of place, self-identified gamers often respond with an age-old argument: “If you don’t like it, why don’t you make your own?” Those on the receiving end of this arrogant question are doing just that, reshaping the gaming landscape by independently designing their own critical games and writing their own cultural criticism. Organizations like Dames Making Games, game makers like Anna Anthropy, Molleindustria and Merritt Kopas and game writers like Leigh Alexander, Samantha Allen, Lana Polansky and others listed on The New Inquiry’s Gaming and Feminism Syllabus are becoming more and more visible and broadly distributed in opposition to an industry that cares much more about consumer sales data and profit than about cultural innovation, storytelling and diversity of voices.

What’s especially strange about the sexism present in WoW is that players not only come from diverse social, economic and racial backgrounds but are also, according to census data taken by the Daedalus Project, 28 years old on average. (“It’s just a bunch of 14-year-old boys trolling you” won’t cut it as a defense.) If #gamergate supporters need to respect this diversity, many non-gamers also need to accept that the dichotomy between the physical (real) and the virtual (fake) is dated; in game spaces, individuals perform their identities in ways that are governed by the same social relations that are operative in a classroom or park, though with fewer inhibitions. That’s why—instead of either continuing on quests to kill more baddies or declaring the game a trivial, reactionary space where sexists thrive and abandoning it—I embarked on a quest to facilitate conversations about discriminatory language in WoW’s public discussion channels. I realized that players’ geographic dispersion generates a population that is far more representative of American opinion than those of the art or academic circles that I frequent in New York and San Diego, making it a perfect Petri dish for conversations about women’s rights, feminism and gender expression with people who are uninhibited by IRL accountability.

Angela Washko, The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, 2012.

WoW, like many other virtual spaces, can be a bastion of homophobia, racism and sexism existing completely unchecked by physical world ramifications. Because of the time investment the game requires, only those dedicated enough to go through the leveling process will ever make it to a chatty capital city (like Orgrimmar, where most of my discussions take place), meaning that only the most avid players are capable of raising these issues within the game space. At such moments, the diplomatic facades required of everyday social and professional life are broken down, and an inverse policy of “radical truth” emerges. When I asked them about the underrepresentation of women in WoW—less than 15 percent of the playerbase is female—some of these unabashed purveyors of “truth” have attributed it not to the outspoken misogyny of players like themselves but to the “fact” that gaming is a naturally male activity. Many of the men I’ve talked to suggest that women are also inherently more interested in playing “healer” characters. These arguments are made as if they were obviously true—as if they were rooted in science.

When I ask men why they play female characters, I’ve repeatedly been told: “I’d rather look at a girl’s butt all day in WoW”

Women now have to “come out” as women in the game space, risking ridicule and sexualization, as more than half the female avatars running around in WoW are played by men (women, by contrast, are rarely interested in playing men). Unfortunately this is not because WoW is an empathetic utopia in which men play women to better understand their experiences and perspectives; WoW merely offers men another opportunity to control an objectified, simulated female body. When I ask men why they play female characters, I’ve repeatedly been told: “I’d rather look at a girl’s butt all day in WoW,” “because it would be gay to look at a guy’s butt all day” and “I project an attractive human woman on my character because I like to watch pretty girls.” I found these responses, which were corroborated by a study recently cited in Slate, disturbing to say the least. They also bring to mind Laura Mulvey’s discussion of the male gaze in her influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” published in 1975: “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact.”

The simulated avatar woman customized and controlled by a man who gets pleasure out of projecting his fantasy onto her is in strict competition with the woman who talks back—the woman who plays women because, as Taetra points out in the image below, for women it is logical to do so. Women haven’t been socialized to capitalize on—or in many contexts even to admit to having—sexual desires and consequently do not project sexual objects to conquer and control onto their avatars.

Angela Washko,The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness: Playing a Girl, 2013 (excerpt).

As I continued to facilitate discussions about the discriminatory language usage on various WoW servers, I realized that the topic generating the most negative responses and the greatest misunderstanding was “feminism.” Here’s a small sample of the responses I’ve gotten when asking for player definitions of feminism (and framing my question as part of a research project):

[Chastity]: Feminists are man hating whores who think their better than everyone else. Personally I think a woman’s job is to stay home, take care of her house, her babies, her kitchen and her man. And before you ask, yes I am female
[Xentrist]: Feminism is about EQUAL rights for women
[Hyperjump]: well all you really need to know is pregnant, dish’s, naked, masturbate, shaven, and solid firm titties. feminism is all about big titties and long stretchy nipples for kids to breastfeed.
[Taetra]: Feminism is the attention whore term of saying that women are better than men and deserve everything if not more than them, which is not true in certain terms. Identifying with the female society instead of humans. Working against the males instead of with.
[Yukarri]: isnt it when somebody acts really girly
[Try]: google it bro
[Holypizza]: girls have boobs. gb2 kitchen
[Raspberrie]: idk like angry more rights for females can’t take a kitchen joke kind of lady
[Defeated]: is that supporting woman who don’t make me sammichs? they need to make my samwicths faster
[Kigensobank]: i dont know if WOW is the best place to ask for feminists
[Mallows]: I think that hardcore feminists often think that women are better lol and they change their mind when they don’t like something that men have that is undesirable
[Alvister]: da fuq
[Misstysmoo]: lol feminism is another way communism to be put into society under the pretense of
protecting women
[Seirina]: Feminists are women who think they are better than men. Theyre nuts. Men and women are equal. We’re just sexier.
[Yesimapally]: Big Chicks who love a buffet but hate to shave their hairy armpits??
[Nimrodson]: i think it’s a word with too many negative/positive connotations to be worth defining
[Dante]: woman are usefull as healer
[Scrub]: yes, women were discriminated against while back, but after many feminist movements the laws were changed. It is now the 21st century and women have all if not more rights then men do. so the feminist activists are doing nothing more then creating drama

The tone of many of these comments reflects what one might find on a men’s rights forum. Recently the gaming and men’s rights communities have overlapped unambiguously, as Roosh V—a so-called pick-up artist dubbed “the Web’s most infamous misogynist” by The Daily Dot—just created an online support site for #gamergate supporters despite not being a gamer himself. I conducted an interview with him for another (seemingly unrelated) project a week before he announced this site.

Angela Washko, BANGED, currently in progress.

Most of the women I’ve addressed in WoW do not see themselves as victims within this system, likely because their scarcity greatly increases their value as projected-upon objects of desire (as long as they don’t ask too many questions) without having it related to the physical body outside of the screen. Among the women I’ve talked to, I’ve found that there are two common yet distinct responses to my questions about feminism and being a woman inside of WoW. Response type #1: “Feminists hate men and feminism encourages physically attractive women to be sluts.” Response type #2: “Feminism is about equal rights for women, but I don’t talk about it in WoW because bringing up issues about the community’s exclusivity compromises my participation in competitive play and makes me a target for ridicule.”

Opportunities to interact online without potential repercussions for one’s offline life are becoming fewer and fewer.

Of course phrases like “get back to the kitchen/gb2kitchen” or “make me a sandwich” can be said in jest, but they nonetheless reinforce conservative viewpoints regarding women’s roles. The overwhelmingly popular belief communicated in this space—that women are not biologically wired to play video games (but rather to cook, clean, produce and take care of babies, maintain long, dye-free hair and faithfully serve their deserving men)—creates a barrier for women who hope to excel in the game and participate in its social potential. This barrier keeps women from being taken seriously for their contributions within the game beyond existing as abstracted, fetishized sex objects. Women who reject this role may be publicly demonized and called “feminazis.”

Unfortunately I did not learn how to turn WoW into a space for equitable, respectful conversation, as I had intended. Instead I came away with some thoughts about how much bigger the issues are than the game itself. Back in the days of dial-up modems, when my family finally realized the impending necessity of “getting the internet,” there was a huge fear of allowing anyone to know “who you really were.” Anonymity was the default then, and protecting your identity was key to avoiding scams, having your credit card information stolen, being stalked IRL or whatever else parents everywhere imagined might happen if someone on the internet knew your “real identity.”

What I learned early on from playing MUD games (text-based multiplayer dungeon games—precursors to MMORPGs like WoW) was that you could actually be quite intimate, revealing and honest with little consequence. There was no connection to your physical self in that kind of setting. But that seems to have changed drastically since the transition from Web 1.0 to 2.0. Web 2.0 has all but eliminated the idealized possibilities of performing an anonymous virtual self, moving internet users toward performing an (often professionalized) online version of one’s physical self (i.e., branding). The possibility of anonymity has disappeared as an increasing number of sites, Facebook foremost among them, require us to use our real names and identities to interact with other individuals online. Opportunities to interact online without potential repercussions for one’s offline life are becoming fewer and fewer.

Angela Washko, The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, 2013

Though I had initially hoped to convince many WoW players to reconsider the adopted communal language therein, I quickly realized that this was both a terribly icky colonialist impulse on my part and that its persistence was related to a more complicated desire to hold on to a set of values that is becoming increasingly outdated and unacceptable. Throughout my interventions in the massively multiplayer video game space, I’ve found that WoW is a space in which the suppressed ideologies, feelings and experiences of an ostensibly politically correct American society flourish.

“It’s just a bunch of 14-year-old boys trolling you” won’t cut it—gamers are not a homogeneous social group.”

In many areas of physical space, racism, homophobia and misogyny play out systemically rather than overtly. It has fallen out of fashion to openly be a sexist, homophobic bigot, so people carve out marginal spaces where this language can live on. WoW is a space in which the learned professional and social behaviors (or performances) that we all employ as we shift from context to context in our everyday life outside of the screen are unnecessary. At the same time, this anonymity produces one of the few remaining opportunities to have a space for solidarity among those who are extremely socially conservative in a seemingly unsurveilled environment unattached to participants’ professional and social identities. For the players I talk to, my research project provides a potentially meaningful platform to share concerns about how social value systems are evolving while protected by the facade of their avatars.

Thanks to the emerging visibility and solidarity of visual artists, writers, game makers and other cultural producers fostering a “queer futurity of games” (to quote Merritt Kopas) and more inclusive internet spaces in general, I believe that new spaces will be produced by and for those targeted by #gamergate and its ilk. I hope that efforts will move beyond examining how marginalized groups are represented and move toward creating game spaces that promote empathy. Rather than playing a female blood elf solely because you like the design of her ass, players would be allowed to fully experience the perspective of a person they might not understand or agree with. Perhaps by living as an other in this queer utopian game space, players will come to respect people unlike themselves; at the least, they will have a harder time denying that the experiences of other gamers are valid, acceptable and even worth celebrating.

WHAT to say to WHOM : Take the free online course on this site

October 5, 2018

Getting the right message to the right people is not as intuitive as it might seem.

You obviously can’t talk to everyone at the same time, so a first challenge is to identify who you will talk to, the target group that is the most relevant for us, here and now. In other words: your particular objective, at this particular time, in your current context.

And then of course, it’s about what to say. Sadly, information only doesn’t change people. But so what does ???

And the way in which you communicate your message to your audience might matter just as much as the rest.

To dig deeper into these aspects, we have developed an interactive online course, full of examples and lessons on how campaigners from around the world faced these challenges.

You can access the course HERE

June 5, 2018

Article first published on IPS journal

The globalisation of anti-gender campaigns

Transnational anti-gender movements in Europe and Latin America create unlikely alliances

By Sonia Corrêa, David Paternotte, Roman Kuhar | 31.05.2018

EPA — Hundreds of people take part during a demonstration in front of the Paraguayan Congress in Asuncion to claim a public education system based on traditional family values.

In 2012 and 2013, thousands of people demonstrated against same-sex marriage in Paris and other French cities. The success of these protests came as a surprise in a country often associated with secularism and sexual freedom.

The organisation La Manif pour Tous led some of the demonstrations, taking to the streets with pink and blue flags. It urged activists abroad to emulate the French with slogans, posters and strategies travelling across borders. While similar mobilisations happened earlier in Spain, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia, 2012 appears to have been a turning point.

Spectacular mobilisations have also taken place in Latin America, which is both a key target and a production hub of anti-gender campaigns. A first flare was registered in 2011 in Paraguay, when the term ‘gender’ was contested by the Catholic right during discussions on the national education plan. In 2013, in one of his weekly TV programmes, Ecuador’s leftist president Rafael Corrêa similarly denounced ‘gender ideology’ as an instrument aimed at destroying the family. Since 2014, these attacks have intensified, with massive demonstrations in numerous countries, and they decisively impacted the Colombian peace agreement referendum in 2016.

It culminated in November 2017, when American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler was viciously attacked in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Although the attack received global attention, it is only the tip of the iceberg in Latin America.

Transnational campaigns

In both regions, these movements contest what they call gender ideology. Sometimes referred to as gender theory or genderism, it is presented as the matrix of the combatted policy reforms, and should therefore not be confused with gender studies or specific equality policies. No less importantly, gender ideology is seen by some as the cover for a totalitarian plan by radical feminists, LGBTQI activists and gender scholars to seize political power.

Numerous scholars have traced the origins of gender ideology back to the Vatican and their political allies.

Crucially, this discourse recaptures and reframes Cold War Catholic discourses against Marxism and stirs anti-communist sentiments in Eastern Europe as well as in Latin America. There, the ‘evils of gender’ are entangled by right-wing activists with the ‘spectres of Venezuela’ or calls for a military intervention. Although national triggers vary (abortion and reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, LGBTI parental rights, gender mainstreaming, gender violence, sex education, anti-discrimination policies and so on), the explanation given by anti-gender campaigners is always the same: all this is due to gender ideology.

These movements not only share a common enemy, they display similar discourses and strategies as well as a distinctive style of action. We label them transnational anti-gender campaigns to emphasise their global scope and underline their particular profile in the wider landscape of opposition to feminism and LGBTI rights.

A Catholic cradle

Numerous scholars have traced the origins of gender ideology back to the Vatican and their political allies. Building on previous projects such as Pope John-Paul II’s Theology of the Body lectures or the New Evangelization, it was designed in response to the 1994 Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, when the term ‘gender’ entered the United Nations vocabulary, surrounded by demands for rights relating to reproduction and sexuality.

This discourse, which relies on ideas espoused by Cardinal Ratzinger in the early 1980s, was developed in Europe and Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s, leading to the Lexicon: Ambiguous and Debatable Terms Regarding Family Life and Ethical Questions (2003) and the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and World (2004).

Gender ideology is not only a lens through which to analyse what happened at the UN, but also a Catholic strategy of action. Based on philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, it propagates its alternative interpretation of gender through means that subvert the notions it opposes. While John-Paul II and Benedict XVI designed this project, Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his support, describing gender as a form of ‘ideological colonisation’.

Campaigns on the ground

Contemporary mobilisations, however, cannot be reduced to a Catholic enterprise, but intersect with other political projects and wider sets of actors. First, present strategies are reminiscent of the US Christian Right, and US organisations are active across continents, propelling transnational networks such as the World Congress of Families.

Since evangelical voices, which are new in Latin America, are more strident, the intellectual role of the Catholic hierarchy is often overlooked.

Second, while the Vatican has been instrumental in elaborating a frame of action, actors on the ground are more diverse. They include other religious groups as well as secular voices, and form coalitions that vary considerably according to local contexts.

The European situation cannot not be understood without looking at intersections with right-wing populisms. Both rely on attacks against corrupt elites and pretend to defend ‘innocent children’. They invoke common sense against decadent ideas and claim that things have ‘gone too far’, depicting themselves as the defenders of a majority silenced by powerful lobbies. These encounters explain why, in several European countries, right-wing populists have joined anti-gender campaigns without being particularly religious. This overlap offers a springboard to anti-genderists while fuelling anti-liberal discourses and sentiments.

Campaigns in Russia and the parts of Europe under Russian influence have been directly engineered from the Kremlin with the support of the Russian Orthodox church. As part of the state machinery, they are instrumentalised to restore the international status of Russia through a global defence of national sovereignty and ‘traditional values’. Poland and Hungary are currently following this path, with Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orban, increasingly vocal on the issue.

Latin America campaigns displays distinctive features. First, more than anywhere else, the criticism of gender ideology is no monopoly of the right, even though right-wingers are usually on the front lines. Second, these campaigns involve both conservative Catholics and evangelicals (mostly neo-Pentecostals). Since evangelical voices, which are new in the region, are more strident, the intellectual role of the Catholic hierarchy is often overlooked. However, Latin American Catholics have significantly contributed to the development of the anti-gender discourse and current anti-gender formations rely on older Catholic anti-abortion structures.

Third, anti-gender political formations are not exclusively religious but encompass secular actors whose profile differs substantially across countries. In Brazil, they include politicians playing electoral games, extreme-right actors, centre-liberals articulating anti-state arguments alongside anti-gender arguments, middle-class activists longing for social order and transnationally connected Jewish right-wing activists.

Indeed, if anti-gender campaigns are so efficient, it is precisely because they amalgamate actors who would not usually work together.

Despite this unexpected diversity, however, the populist analytical frame, so common in Europe and the US, is inappropriate. Indeed, populist practices have long been deeply ingrained in the regional political culture. As a result, populism has no side and cannot be easily mapped on to the left-right divide in the region.

A complex constellation

Anti-gender movements include a complex constellation of actors that goes far beyond specific religious affiliations. Research has shown that ‘gender ideology’ is an empty signifier, which can tap into different fears and anxieties in specific contexts and therefore be shaped to fit distinct political projects. Furthermore, as stressed by Andrea Peto, Eszter Kováts, Maari Põim and Weronika Grzebalska, the vague notion of gender ideology operates as a ‘symbolic glue’ that facilitates cooperation between actors despite their divergences.

This is precisely what must be understood: what are the specific constellations of actors in each context and how can different sorts of actors, who usually do not work together and can even compete with each other, find a common ground on which to collaborate?

In brief, how to explain joint ventures between believers and atheists, Catholic and Russian Orthodox or Latin American evangelical, or opposed strands within contemporary Roman Catholicism? It must also be reiterated that the debate is not about faith against atheism, and that not all believers of a specific denomination are involved in these campaigns.

A more sophisticated analytical frame would allow us to move away from simplistic grids such as populism, the global right or a global backlash, and pay more attention to the specific political formations at play on the ground. It would also avoid narrow binary frames opposing ‘us’ to ‘them’ that unduly homogenise distinctive contextual conditions and a complex array of forces and actors.

Finally, contextualisation and complexification are not only needed analytically, but are politically essential. Indeed, if anti-gender campaigns are so efficient, it is precisely because they amalgamate actors who would not usually work together. Today, it is crucial to further understand how these mysterious coalitions are forged and sustained.

Essential guides to Framing Equality

December 2, 2017

The European umbrella organisation of LGBTQI organisations ILGA Europe and the Public Interest Research Center have just published two essential guides to help activists frame their messages.

The first of these, Framing Equality, is a short guide to strategic communications, based on extensive research and building on the experience of activists and communicators from around the globe.

According to the editors “It aims to provide a framework rather than a blueprint; helping you to ask the right questions rather than giving you the right answers”.

The toolkit is based around 3 chapters:

Define the task
This means getting clear on your vision and your goals, and then focusing in on where your audience currently is on the issue in order to know the barriers you need to overcome
Develop the Frames
This section provides lots of examples and exercices on how to do this. It also helps understanding how “frames” work for communication
Test and refine
There are more and less involved ways to do this, depending on how much resource you have, and what kind of scale of implementation it will involve.

The second publication is a resource to help you test your messages. It is designed for campaigners who have little or no experience with message testing. You will be able to use this guide if you’re working with a research company and want to be able to explain what you need and make sense of what they provide. You’ll also be able to use it to get more involved in testing messages yourself.

Finding the right frame in Slovenia -toolkit just published

November 16, 2017

A very interesting report has just come out. It tells the story of how LEGEBITRA, Slovenia’s main LGBT organisation, has developed their messages when the government imposed a national referendum on opening marriage to same-sex couples. This report gives a detailed overview of how the each side FRAMED the debate.

The analysis differentiates between the “diagnosis” (what people believe is the problem), and the “prognosis” (what people think is the solution).

The findings are summarised in the tables below

The report further includes valuable practical information on how the Focus Group Discussions were organised and conducted.

While the report does not release any information on what messages were actually developed as a result of the analysis and the FGD, it still provides an essential reading for any campaigner for sexual and gender minorities!

Elements of a Frame

September 13, 2017

The Frameworks Institute distinguishes 11 elements of a frame. A useful “mapping” of the various elements you should consider when developing a message.

Framing is the process of making choices about how to communicate. Strategic framing is making these decisions with a clear goal in mind and with the intention of cueing a specific response in the interests of social change. In Strategic Frame Analysis, the various ‘choice points’ are considered ‘frame elements.’ It can be helpful to framers to think of each of these frame elements as serving a specific purpose or doing a communications ‘job’ in discourse. With the purpose of the tool in mind, framers can feel more confident in their choices, and use the frame elements with greater intentionality and fluency.

Context	Establishes the nature of the problem as either a public “issue” that concerns us all, or a private “trouble” affecting only those individuals experiencing the problem. Strategic framers “widen the lens” on the context, choosing a panorama over a portrait, and appealing to systems rather than sympathy.
Explanatory Chains	Makes clear, concise, and explicit connections between underlying problems and visible outcomes. Supports consideration of the problem and appropriate solutions by allowing average citizens to quickly grasp the essential insights that experts take for granted.
Explanatory Metaphors	Explains how an abstract, unfamiliar, or misunderstood system or process works by making a carefully developed comparison to a concrete, familiar domain. Supports consideration of the problem and appropriate solutions by allowing average citizens to quickly grasp the essential insights that experts take for granted.
Messengers	Supports consideration of the communication by selecting a speaker/writer whose identity or perspective is viewed as objective, trustworthy, and reliable.
Narrative	Overrides default expectations and engages interest by anticipating questions and providing a coherent story that sticks together.
Order	Deciding on sequence of message elements strategically, considering research when choosing what goes earlier or later in a communication
Social Math	Supports the language-based framing choices with numbers that advance and strengthen the overall communication strategy. Translates data to a more comprehensible and compelling terms by making a comparison to a familiar domain on a relatable scale.
Solutions	Supports engagement in the issue by establishing that problems have solutions; directs consideration of collective, public responses to social problems.
Tone	Supports consideration of the message by establishing it as explanatory and reasonable. A reasonable tone (as opposed to a rhetorical or partisan tone) also signals that this is a message for ‘everyone,’ not just those who already agree with the point of view being expressed.
Values	Establishes why the issue matters and what’s at stake. Strategic framers look to tested, collective Values that reliably orient the communication toward consideration of the public nature of the problem.
Visuals	Supports the language-based framing choices with images that are consistent with the overall framing strategy. Most often, Visuals do the work of illustrating Context and Tone – strategic framers therefore literally widen the frame of a shot, and choose images that are explanatory and informative rather than hyper-emotional.

Why social change needs to be a laughing matter

July 5, 2017

Reproduced from Wagingnonviolence.org

Struggles against human rights abuses or militarism are rarely linked — in thought or discussion — to humor. As serious matters, they deserve serious, strategic thinking about how to dismantle the power structures that enable them. But what if humor itself is a powerful tool for doing so? In “Laughing on the Way to Social Change,” in the January 2017 issue of Peace & Change, Majken Jul Sørensen explores this possibility in the context of three recent examples of activism in Sweden and Belarus, asking how the use of humor affects the way nonviolent action operates — particularly its ability to disrupt dominant discourses and therefore challenge power.

In the first example, two Swedish activists flew an airplane through Belarusian airspace, dropping 879 parachuted teddy bears with signs reading, “We support the Belarusian struggle for free speech.” A response to an earlier action where Belarusian activists assembled stuffed animals in a central square — bearing signs like, “Where is freedom of the press?” — the parachuting bears ultimately resulted in two Belarusian officials being fired. The second and third involved a Swedish anti-militarist network called Ofog, or “mischief.” In response to NATO military exercises in Sweden, Ofog created a “company” whose purpose was to make these exercises more realistic by providing civilian casualties. Dressed as businesspeople, activists walked through the streets “recruiting” ordinary Swedes for “jobs” as killed, wounded or traumatized civilians. In response to a Swedish military recruitment campaign, Ofog added words to recruitment ads, changing their intended meaning. For instance, on one that said, “Your friend does not want any help during natural catastrophes. What do you think?” Ofog added, “By the military. Other help is welcome.” Using the ambiguity inherent in humor, these actions were able to catch their audiences off guard, spark discussion and bring attention to free speech or militarism in ways different from how logical argumentation could have.

Sørensen examines all three actions from the vantage point of Stellan Vinthagen’s four dimensions of nonviolent action to see how humor might contribute to, or detract from, their operation. The first, dialogue facilitation, refers to nonviolent action’s ability to maintain an openness towards the adversary even in the midst of conflict. On the one hand, a humorous action like those above might inhibit dialogue if observers are “suspicious or annoyed” about the actors behind it or the lack of clarity around its meaning. On the other hand, especially compared to more aggressive forms of resistance, humorous action signals an inherent openness through its playful approach, providing an invitation to dialogue and also lots of “‘material’ for conversation.”

The second dimension, power breaking, is the one Sørensen sees as best served by humor. It is widely understood in theories of nonviolent action that those in power will not give up their power — or even engage in dialogue — unless pressured. Humor is well positioned to break through dominant discourses — themselves forms of power — by disrupting the language and symbols used by those in power to represent reality in a particular way and providing alternative interpretations of that reality. Doing so opens space to question what has been considered “normal” and “natural” — like the need for a military to keep one’s community safe.

The third dimension is utopian enactment: the ability of nonviolent activists to enact, at least momentarily, the new reality that they envision — as when black civil rights activists in the U.S. South engaged in normal, everyday activities like eating or swimming in “white only” spaces, enacting the integrated society they hoped to create. Utopian enactments show that other realities are possible and can create “hope [and] joy” in the midst of anger and despair. Humorous actions are well suited to such enactments, as they engage the imagination and are not bound by the usual constraints of “reality” — as seen in the international solidarity enacted by teddy bears.

Finally, the fourth dimension, normative regulation, re-establishes nonviolence as the norm and violence as an aberration — seen in the training for and maintenance of nonviolent discipline, even in the face of violence. Humor can play a role here in defusing potentially violent confrontations with police, as “a carnivalesque atmosphere” can make interactions “less hostile.” In cases where humorous actions can be interpreted as aggressive or involving ridicule, however, their productive role in utopian enactment and normative regulation may decrease.

While humor may contribute nonviolent action’s effectiveness in some of these dimensions, it may detract from it in others. While parachuting teddy bears through Belarusian airspace challenged the regime’s authority, it did not invite dialogue with the regime — only with the general public. Ofog’s actions disrupted dominant militaristic discourses and engaged the general public in dialogue, but they did not enact the new anti-militarist realities activists envisioned. Most importantly, though, humor — “by playfully twisting the language of power” — provides a tool for activists to engage in what Sørensen calls “discursive guerrilla warfare.”

Contemporary relevance

With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, U.S.-based nonviolent resistance has received a massive jolt of energy. Beginning with the Women’s March the day after the inauguration, the resistance has had a lot on its plate: the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea, escalation of war in the Middle East, and the undermining of international organizations and agreements, but also immigrant and refugee rights and protection, a racist law enforcement and criminal justice system, climate change and environmental deregulation, the normalization of sexual assault, an inflated military budget at the expense of crucial social programs, the gun lobby, health care, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, anti-Muslim prejudice, workers’ rights and economic inequality, and even an emboldened white nationalism — to name a few. In this context, the more we can learn about effective activist techniques — including humor — the more successful we will be at pushing back against the racist, militarist, sexist, science-denying agenda before us.

Practical implications

How can these insights about the use of humor in nonviolent action be applied to current resistance to the Trump agenda, as well as to other nonviolent movements elsewhere in the world? First, it may be useful to conduct an analysis before undertaking an action (as part of a nonviolent campaign) to assess its likely effects on the operation of the four dimensions of nonviolent action, as outlined by Vinthagen: dialogue facilitation, power breaking, utopian enactment and normative regulation. Which of these will be strengthened and which will be weakened through the action — and are these trade-offs worthwhile and useful for the overall goal of the action? Second, similarly, activists should ask themselves: who is/are the intended audience(s) for the action, will different audiences be affected or respond differently, and are these responses useful for the overall goal of the action? Finally, on the basis of this analysis, how might the action be improved to more effectively challenge dominant discourses and spark discussion while minimizing the ways in which it could be read as aggressive or disingenuous?

This article was published in partnership with the Peace Science Digest. To subscribe or download the full issue, which includes additional resources for each article, visit their website.

Allow People to Change by Modeling Change Journeys

June 29, 2017

On June 26, 2017German Chancellor Merkel announced her change of heart of same-sex marriage. For details, see report from LA Times by clicking on the image below.

Right, it’s clear that the real reason for this is that widespread pressure has made it politically impossible for her to resist any longer, especially as the opposition was going to use her stubborn resistance to an issue most Germans support as a major argument in the upcoming elections.

Still, this shows how important it is to create the story of a change journey, so that

a) it gives leaders a chance to move without loosing face

b) it allows conflicted people to model their own change. So people can say “I’m like Merkel, I changed my mind”. Once the head of government does it, it just becomes more acceptable for all.

Obama’s own change journey was a key milestone in the debate on same-sex unions in the US and clearly paved the way for the Supreme Court decision: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/09/barack-obama-supports-gay-…

But it doesn’t always need to be that high level. Many clever campaigns have modeled such change journeys by people that the campaigns’ target group find easy to relate to. See for example this transcript from the US campaign on same-sex marriage:

How to reclaim Family Values from haters: A great guide for activists!

June 16, 2017

In 2016–2017, ten movement leaders and experts from the LGBTI, women’s rights and progressive faith movements charted the use of family in recent years of progressive activism.

They engaged with 200+ experts, movement leaders, activists, scholars and grant makers through a survey, a conference and consultations with key organisations.

[box] “To continue winning over hearts and minds, social justice activists must complement their traditional approach based on rights, laws and standards (“We have the right to marriage”, “We have the right to free movement”) with a values-based approach (“We love each other and want to commit to spending our lives together”, “We all belong to a family”). This requires a fundamental shift in the conception, organisation and running of social justice campaigns.”

This guide invites social justice activists to consider placing family equality at the centre of our progressive strategies, discourse and actions.

[box] “Campaigning publicly about family appeals to people – law-makers, the public, specific audiences and their fundamental sense of what a family truly is about: love, care, belonging, and deeply shared values. Appealing to these shared values is essential to effective social justice activism”

[box] “Good strategic communication and messaging can only be grounded in good prior research into what messaging will best appeal to voters’ and politicians’ values”

Download the guide now

Six behavioural psychology tips for effective campaigns

February 16, 2017

The following article by BOND’s ALICE DELEMARE, provides a good summary of essential strategic points and offers useful links to more detailed articles. A good article to keep close at hand.

From BOND

Changing people’s behaviour is difficult. If we want people to take sustained action in support of international development issues, we need to understand behavioural psychology and build this into our campaign design.

A recent CharityComms conference on developing behaviour change campaigns made me think about what lessons the development sector could learn from organisations like Sport England and the RNLI. These charities root their campaign strategies in an understanding of psychology in order to change the behaviour of their target audience.

1. Get to know your audience

In-depth audience knowledge is vital for a successful campaign. We talk about this a lot. But how well do we really know the audience we’re trying to reach? Where do they live? How old are they? How do they spend their free time? What are their main concerns? Where do they get their news? Who do they trust?

For example, Sport England spent time preparing the ground for their successful This Girl Can campaign by first listening to, then engaging in conversation with, women online.

One of the lessons of the EU referendum is that organisations need to be more in touch with their audiences. To be successful campaigners, we need to get out and about and talk to people we don’t usually come into contact with about their concerns. We need to step out of our comfort zone and try new ways of communicating and collecting information.

Sheffield-based social enterprise Aid Works is a good example of an organisation talking to a diverse range of people. They work all over Yorkshire, holding community meetings and going into schools.

2. Normalise the action

People are herd animals; we are strongly influenced by what those around us are doing. Given the option between two unfamiliar restaurants, one empty and one busy, most of us would choose the busy restaurant. We assume the food is better because everyone else is eating there.

If we want people to take action on international development issues, we need to show our audiences that the desired behaviour is “normal”.

We also need to be careful not to promote the opposite behaviour in our communications. For example, communicating that “134 patients failed to attend their appointments last month” in a doctor’s surgery, reinforces the idea that lots of people are missing appointments and won’t encourage the desired behaviour. The surgery would be better saying: “99% of patients kept to their appointments last month, make sure you do too.”

3. Choose the right messenger

We are also heavily influenced by the person communicating information to us. Social enterprise Behaviour Change explain that there are two important factors which determine the success of a messenger: whether or not they have experience of the issue and whether the audience trusts them. Insight from the Aid Attitude Tracker (AAT) backs this up. AAT research shows that the best messengers for development issues are ones whom the audience perceives to be both warm and competent.

Of course, to choose the right messenger you need to understand your target audience. In order to influence behaviour change in commercial fishermen, a closed network with a strong identity, the RNLI chose to work through partners like the Fishermen’s Mission and found individual fishermen that the community trusted to spread their message.

4. Appeal to the subconscious

Human behaviour is influenced by subconscious cues, as much as – if not more than – by our conscious thoughts.

This is why, for example, food retailers often pump out a signature scent. It serves as an aromatic marketing poster, triggering memories and desires, which encourage an emotional connection with the product.

Perhaps bringing a signature scent into international development campaigning is a little far-fetched, but exposure to certain words, colours and images can also have a subconscious effect on our behaviour.

Putting a mirror behind one tray of pastries at the CharityComms conference meant that fewer pastries were eaten from that tray, because people subconsciously self-evaluated before adding them to their plate. The colour blue is associated with trust and honesty and could be used to subconsciously impart such feelings to an audience when used in a presentation.

5. Strengthen intrinsic values

Psychologists have identified a number of consistently occurring human values: the things that people say they value in their lives. The prevalence of these values has been tested many times and found to be consistent across different countries and cultures. They can be grouped broadly into intrinsic and extrinsic values. The Common Cause Foundation explains more.

Extrinsic values are centred on external approval or rewards, for example: wealth, image, social status and authority. Intrinsic values relate to things we find inherently rewarding, for example, self-acceptance, connection to family and friends, connection with nature, and concern for others.

How can international development campaigners make sure we are designing campaigns that promote intrinsic values rather than extrinsic values?

Global Action Plan, a charity inspiring people to take practical environmental action, promote the values important for sustainable development through their work with school children. They found that pupils were more likely to adopt those values if they practised them through activities in the Water Explorer programme, instead of simply being told about them. We need to find ways to apply similar techniques to campaigns targeting adults.

6. Use a multi-dimensional approach

Behaviour change campaigns need to be multi-dimensional. And all the different elements need to work together. National, public-facing communications; face-to-face work with the target audience at a local level; and products which make it easy for people to change their behaviour all need to complement each other to have maximum impact.

For example, Parkinson’s UK combined national communications and work with in-house trainers in the retail and transport sectors, to promote understanding of Parkinson’s disease and other “hidden disabilities”. The Time to Change campaign addressed their audience of 25 to 44-year-olds across England through national, local and individual strategies to tackle mental health discrimination.

When designing and developing a behaviour change campaign, it is also important to bring in different opinions: expert and non-expert. Gathering a group of people with different expertise and different perspectives will help to create a campaign with a much broader appeal.

Have you seen any examples of campaigns that use behavioural psychology effectively? Have you tried any of these techniques in your own campaigns? Tweet us @bondngo with your ideas and suggestions.

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Category: messaging