Perspectives

Communication matters. Those of us concerned about social problems know that the way we communicate about our issue can help to place it on the public agenda, prime people for action, expand our constituencies — and more. Or the way we communicate can trigger negative attitudes, disperse accountability, fail to define our issue as worthy of public attention. No one is off the hook when it comes to communication. Even those of us not directly responsible for communications have much to gain from a strategic understanding of how to frame our issue to build public understanding and support.

The FrameWorks Institute helps those involved in social movements figure out what type of communication works. Our approach is based on research about how people think. For example, it’s tempting to think of the people we want to reach as empty fishbowls, eagerly waiting to receive the messages we drop in. But we know from research that people’s minds are a swamp of hypotheses and understandings about how the world works. These “schemata,” based on prior knowledge, experience and expectation, guide perception and inference and are activated when confronted with new information.

The research tells us that people tend to move toward schema-consistent information and away from schema-disconfirming information. It also tells us that schemata are stubborn and deeply rooted. What does this research mean for us? It means that people are not blank slates. They try to fit what we say into what they already know. Getting them to think differently can be very challenging. Entrenched attitudes and ideas can’t be dislodged with one sound bite and often persist even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

But effective framing can make a difference, enabling people to see an issue from a new perspective. Simply put, a "frame" is the way a story is told. It uses values, context, metaphors, numbers, visuals, tone and messengers to trigger the cultural models that people use to make sense of their world. "I know this story," people say. "It’s about X." A frame signals what counts and what can be ignored. It answers the basic questions: What is this about? What is the problem? Who is responsible? What are the solutions?

The problem of childhood obesity can provide a helpful example for us, illustrating what common messages about childhood obesity are really telling the public and what is obscured by these messages. Recent headlines indicate the challenges implicit in the way this topic is framed: "Healthy Habits Combat Childhood Obesity," "Parents Told to Take Front Line on Childhood Obesity," "Parents Blamed for Child’s Obesity ‘Time Bomb.'"

As these headlines suggest, the problem with the dominant communications approach to childhood obesity is a focus on the individual as the cause of the problem, with parents as the only responsible actors in the frame. But if children and their bad habits and food choices are the cause of childhood obesity, then the obvious solution to the problem is changing the personal behavior of the child and/or the parents. This makes it difficult to get people to think about policies identified by public health experts as able to have an impact on the problem — policies such as restricting marketing of low-nutrition foods to children, improving school food programs, increasing resources for nutrition and physical activity programs, expanding physical activity options in the community environment and requiring nutrition labeling in restaurants.

Understanding that childhood obesity is currently framed for the public as an issue of choice and individualism can help advocates know how to broaden public thinking to include the role of the food and physical environments. Using "causal sequences" — clear and concrete explanations of a problem — can help people understand both the problem and its solutions. Examples for childhood obesity include:

• Today’s kids are generally getting less exercise as schools decrease the amount of physical education and recess time offered each week, increasing their risk of becoming sedentary adults. 
• When parents don’t have access to healthy food because they live in a neighborhood where access to fresh produce and other healthy foods is limited, this makes it almost impossible to offer healthy diets at home. Initiatives such as community gardens can help make healthy food available to everyone.  

As this brief example shows, getting an issue in the news is not sufficient to guarantee it a place on the public agenda. In order to tell our story well, we need to know:

• What happens when people interact with our story? How do their expectations and experiences influence their understanding? 
• What do people already know and believe about this issue? 
• What do we have to work with? How can we change elements of the frame to cue a different understanding of the issue? 

 At the FrameWorks Institute we answer these essential questions by using public opinion research, media content analysis, focus groups and interviews to

• Identify and analyze the effects of the dominant themes and frames in public thinking
• Test potential reframes
• Develop simplifying models and metaphors to refocus public thinking
• Test promising reframes to discern their impact on policies.

Through this approach — strategic frame analysis — we can communicate our issues effectively and help people understand their responsibilities. The goal is to induce citizens, legislators and policymakers to think about our issues in such a way that they want to solve them not only through personal action, but through public policy.

Our work has helped us identify these guides for communicating about social issues:

• Provide a strong alternative way of seeing the problem and prime it with values.
• Resist the temptation to make sympathy, charity or crisis the motivation.
• Appeal to people as problem solvers.
• Make the system the problem, not the people.
• Identify solutions early in the message.
• Don’t shame, blame, factionalize or "partisanize."

Good stories focus on issues rather than troubles, on systems and relationships rather than solely on individuals. Good stories emphasize ideas and solutions as well as emotions, evidence as well as anecdotes. Good stories are compelling and engage people rather than entertain them. Perhaps most important, good stories move people from spectators to participants. Good stories make us feel we have a stake in the solutions and the outcomes, that it is worth participating in public activity to bring about change.