Strategic Communications and Biodiversity

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Strategic Communicationsand Biodiversity

• Approaches, Opportunities
• and Lessons Learned

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Traditional approaches to environmental
communications

• 1. Environmental Education
• 2. Agenda Setting
• 3. Public Will
• 4. Mobilization
• 5. Behavior Change

• Knowledge leads to change? (K-A-B)
• Raise media profile
• Create public demand
• Rally the troops
• Change individual behavior

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Strategic communications approaches for social
change

• Framing (sets context, cognition and discourse)
• Values-based communications (uses widely held
  cultural values to provide personal meaning)
• Narrative communications (uses classic
  story-telling structure to establish symbolic
  meaning and channel of discourse)
• Social marketing (applies marketing tools to
  change behavior on social issues.)

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What makes communications strategic?

• Outcome-based
• Resources, activities and products are focused on
  achieving specific outcomes to achieve a specific
  impact
• Audience-based
• Messages, messengers, and placement strategies
  are all designed to speak to the needs and
  interests of the audience
• Integration across organization or movement

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Frames and meaning

• Frames shape cognition and provide the structure
  of discourse

• People rely on concepts and values to assign
  meaning.
• Understanding is frame-based, not fact based a
  story must first make sense, then the facts are
  assimilated.
• Information provides cues that connect to
  pictures in our minds.

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Which frame drives communications about
biodiversity conservation?
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Frames at three levels

• The values level
• Ah, this is about my familys well-being and
  responsibility to future generations.
• The what kind of an issue is this? level
• I think this is about the environment and
  health, maybe the economy too.
• The specific issue level
• The Endangered Species Act needs to be
  reauthorized by Congress.

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Values-based communications

• Uses widely held cultural values to provide
  personal meaning and salience for issues
• Addresses concerns
• Provides solutions
• Suggests responsive actions
• Uses messengers, stories, images that reinforce
  the message.

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Values-based messages

• A values-based message
• States why this audience should care about an
  issueit speaks to their values and concerns.
• Describes a threat or problem and who is
  responsible.
• Provides a solution and describes an action that
  will address the need and the threat.
• Gives people something to do.

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The importance of values, language and metaphor

• Values help ground an issue in personal and
  cultural meaning and import
• Language has power and is laden with meaning and
  layers of context that can work for or against an
  issue
• Metaphors help people file a new concept within
  a familiar set of concepts they provide context
  and relationship

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Both framing and values-based strategies
emphasize

• Lead with frame or value
• Support with facts (dont lead)
• Messenger must resonate with message
• Language must reinforce message
• Images must reinforce message
• Human stories must reinforce message

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Story-based Communication

• Uses classic story telling to provide context and
  meaning for an issue
• Draws on familiar cultural myths/stories to draw
  parallels to issues of the day
• Attempts to develop and grow a meme
• For more information contact smartMeme.com

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Some archetypal stories that shape our
relationship with nature
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Elements of a story-based strategy

• A point of view
• A sympathetic character/protagonist
• Showing not telling (using images and imagery)
• Foreshadowing (show the future)

• Frame the conflict draws attention to details
• Amplifies the voices of sympathetic, relevant
  spokespeople
• Engages peoples values stresses stories/values
  over data
• Offers vision illustrates what the future will
  be

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Social MarketingUses the classic approaches of
marketing applied to social issues to change
behavior

• Product What is the behavior we want to change?
• Price What is the cost to the individual in
  terms of barriers and off-setting benefits?
• Place Where and how will our target audience
  make this behavior change the store? home?
• Promotion What do we say about our product? it?
  How often? When? Where? By whom?
• Policy Where else will this change have impact?
  Social Norms? Legislation? Marketplace?

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Audience-based tools used in social marketing

• Identify barriers and how to overcome them
• Obtain commitments (pledges, signatures, etc.)
• Model behavior
• Provide prompts
• Point of experience
• Establishing norms
• Financial incentives disincentives
• Personalized communications

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Conservation Psychology

• Affect (feeling) is as important (if not more so)
  than cognition.
• Caring is the root of intent, action, involvement
  and meaning.
• To care about (it matters)
• To care for (nurture and protect)
• Take care (to be cautious and thoughtful)

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Pathways to the Public

• Community and grassroots organizing
• News media campaigns
• Entertainment and popular culture
• Education
• The marketplace
• The arts
• Social networks, including
• The Web, faith communities, etc.

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What do effective strategies have in common?

• Not single issue broader strategic goals
• Audience-based
• Address both cognitive and affective (thinking
  and feeling) to create meaning
• Personal context/saliency
• Anticipate barriers and address them
• Evaluation and adaptive strategies

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Lessons Learned

• From the last 14 years

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EE Effectiveness(NEETF study)

• Information and Science only
• Info and science
• how to knowledge
• Info and science how to knowledge plus
  hands on experience

• Little impact on behavior and attitudes
• Significant impact on some behavior, not much
  impact on attitude
• Deeper learning, more lasting behavior change
  more involved behaviors, reinforced by positive
  attitude

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Lessons Learned Frames

• Avoid the Science box frame where this problem
  is seen as scientific and technical and thus
  experts will solve it (Phew!)
• Avoid the Catastrophe frame where all is loss
  and tragedy, thus hopeless and disempowering.
  (Im outta here.)
• Avoid reliance on primarily utilitarian frames,
  nature makes medicine because the research
  shows that values for family, future generations
  and Gods creation are more potent for most
  Americans.

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Frames continued

• Biodiversity suffers from episodic communications
  (an invasive species here, an extinction there)
  and needs thematic approaches to tell the big
  story and big solutions
• Tone tends to be despairing
• Messengers and message not top of mind, not
  deeply resonant

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News framings havent served biodiversity very
well

• Crisis du jour
• Episodic, disconnected events
• Reinforce bad news and hopelessness
• Run with wacky stories (the kangaroo rat example)

• Reinforces extremes (e.g. spotted owl)
• Rarely provide or explain solutions
• Disempower victims privilege the voices of power

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Lessons Learned Values linked to biodiversity
and nature

• Responsibility to care for the Earth and future
  generations
• Responsibility to ones family
• Responsibility to oneself
• Respect for Gods creation (spiritual/sacred
  values of nature)
• Personal fulfillment enjoyment and aesthetics
• Love of country or culture
• Personal liberty and fairness
• Quality of Life
• Sense of Place identity
• Sources Belden Russonello Stewart, 1996 and
  2002 Biodiversity Polls and recent research
  projects.

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What the research tells us

• Use the well-researched, deep cultural values
  that we already know communicate about the
  environment
• Family and responsibility to family
• Leaving a healthy planet for Future Generations
• And consider using strong emerging intangibles
  such as
• Sense of Place/Regional Identify
• Quality of Life
• Pragmatism

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Lessons Learned Messages and Core Concepts

• Complexity (multiple concepts, issues)
• Everything nothing
• Precision (gene pools, populations, etc.)
• vs. Life itself
• Incremental disparate actions get lost and the
  whole doesnt get communicated
• Mushy asks what do we want people to do?

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What is the ask?

• Solutions are hard to define what do we WANT
  the public, policymakers, etc. to DO about the
  biodiversity crisis?
• No one-stop shopping for biodiversity (cant cap
  and trade life itself)
• Defining some meta-scale solutions would help
  address communications problems behavior change
  is good, but not enough, and is audience-specific

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Five ways to healthier homesand habitats

• Make smart seafood choices
• Just say no to lawn and garden pesticides
• Buy organic and locally produced foods
• Buy coffee thats made in the shade
• Create healthy habitat in your own backyard

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Lessons Learned Messengers

• Must be credible to your audience. Messengers may
  be more important than the message itself.
• Real people affected by the issue are usually
  more persuasive than environmental professionals,
  but dont overlook experts. Expertise is
  important.
• Children are often effective messengers for
  biodiversity and environmental health.

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Lessons Learned Languageavoid eco-speak

• Dont use the term biodiversity unless you
  define it. Consider Life itself, nature, the
  natural world, habitat.
• Beware of the cachet of endangered
• Avoid jargon like riparian, vascular,
  invertebrate extirpated.
• Talk about real places, e.g. forests, parks,
  marshes not public lands apple orchards that
  depend on bees not crops that depend on
  pollinators (reduce abstraction connect dots)

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Lessons Learned Tell Stories

• Tell stories that connect the dots to everyday
  experiences
• Put a human face on a human story
• Real lives saved (drugs, flood protection)
• Real action in real communities (rain gardens,
  habitat restoration, etc.)
• Generation to generation sharing place,
  experience, memory, family
• Heroes, Horror Stories
• Put charismatic and surprising people, critters
  and images into the story when appropriate

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Images

• Images that reflect the messages a positive
  appeal to values
• A shocking picture of the problem (but beware of
  stereotyped images).
• Compare/contrast side by sides of that which is
  worth protecting and images of loss or
  destruction lost or saved, etc.
• Attention grabbers

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Compare and Contrast
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Use straightforward facts in simple, specific
language

• Social math e.g. Nine of out ten frog species
  (not 90 or many)
• Facts that provide context and relate to our
  daily lives
• The water we drink
• The food we eat
• The air our children breath
• The view from our windows

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Lessons Learned Pathways to the Public

• Mediums and channels have gone global (the net)
  and micro-targeted (niche markets/data mapping).
• News media is still important for agenda setting,
  but fewer people read newspapers every day.
• Most people still getting primary news about the
  environment from local television news.
• Social networks have exploded but biodiversity
  outreach/action has just scratched the surface.

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Reach people where they are

• Through what they value
• What theyre concerned about
• In a context that provides personal meaning and a
  logical map for thinking about the topic
• In the mediums and the circles of contacts that
  they use and trust
• Give people something positive that they can do
  to make a difference
• Make the action easy, authentic, painless and
  rewarding provide feedback when possible

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Cautions

• Dont rest on aging research in times of rapid
  change
• Consider whether raising urgency is a primary
  strategy during a time of multiple uber-urgencies

• Address Barriers
• 1. Structures
• 2. Mindsets
• 3. Lack of Information and feedback
• 4. Mistrust of government, companies and science
• 5. Isolation
• 6. Terminology