A key element of the Trump administration's strategy is to convince the public that the MAGA movement is unstoppable. They will broadcast the message that “No one can beat us” with each advance, whether the arena is legal, journalistic, educational or civic. They will be doing this on multiple issues simultaneously, hoping to send community, labor and cultural groups into panic mode. When everyday people, without whom mass movement is impossible, absorb the idea that something is unstoppable, they lose the political will to organize and act. We can narrate in a way that inspires action, rather than contributes to its depression.
We’ve put together five reminders for shaping content in the first 100 days. Because things will be moving fast, there may not always be a “words that work” memo available on recent developments on your issue right when you need it, and it might not work for your community if it does exist. We hope that this will support people working on democracy, health care, immigration, climate catastrophes and more in creating effective messages, memes, op-eds and stories.
Communicating in Crisis: Changing the Formula
Let's consider the most common formula for raising awareness and engagement of our audiences:
Lay out the threat, often with descriptions of very powerful players doing bad things and data about how much worse it’s going to get. (75%)
Make a demand or name a solution, often in the form of a slogan. (20%)
Call audience to action, often involving a petition, protest, fundraising or joining an organization or campaign. (10%)
This formula opens three big risks. First, when you lead with explaining the threat, it’s easy to reinforce opposition's messaging by repeating lies and misinformation or otherwise legitimizing a faulty argument. Words, phrases, and images have a reinforcing effect when repeated.
Second, attention spans are short. There’s no guarantee that our email, our social post, or our informal OpEd will keep the audience long enough to get to the solution and action. Often, the formula allows little time for inviting audiences to buy-in to the solution or for making a clear connection between the call to action and the demand. Anger is not always enough.
Third, even when our audiences share our outrage, overemphasizing the opposition’s power will drive them to their beds, rather than to the City Council meeting. Anger is not equally motivating to all audiences. In this FRANK talk, Davin Phoenix describes the differences between white and Black reactions to communications built on outrage.
Solutions First
Narrative power is the ability to tell stories that show the values, beliefs, and messages you want to see applied in the world. To challenge the idea that authoritarians are unstoppable, we need to communicate in a way that demonstrates the power of our communities and why our strategy will succeed. Here are some guides to use when narrating through a crisis:
Start with solutions: Your audiences are saturated with stories and messages about the problems they face. Solutions activate. They inspire hope and action. Check out this advice from the National Human Services Assembly to explain-but not start with-the problem, so that we don’t feed fatalism. Public Citizen's framing and playbook is a great example of leading with solutions. A month after the election, it shares their disappointment, but gets to the good news within a few words of the opening.
Talk about actual people, rather than abstractions. How will real, everyday people benefit from the solution? How are they already organizing themselves? What can your audiences join or help build? While noting the scale and reach of anti-LGBT bills, Funders for LGBTQ Issues' webinars emphasize the strategy, creativity, and effectiveness of local organizing.
Cut the problem down to size. When you talk about the problem, try to emphasize its soft spots, and keep it from taking up an overly large portion of your narrative real estate. What institutions or people constitute a vulnerability for the opposition? Planned Parenthood's series on video campaigns that inspire hope is a great example.
Make the call to action a real call. Invite the audiences to consider your demand. Why is it going to work? Who does it target to change the situation? Show some of the people already taking this action or organizing around this issue. Protect Democracy offers multiple opportunities for action and connects audiences to resources from organizations doing the work. In this episode of the Words to Win By podcast, we hear from labor organizers about how they reinforce the role of collective action in improving people’s material realities.
Use images and concrete examples. Avoid jargon. Find synonyms for the words and ideas that matter to you, not because the law bans mention of DEI or racial justice, but because jargon might repel the very people we want to activate. Heartwired's case study of care messaging provides some important insights about lingo that has an exclusionary and disorienting effect on listeners and readers. “Organizations reported that they don’t know how friends, family members and neighbors who care for children think of or refer to themselves.”
Narrative Initiative will be holding these principles close as we craft strategy and support our partners in the coming months while our collective landscape shifts.
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