Peckham Anna |
I’m aware that there’s been some debate amongst CRAGgers about media representation of us, and “green self-selection”, both of which are problematic given our need to mainstream the acceptance of carbon rationing.
I’ve been mulling over how CRAGs could widen their audience for a while, and several books have been really helpful.
Firstly, I know I’ve mentioned this book before on this forum, but George Marshall’s “Carbon Detox” really is superb in the way it grapples with the issue of audiences of climate change messages. In addition to being an easy, entertaining read with lots of very useful concepts – the carbon bottom line – and practical detox things to do – he clearly describes how people with different types of core values will respond to, or be turned off by, different types of message about climate change i.e. how you “frame” a message. For instance, “self-selecting greens” will probably be motivated to “save the planet” and contemptuous of attempts to make them “the first with new gadgetry”, whereas go-getting materialist heavily competitive types will probably respond in opposite ways. He describes four broad different clusters of core values – Survivors, Traditionalists, Winners and Strivers. I don’t want to describe the book in any more detail – I want people to actually read it – it really is excellent…
So, take home point one: be aware of the likely core values of your audience beforehand, and frame your message accordingly. If poss, frame it so there’s something for everyone!
Secondly, on the recommendation of Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty in The Sunday Times a few weeks ago, I’ve also been reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell which has some very interesting ideas on social change – see the wikipedia crib:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point_(book)
So, take home point two: we need some trendsetters, some mavens and some connectors… and then, having got our message out there effectively, we need to make our message “sticky”.
Thirdly, how to make our message “sticky”? I’m now reading “Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion” by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini that is very easy to read and includes lots of counter-intuitive research based examples of what works when persuading people.
There’s an RSA podcast that gives you an introduction if you’re interested [right at the bottom of the page]:
So, take home point three: don’t use what you think will work for you, use what does actually work, which may be surprising. For instance, as part of an ad, why is “Operators are waiting, please call now” far less effective than “If operators are busy, please call again”? Because the latter suggests that lots of people are already interested in calling, which means that other people are more likely to be persuaded. We really aren’t rugged individualists – by and large, we do what we see other people doing. This is social proof theorem at work – I’d like to see CRAGs making creative use of this.
OK, I’m a psychologist so it’s not surprising these are issues I’m interested in, but I really do think these ideas are * crucial *, and I think they should be included in any pack we give to start-up CRAGs, because I see no reason why CRAGs can’t be part of the mainstream cultural change we so urgently require * so long as * we * express * ourselves * effectively * [i.e. don’t * describe * ourselves as hair shirt, even if our lives are carbon-minimalist, it just says “oh look, eco-fundamentalists, they’re so not like me – and hence what they say is of no relevance to me].
There’s also a huge difference between persuading people to join us [which we need to do] and teaching [even though we also need to be able to teach informally and effectively at meetings, especially as we get more mainstream people involved]. Persuasion is done by equals, teaching is done expert to novice – so different conversational tones and techniques are needed.
In addition, as George Marshall points out, we really MUST move away from using the “Medusa effect” – ohmigod it’s so ****ing scary – which can be greens’ default mode under stress – it just paralyses people in terror, despair and denial. Even if we only describe ourselves as feeling that way, people don’t wanna know!
I’d be happy to produce a mini-guide condensing the key points of relevance for CRAGs from these last two books for the start-up pack if people felt that was a good idea. I’ll also try to put up the “Climate Change and Core Values” exercise we did at Peckham CRAG in December on Peckham CRAG’s pages at some point.
It’d also be really interesting to hear from CRAGgers who may have been trained in how to deal with the media – I know Zaria from Peckham CRAG has, maybe others have too.
I’d be interested to know what other CRAGgers think about these ideas. One implication might be that we have a standard, agreed agenda and way of answering questions when we deal with the media.
Best wishes,
Anna
Key messages
david
Sorry, I realised this comment wasn’t really relevant to this thread, so I’ve started a new thread at Key media messages