Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
f you’ve heard of Frank Luntz, you may know him as the evil-genius messaging expert who advised Republicans how to twist words to support their policy priorities. But Luntz seems to have gotten religion on climate. He has stopped minimizing the problem of global heating and has instead decided to do the opposite — to try to help activists raise the alarm.
How do we anchor ourselves in a world in which neither the narratives we are told nor the images we are shown can be trusted?
“Protest” is not the only tool we have. If we take a minute to understand what’s actually going on in the heads of our opponents, and how they understand the unfolding of America’s polarization, we may be glad that we have more options.
Unpropaganda aims at stopping a message from propagating by presenting a lot of contrasting information to a public unable to fully evaluate it.
"Cecil the lion" is having so much success because it has the three basic characteristics that make a meme a supermeme. These are 1) Be simple, 2) Have a villain, 3) Be reassuring. From these considerations, we can probably understand why it is so difficult to create effective climate memes that carry the right message: climate science is not simple, the villain is us, and the story is disquieting, rather than reassuring.
Everyone loves a courtroom drama–especially one that pits a feisty, but a determined criminal defense attorney against the awesome power of a prosecutor who has the resources of the state behind him or her. We see such David and Goliath stories every week on television.
To call forth an emergency response from people, we have to put them in the role of rescuer. We must make clear that (1) an emergency is unfolding and (2) YOU have a critical role in responding to it.
