Messaging, media, fight for the frame

Messaging and media liaison work

Seven days a week I grasped for every handle I could in order to pump words from movement centers into the circuits of the news media.[1]

--Mary E. King, communications worker for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the Civil Rights Movement (photo from 1964)

Arguably, few activities are more crucial to the success of any campaign, any movement, than messaging, which both crafts and disseminates the messages that create, validate, and develop a base of support for the campaign. Social movement researchers stress the need to craft messages that demonstrate a problem, promote viable alternatives, and convince the general public that ordinary people can bring about the needed changes.[2]

Thus, one of your campaign’s first tasks is to form a media committee, as the linchpin of campaign recruitment. The skills required of media committee members include developing a perceptible narrative, distinguishing what will make astute timing, and creating a broad, realistic understanding that it is the campaign or movement that must manage all publicity problems, not the media outlet personnel.[3]

Our job was to change the public narrative.

--Reverend Barber[4]

Some activists seem to believe that, along with Oscar Wilde, there is “no such thing as bad publicity,” but in campaigns of nonviolent action that is false. Merely one maladroitly distributed message can harm the image, dampen recruitment, foster a perception of hopelessness, drive away the as-yet uncommitted, and reduce “people power” human agency. 

On the other hand, a carefully created and masterfully managed public information effort can project a positive profile, engender hope, attract fence-sitters, and present a picture of strength that presages victory for civil society. 

The media team that maintains a tight two-way communication with the core organizers will more likely avoid missteps, especially the fatal flaw of promulgating a message that runs counter to that of the core of leadership. It is in the nature of popular (meaning of the people) campaigns that in the absence of an intentional strategy, it will not work to have one person doing this and another performing that, one committee presenting this but another undertaking that. In any effective campaign the media teams will bear in mind the “One band, one sound” agreement. 

A media campaign is strongest when it reveals participation by large numbers and masses of people, rather than a weak-appearing handful of scattered activists who are easily sidelined, thereby stamping the campaign as marginal. Avoiding outreach to media outlets until your internal strength shows strength and unity. As Reverend Barber wrote, “While they are ignoring you, you have time to build power.”[5]

This is not to suggest that acts of inspiration by a sympathetic individual or small group are not important to publicize—they are. When a Rosa Parks offers civil resistance as a lone compelling and moral figure, all publicity efforts are important. A sympathetic figure who takes a moral stand will generate interest, sympathy, and participants if the communications workers do a good job of crafting a message that appeals to most people.

Prepare media lists that match your objectives. For example, if your campaign is directed at pressuring a state legislature and governor to pass a measure that will uplift vulnerable people, a state media list should include all newspapers, radio producers, television reporters and producers, and social media. Deciding how to approach each event or story is important. 

For example, researcher Janjira Sombatpoonsiri[6]researched the use of media in Serbia under extremely state-dominated repressive authoritarianism. She found that there was still competition to scoop rival media outlets and that activists could use that rivalry to induce competition for campaign stories. Otpor! (Resistance!) student activists assured editors that they had the scoop, which put double pressure on the editors to not only use it because they wished to outdo other media outlets, but to also feature the campaign story prominently to encourage the activists to view them again as being worthy of an exclusive angle. 

On the other hand, broad dissemination of a media release is often preferred, in the hope that some media will use it and some may follow up. Each media team, in consultation with the core leadership, must make each of these decisions based on best assessments of real time factors. 

Framing is key. When, for example, the Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan was advised to tone down his strident objections to drafting young men to fight in Vietnam, Berrigan’s response was, “If the government were coming for TVs and cars, then you’d be upset. But, as it is, they’re only coming for your sons.”[7]Recasting your narrative to illustrate its urgency and moral necessity is critical. 

Multiple vectors are more effective than single outlet messaging. Nonviolence analyst Shaazka Beyerle wrote of the anti-corruption people power movement in Addiopizzo, Italy, that messaging was launched via “stickers, sheets and banners, T-shirts, websites, web banners, social networking (Facebook, YouTube, blogging, Internet mailing lists, e-newsletters, leaflets, advertising (billboards), children’s rap songs, poster contests in partnership with Solidaria (a civil rights organization supporting Mafia victims), theatre skits, and media coverage and interviews.”[8]Toss in any of the newer social media platforms for expanded outreach.

Be aware of hooks on which to hang your story, especially as they relate to the roving attention of mainstream media. So, for example, when radical nonviolent humanitarian group Voices in the Wilderness (VitW) wanted to bring food and medicine to Iraq in violation of sanctions in the 1990s, they did many of their aid actions when international attention was focused on the sanctions-driven hunger and healthcare crisis that UNICEF estimated killed a half million Iraqi children under five years old. The timing of VitW actions and messaging was greatly enhanced by bringing it all into the international spotlight already shining on Iraq.[9]That angle greatly advanced the participation of civil society in breaking those killer sanctions.

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[1] King, Mary E. (2010). “Getting out the news,” (pp. 332-344), in Holsaert, Faith S.; et alia (Eds.) (2012). Hands on the freedom plow: Personal accounts by women in SNCC. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press (p. 335). 

[2]Maney, Gregory M., Patrick G. Coy, and Lynne M. Woehrle. 2009. "Pursuing Political Persuasion: War and Peace Frames in the United States after September 11th." Social Movement Studies 8, no. 4: 299-322.

[3]https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/pressing-case-nonviolent-movements-media-part-1/

[4] Barber (p. 85)

[5] Barber (p. 55)

[6]Sombatpoonsiri, Janjira (2015). Humor and nonviolent struggle in Serbia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. 

[7] Polner, Murray, and Jim O’Grady (1997). Disarmed and dangerous: The radical lives and times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan. New York, NY: HarperCollins (p. 189).

[8]Beyerle, Shaazka (2014). Curtailing corruption: People power for accountability & justice. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner (p. 127). One might add sidewalk chalk, murals, projected images onto buildings, Reddit AMA, Twitter, Instagram, phone banks and door-to-door canvassing.

[9] Kelly, Kathy & Rai, Milan (2009). “Voices in the Wilderness: Campaigning against sanctions on Iraq, 1995-2005)” pp. 143-149 in Clark, Howard (Ed.). People power: Unarmed resistance and global solidarity. New York, NY: Pluto.