10 Hot Topics for Fall Messaging Work
10 Hot Topics for Fall Messaging Work
We Can Improve Democratic Coalition Messaging By Working On Framing
What Is Values Messaging, or Framing?
Shift the Country is set up to reach and energize a majority coalition of voters with action and civic engagement that gets people talking and inspires them to make change.
One of the ways we’re pushing to do that is with our Thing 4: Championing Vision, Values, & Moral Courage.
This is one of the huge, huge ways that Democrats and our larger majority coalition can “work on messaging,” which we always hear about being an issue that needs improvement.
Do you ever hear the metaphor about how Democrats tend to bring a briefing book to a gun fight?
Yeah. It’s true. We tend to want to sway everyone with facts and data.
As we’ve seen sooooooooo much the past many years — not everyone is convinced or swayed by facts and data. But where minds might not change due to facts and data… values and moral arguments can have an impact. Our brains are wired in different ways, and using values and morals to make your point and sell your case can be huge. HUGE.
It’s also often easier to remember a values or moral argument — and for that reason the values or moral take on a subject often drives the public or media narrative on a given topic.
Values arguments can resonate more than data. One of the things that helps something “go viral” is someone making a values argument or showing moral courage — like Mallory McMorrow in this now-famous declaration on what’s right and what’s not okay. One headline says a reporter felt McMorrow’s speech “in his soul.” That’s resonance, or what Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point calls “stickiness.” It’s something that makes people want to share stuff.
Saying that we need to feed hungry children in school who can’t afford to eat is a whole different thing than facts and figures about school lunch programs, for example.
Saying that kids should be able to go to school without being terrified that an active shooter will gun them down is a value. It’s also a vision — for what we want.
Talking this way is often called “framing.” Super smart person and linguist Dr. George Lakoff has the largest body of work on this stuff, compiled on his site here, and now operating on Substack with co-author Gil Duran at Frame Lab.
You can also learn about this through a free 1-hour course on framing/messaging put together by Building Bridges for America; a nonprofit of former Pete Buttigieg staffers and volunteers.
Teamwork Planned To Work On Values Messages for These 10 Areas
In order to start using framing, values, and moral arguments better, our nascent nonprofit has figured out that we should get groups of volunteers together to work on how we can do decent framing around hot topic areas.
In other words, if we want to talk about gun violence and widespread firearms availability, what are the best values- and vision-based approaches for doing that? What are sub-optimal approaches? Can we research together and find material others have already put together and reference that? That’s what we mean by teamwork on this.
As such, we’ll be digging into this through Zoom calls and volunteer coordination. Nothing’s scheduled yet, but we’re getting into it. If you want to be involved, holler and/or volunteer.
With that, we’ll also be pushing for existing groups and coalitions out there doing politics to get into this also as part of Thing 2: Do more with community & coalitions. If you’re with a group or local party or a bunch of friends or whoever and want to get involved or have us speak, drop us an email at team@shiftthecountry.com.
Our 10 Hot Framing Topics for Fall Volunteer Work
These are the framing, values, and moral arguments areas we’re going to focus on for volunteer work this fall — like ASAP.
They reflect on the priorities that appear to be important for the loose coalition of Democrats and their allies — and also on the risk landscape in the US at this time from a national security perspective.
Democracy, Voting, & Elections
National Security & The Rule of Law
Gun Violence & Widespread Availability
Schools, Education, Science, & History
Healthcare, Access, & Abortion
Climate & Environment
Income Disparity, Wages, Wealth Gap, Etc.
De-Escalation, Disarming, Defusing, & Diffusing
Love vs. Hate / Inclusivity vs. Bigotry / Humanity
Empowerment, Cheerleading, & Hope
Let us know what you think.
The last three items are a bit non-traditional in political work, but we need to do different stuff and to fight differently because the political environment is changing fast. The last three on the list are are listed given the risk landscape that’s unfolding before us and the complexities of it. They center our humanity, they help us address the dangers of extremism, and they follow approaches for countering authoritarian and fascist threats.
The rest of these 10 hot-topics-for-framing line up loosely with our 10 Critical Parts of Society That Need Attention, but it’s not an exact match. Those 10 critical parts of society are a tool in case folks need a starting point for where to focus action, engagement, strategy, and ideas. We used them in this process to make sure we were covering our own priorities for the work we’re doing.
More to come. We’ll send out updates here once we schedule Zoom conversationns to get into this framing work. If you’re already signed up to volunteer, make sure team@shiftthecountry.com is marked safe in your email folder so you get our volunteer emails.
Finally, here’s the viral video again from Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow mentioned above. What if there were thousands of us this fired up, raising a ruckus everywhere… both online and in the communities where we live?
What if. So let’s do it. We have 14 1/2 months til the 2024 election.
Plenty of time to drive the zeitgeist.