Topic: Right for the Wrong Reasons
By: Dr. Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr.
FrameWorks Institute Collaborator
December 19, 2003
The cover story of the recent issue of The New York Times Sunday Magazine (November 30, 2003) is about "inspiration" in the field of design. Where it comes from, what it leads to, and how it happens. Using design examples like the new $20 bill, the iPod, low-cost, labor saving devices for people in rural Africa, and cartoon character Sponge Bob Squarepants, the Magazine calls attention to how and why innovation is spawned. One quote from Rob Walker's article on the development of the iPod provided the inspiration for the architecture of this piece:
This line got me to thinking about the role of innovation in advocating for a Progressive social policy agenda. Now, how did I go from thinking about design to thinking about moving public will on social issues? What do these two things have in common? On the one hand, the history of innovation is, in no small measure, the ability to take good ideas and mutate them; on the other hand, advocates on the Left have secretly (and in many cases openly!) admired the way that political conservatives have used communications to fuel a growing public policy reformation in the United States. It makes sense, then, to see how we can imitate the communications innovations of the Right in order to iterate our communications strategies to overtake the opposition in the national social policy dialogue. As the social movements literature tells us, the most successful movements are associated with the development of an innovative master frame.
I have titled this piece Right for the Wrong Reasons as a double entendre. First, the primary focus is on how the Right effectively frames social issues to influence the public agenda. The title also reflects the ideas that while the Right may be correct in valuing the role of communications in moving public will, its members are wrong in their analysis of social inequity. In short, this E-zine examines the following questions:
- How, and to what effect, has the Right reframed the American social agenda in the post-civil rights era?
- What are the lessons learned and how are they related to a Progressive reframing of the public conversation around social issues?
Let me clear up what I mean by the concept of frames. In FrameWorks parlance the term frame refers to the "labels the mind uses to find what it knows." Frames are a composition of elements — visuals, values, stereotypes, messengers — which, together, trigger an existing idea. They tell us what this communications is about. They signal what to pay attention to (and what not to), they allow us to fill in or infer missing information, and they set up a pattern of reasoning that influences decision outcomes. Framing, therefore, is a translation process between incoming information and the pictures in our heads. As Charlotte Ryan said, "[E]very frame defines the issue, explains who is responsible, and suggests potential solutions…conveyed by images, stereotypes, or anecdotes."
Reframing indicates the capacity to identify alternative frames that may be weaker but have more promise for promoting a preferred policy outcome. Quoting Tarrow, Snow, and Benford, "[W]hen a movement wishes to put forward a radically new set of ideas, it must engage in frame transformation: new values may have to be planted and nurtured, old meanings or understandings jettisoned, and erroneous beliefs or 'misframings' reframed." (see Sidney Tarrow, "Constructing Meanings through Action," in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, Morris and Mueller, eds, 1992: 188).The goal, then, is to specify frame elements — messengers, metaphors, models — that support and invigorate the new frames; frames more in line with a Progressive agenda.
The evidence is pretty strong — the Right is "winning" on a number of social issues. Whether it is tax cuts, Medicare reform, school choice, or free market health care, a radical transformation is occurring in the country's social policy agenda. And while it is difficult to figure out what came first, it is obvious that these trends are connected to the significant gains made by Republican candidates at the local, state, and federal levels. We shouldn't be surprised then that conservative values — driven by the belief in individual freedom and personal responsibility — are dominant in American life.
But doesn't this really beg the question of why and how? The "why" has several answers, and I'll name just a few: massive immigration, a volatile economy, growing income inequality, timely leadership (e.g., Gingrich, Bush II, and Schwarzenegger), diversification of media (e.g., Fox News), and a strong intellectual infrastructure (e.g., the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution). To varying degrees, these factors surely reshuffled the calculus for the distribution of goods and services in the society.
But as the social movement literature tells us (once again); social movements fail, even when the context is ripe, because they lack a "master frame" that resonates with the public's deeply-held beliefs. In other words, although the stars aligned correctly for the Right, the fact that the movement's members had a clear and simple message about their agenda was a necessary condition for the alteration of the country's social agenda.
Importantly, the Right was committed to the notion of funding communications infrastructure and research capacity. What came back from this network of research was a set of principles that guided the public defense of conservatives' policy goals. Perhaps the clearest example of this thinking is Frank Luntz's monograph, Language of the 21st Century. Written for Republican members of Congress in the second Clinton administration, the Luntz report summarized the findings of more than 200 focus groups and provided ready-made applications for members to use across a range of issues from health care to the budget to affirmative action. In other words, it is a communications primer for politicians and policymakers. Indeed, a good case can be made that the central tenets of the monograph can be found in any number of successful bids by the Right to control the social agenda
I want to focus on four basic "lessons" of communications strategy outlined in the Luntz report. I have paraphrased Luntz's directives in italics.
- Principles are more important than politics or policy. Americans aren't looking for an agenda; they are looking for principles and politicians who exhibit them. In this vein, standing up for principles is more important than being loyal to a cause. For example, the Luntz report urges politicians to "use the values approach to communication" when it comes to health care issues. This means that, although their proposed reforms are really about free-market health care provision, "[H]ealth care "consumer" is the worst term to use….far better to use "members", "enrollees", or "participants." So while their policy agenda is completely consumer driven, their communications is about the values of choice and security. As Luntz says, "It's about your doctor, your hospital and your health care plan."
- Embrace the moral agenda. Americans believe we are facing a moral crisis. In the chapter on morality, Luntz cites a broad body of data suggesting that people are uneasy about the state of faith, family, and community. Luntz challenges conservatives not to shy away from discussing values. As he asserts, "talk about spirituality and faith in God…, talk about 'family values'…, use words like "values" and "morality". For example, in the section on crime, Luntz counsels that reforms like "jail, not bail," "protect victims' rights", and the "double time" clause should be cloaked in the language of individual responsibility, moral accountability, and fairness.
- Focus on policy, stop talking politics. When the subject becomes politics, change the subject. The section on "education" is telling on this point. In this part of the report, Luntz encourages his partisans to ignore the political sniping of critics who say that education is an issue the Democrats own. He recognizes the impulse to get in a political debate with the Left about education reform. Instead, Luntz advises conservatives to focus on a directed education reform plan. The policy menu, for example, should be built around the notion of "parental choice". Reform, according to this line of reasoning, is about decentralizing federal authority and relinquishing power to the "towns and parents". It is a reaction against the inability of education bureaucrats to fashion an effective, results-oriented educational system (and the American public is plenty aware of the failure of, primarily, public schools). In all, Luntz tells conservatives not to take the political bait on education; instead, they should focus on policies that support parental choice and involvement. Put more colloquially, sell programs on their merits without attacking the other side. Americans have had enough of partisan bickering.
- Stop being defensive. Talk about the principles you are defending, don't talk about strategic considerations. Don't talk in public about getting your message across, end games, and doing a better job of explaining. The section on affirmative action is the appropriate case study here. It is no secret that the Right has been on the defensive with regard to race in the post-civil rights era. The attack on affirmative action, however, gives chapter and verse for how to go on the offensive. Luntz starts by following the first rule of innovation — imitate. He suggests using the language of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about being judged by the "content of our character" as a way to symbolize that affirmative action "does more than categorize, it judges people". Raising the point that women and minorities who are perfectly capable of competing are now looked upon skeptically is a powerful way to illustrate the destructiveness and damage affirmative action has done to individuals in the society. Perhaps even more effectively, Luntz advocates communicating that affirmative action legalizes selection of applicants on the basis of race and gender instead of ability and achievement. The success of Proposition 209 in California — that state's broad prohibition against affirmative action programs, passed in 1996 — bears testimony to the effectiveness of this type of strategy.
What can we imitate from our analysis of the Right's communications techniques? There are four clear lessons:
- Built space. The Right has poured a great deal of resources into analyzing how communications interacts with people's existing belief systems. Foundation, business, and governmental elites have expended a great deal of energy providing support for people like Luntz to do and distribute their work. It's not all about money, but it is about the architecture of a space where thinkers and doers can work together.
- Intentionality. The Right has been clear from the start that its members intended to revolutionize American life. As early as 1980, people like Richard Viguerie began to talk about using communications to retool the way Americans think about social life. And on through Newt Gingrich and George Bush II, the Right has been crystalline in its basic goal. No navel-gazing here.
- Talk values. As the Luntz report makes clear, the battle is for the hearts and minds of the American public. The Right has understood that it is not about building the best widget; rather, it is about promoting an agenda that resonates with people's deeply held assumptions and worldviews. Find ways to open the conversation; don't stop it cold with techno-speak.
- Discipline. It is painfully evident that effective communications strategies involve not only finding the right message but also having the discipline to stay on it. Now any communications expert will say this is elemental; exactly! And it is exactly what the Progressive side of the street lacks. As the old saw goes, "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
On the other hand, what should we iterate? That is, how do we refine, redirect, and remold our communications, now that we have a sense of what to imitate? The good news is that there have been some signs of hope recently. The University of Michigan affirmative action decision and the failure of Proposition 54 (the racial classification initiative) in California are welcome signs that the Progressive movement may be getting out of its own way. For instance, the Michigan case had two effective framing elements. The first had to do with the message — affirmative action is the right thing to do because it benefits the broader society. At the FrameWorks Institute, we call this the Interdependence Frame. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." The second had to do with the messenger. Amicus briefs filed in the Michigan court base by the business community and the military proved the power of what we call "unlikely messengers." In other words, people (or groups) with no obvious self-interest at stake testified before the public. Taken together, these two frame components played a powerful role in the arguably successful (if only temporarily) adjudication of the case at the Supreme Court.
The framing around Proposition 54 was also interesting. In this case, advocates made the decision to frame the debate as being "about" fairness but they did so through the "health" door. That is, race and racism were not perceived to be the most effective way to get to questions about justice and fairness, because many people do not have a useful model of race with which to reason. Thus, when people like C. Everett Koop appeared in advertisements arguing that the measure wasn't fair because innocent people would be adversely affected (and maybe even die!), the public was able to use the Equity Frame to come to a policy decision. True enough, it remains to be seen if this will be an effective strategy when Prop. 54's chief advocate, Ward Connerly, and his associates make all medical data exempt and reintroduce the measure. Nonetheless, Prop. 54 didn't pass, and in the process it raised the bar, and the stakes, for future debate.
In all, we must renew our commitment to innovate in the area of advocating for a Progressive social agenda. I hope this piece inspires you to think about how we use communications to overtake the national conversation about social issues.
Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. is Associate Vice Chancellor, Community Partnerships at the University of California, Los Angeles where he also serves as a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Center for Communications and Community. He has collaborated on many FrameWorks projects including those involving adolescent and early child development, global warming and international engagement. The Center for Communications and Community, which he heads, provides complete experimental design and media effects testing in the local Los Angeles area, as well as content analysis of media frames in the news.
