Topic: Telling New Stories About Children's Issues
This new KIDS COUNT E-Zine, "Telling New Stories About Children's Issues," is the result of a collaboration between FrameWorks and VOICES for Alabama's Children. VOICES' Communications Director, Lisa Parrish, wanted to build upon what she had learned at the FrameWorks Communications Training by writing a piece that local children's advocates could use to more effectively tell their stories about children and family issues. Lisa passed along her draft to FrameWorks, we suggested and edited, and we believe the result adds an important missing document to the framing literature. Lisa's background as a journalist makes this an especially useful document, bringing new insights to the FrameWorks research.
Telling New Stories About Children's Issues
By Lisa Parrish, VOICES for Alabama's Children
There is little doubt that television and newspapers play an important role in our lives. The way those issues are presented or framed by advocates and the media has a powerful impact on the attitude and responses that are elicited from the public.
What was believed to be effective and clear a few years ago, however, is proving not to be the case. Communication researchers are now able to suggest powerful messages to reawaken the public to accept responsibility for helping all children. They able to craft language that helps people connect to our values. That means both reporters and advocates must retool their language and their approach to a story to elicit the responses they are seeking. People turn on the T.V. or open the morning newspapers with preconceived beliefs, biases, and opinions. To help them listen to the stories we are telling, we must be aware of their beliefs, avoid using words that trigger negative responses, focus on solutions to problems and put data and numbers in context.
I. Acknowledging Public Beliefs and Values
Across issues, there are some common themes that affect how people think about children's issues. In crafting effective communications, children's advocates and reporters need to be sensitive to these long held beliefs.
- Individuals are solely responsible for their situations/Bootstraps Mentality - Parental responsibility is the biggest stumbling block facing advocates. Many people can point to how they overcame adversity to be the successes they are today. They believe it is solely the parents' responsibility to raise and care for the child. Messages should incorporate ways to broaden this responsibility of parents in general to promote the well-being of all children. Speak of "our children" or "America's children."
- Define a broad based solution - People often see only negative coverage of children's issues. This type of coverage has caused many to feel the problems are overwhelming and only getting worse. When explaining a problem, offer a solution. On most issues people understand involving government and business. However, when you are telling stories about crime and violence, people feel helpless about their ability to improve the situation and are least likely to see solutions as individually based.
- One person cannot make a difference - While people firmly believe that an individual should be responsible for his or her own situation, they are also resigned to the belief that they are unable to make a difference in the world. Instead of urging people to volunteer, which they believe can take too much time, ask them to talk to neighbors, church groups and co-workers about what can be done about an issue.
- The worthy v. the unworthy - People want to be generous to those in need but believe many take advantage of the system. Counter this by incorporating into the message ways in which recipients are demonstrating worthiness.
- All problems can be traced to working women - Focus group interviews reveal the belief that because women are working rather than tying the neighborhood together, people no longer have the kind of relationships with neighbors that allow them to interact with children. Many believe that the plight of the working poor is partly due to the greed and standards of dual income families.
II. Starting at the Beginning: Define the Problem
You cannot solve a problem that is not perceived to exist by the public. Coming forward with important "breakthroughs" in social remedies-programs that work or declining trends - will not matter much to the public unless the problem has already been established. Moreover, it is not merely the volume of news that determines an issue's ascension onto the policy agenda, but the composition of that news. How the problem is presented, its news composition, and the solutions determine how the public will view the issue. This is what is referred to a "framing."
III. Using Metaphors to Define the Problem
The words you use to describe a problem or condition trigger certain frames of reference for the adult public. Frames connect, through language and symbol, to bigger models we hold about how the world works and to our core beliefs.
Child Care
For example, in a study on child care (Lakoff and Grady, 1998) the following metaphorical reasoning was observed. People tended to see very young children as being precious objects more to be protected than nurtured. The researchers argue that if young children are viewed this way then daycare is a container for the object, and the only standards that matter are that it be warm, safe and dry. This observation helps explain why the high volume of news coverage on day care issues does not translate into a movement for better quality. The nature of the frame itself supports more attention to safety and less attention to development. One might say that child care issues are dominated by a safety frame.
By contrast the researchers suggest if a child is like a plant, in need of daily stimulation and nurturance, then child care becomes an environment and the standards become nurturance. By conscientiously and consistently reframing the nature of early childhood toward a development frame, one can affect reasoning about daycare standards.
Emphasize that day care is early education and that quality child care is important for the healthy development of children. Child care expressed in these terms becomes more than babysitting.
Teen Violence
When communicating a violence prevention message the journalist and child advocate must confront a number of counterproductive attitudes about violence - more police and more prisons are the solutions. Talk instead using metaphors that emphasize jobs and education. The following are some examples:
- Violence is a disease that strikes the community - community is like a body that must be kept strong and healthy to resist disease.
- Jobs and education are preventative medicine
- Police and prisons are community painkillers
- Kids' public behavior is everyone's business- Studies show that violent crime is lower in a community that doesn't hesitate to correct behavior of their neighbors kids.
- Reduce crime, talk to a neighbor
Health Care
Everyone has a health care story and understands the need for good medical care. But when the healthcare conversation shifts to a discussion about children who are not covered by insurance, people often blame the parents. To keep strong support for universal access to health care for children, offer examples of children living in middle class families. Describe these families without insurance as being:
- Recently unemployed
- Divorced parents
- Part-time employees or employees of small companies that do not offer insurance.
Talk about health concerns for children in terms of assets.
- "Health as an asset"
- "The wisdom of taking care of children's/family health"
- "Financial wisdom"
IV. Putting the Data in Context
Data is no good unless it is used. Readers have difficulty understanding numbers and statistics unless they are explained. Convey meaning, not just numbers. Instead of spending time educating the public on exact numbers, interpret them.
Here's an excerpt from an op-ed piece in the Mobile Press Register written by VOICES for Alabama's Children which puts the problem (the state's preventable teen death rate) in context for the reader:
"More than 140 Alabama children, ages 15 through 18, died in crashes in 1998. That's like wiping out half the boys in the senior class at Bryant High School each year. These young deaths are preventable and Alabama is not doing all it could to stop them. In fact, Alabama ranks 42nd out of the 50 states in preventing teen deaths, according to 2000 National Kids Count Data Book."
Personalizing Your Story
Suppose you wanted to do a story about the increase in the number of births to unmarried teenaged girls in a particular county. Many reporters would try to track down a few teen moms to interview. Such a news story might go on to describe the inexperience of the mother, her lack of education, how poor she is and how little necessary equipment she has for the baby.
Researchers call this an episodic frame because it reduces life to a series of disconnected episodes, isolated events or case studies. Thanks to recent focus group studies on communications, we now know these episodic frames release the reader/viewer of any personal or social responsibility. When someone reads or watches this story on television, the two-person frame sets up the idea that the teen parent alone is responsible for the child's needs. The more specific and dramatic the case study, the more dire the child's situation and the more attention paid to describing it, the more likely it is that the viewing public will remember the issue as that mother/child's problem and not as a public issue.
A good well-researched news article does not have to have a personal viewpoint to help tell the story. In fact, a personal view appeals to the people who are already drawn to the story but does nothing to attract them if not interested. Readers then focus on the problem of the individual rather than the broader pattern. Instead of making the story person, talk about the community, what the community may lack for its citizens and about public responsibility.
V. Offer Solutions and Build Partnerships
Suggest direct appropriate public responses. Give examples of programs that have successfully addressed the problem. Propose unexpected partnerships to address problems. One way to do this is by incorporating business into the public dissemination of data. Ask business leaders to comment on what they are doing, what the workplace can do to improve children's opportunities. Look at public/private partnerships. Another way to move the public is to find unlikely allies such as policemen and senior citizens who agree with your cause.
Emphasize Community not the Person
If you broaden the frame to include other parents, the community, business leaders, or the mayor, you expand the possibilities for meeting children's needs. Instead of spending three or four paragraphs or 50 television seconds on baby John Smith and his teen mom broaden the story. "Health department officials say births to unmarried teenage girls have nearly doubled in Cleburn County. Babies like John Smith, born to young unwed mothers are more likely to be premature compared with babies born to older parents. Health Director says one way to improve a baby's chances is the Gift of Life program …." Advocates who expend energy on supplying media with dramatic case studies of particular situations, or who focus on "worst case" examples to dramatize broader social issues would do well to reconsider the value of this practice.
Focus on programs, giving them links to basic American value frames like fairness and generosity and building awareness in the public's mind that there is in fact an alternative moral discourse.
Fighting the Stereotypes: Choose your words carefully!
It should come as no surprise to anyone that what you say is not always what people hear. It's not what you say it's how you say it. Researchers at the Frameworks Institute in Washington, D.C., working for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and other groups like the Rockridge Group of Berkley, CA working with the Ford Foundation, and the Benton Foundation are currently examining what words have negative and positive reactions with the public. Here's what we know so far:
| Instead of: | Use: |
| Child care | Early childhood learning or education |
| Teenagers | Adolescents |
| Government programs | Be more specific: programs for health care, crime fighting or education |
| Poor | There are simply not enough positive frames for "the poor" in the public mind. These have a slightly less negative connotation: deserving poor, working poor |
| Parental Responsibility | Speak of "our children" or "Alabama's Children" |
Avoid These Words:
Self-sufficiency
Welfare reform
Tax relief
SUMMARY:
We know that people are paying attention to news about children, but to have a positive impact, news stories should:
- Show success or solutions
- Stay local
- Broaden beyond the individual or personal story
Use the Kids Count indicators for public understanding.
- Point the way to solutions
- Package the data with examples of "programs that work."
- Reporters should use their investigative skills to discover why programs aren't more available or fully funded.
There is nothing easy about public communications. It is especially hard when the message you want to send is something no one wants to talk about. The stories behind the indicators in the 2001 Kids Count Data Book are important ones that need to be told in a way that will encourage public policy changes and improvements.
About the Author
Lisa Parrish is a journalist with 12 years of experience in covering politics and state government in Alabama. To her current work on children's issues, she brings a reporter's sensitivity to telling stories that engage real people. At the same time, her work convinces her that new stories are necessary if people are to understand the impact of policies on personal lives. This article is based on work conducted by the FrameWorks Institute, a nonprofit Washington, D.C. based think tank that analyzes how people understand social issues. The Institute's work on children's issues has been funded in part by the Annie E. Casey, David and Lucile Packard, Benton, and W.T. Grant Foundations. Material for this article also comes from a paper written by the Rockridge Institute, Berkley, CA, which was commissioned and paid for by the Ford Foundation. While this article is based on that research, the conclusions are solely those of the author.
