Category: Theory

How to do an Audience Analysis

Şubat 7, 2020

This article was curated from COMPASS


An audience analysis is a process used to identify and understand the priority and influencing audiences for a SBCC strategy. The priority and influencing audiences are those people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. A complete audience analysis looks at: 

  • Socio-demographic characteristics such as sex, age, language and religion.
  • Geographic characteristics like where the audience lives and how that might impact behavior.
  • Psychographic characteristics such as needs, hopes, concerns and aspirations.
  • Audience thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and current actions related to the health or social issue. 
  • Barriers and facilitators that prevent or encourage audience members to adopt the desired behavior change.
  • Gender and how it impacts audience members’ behavior and ability to change.
  • Effective communication channels for reaching the audience.
Why Conduct an Audience Analysis? 

An audience analysis informs the design of materials, messages, media selection and activities of a SBCC strategy. It establishes a clear, detailed and realistic picture of the audience. As a result, messages and activities are more likely to resonate with the audience and lead to the desired change in behaviors.

Who Should Conduct an Audience Analysis? 

A small, focused team should conduct the audience analysis. Members should include communication staff, health/social service staff and, when available, research staff.

Stakeholders should also be involved throughout the process. Consider effective ways to engage stakeholders to gain feedback and input, including: in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, community dialogue, small group meetings, taskforce engagement and participatory stakeholder workshops. 

When Should Audience Analysis Be Conducted?

An audience analysis should be conducted at the beginning of a program or project, in conjunction with a situation analysis and program analysis. The team should start thinking about the audience during the desk review and fill in any gaps during the stakeholder workshop. It is part of the Inquiry phase of the P Process. 

Estimated Time Needed

Completing an audience analysis can take up to three to four weeks. When estimating time, consider the existing audience-related data, what gaps need to be filled and whether additional stakeholder or audience input is needed. Allow for additional time if formative research is needed to fill in any gaps that may exist in the literature.

Learning Objectives

After completing the activities in the audience analysis guide, the team will: 

  • Determine the priority audience. 
  • Determine the influencing audience(s). 
  • Describe the priority and influencing audience(s).
  • Develop an audience profile for each priority and influencing audience(s).

Prerequisites

Steps

Step 1: Identify Potential Audience(s)

To address the problem statement and achieve the vision decided upon during the situation analysis, brainstorm and list all potential audiences that are affected by or have control over the health or social problem. For example, if the problem is high unmet need for family planning, potential audiences may be:

Step 2: Select the Priority Audience

An effective SBCC strategy must focus on the most important audience. The priority audience is not always the most affected audience, but is the group of people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. The number of priority audiences depends mainly on the number of audiences whose practice of the behavior will significantly impact the problem. For example, priority audiences may be:

To identify the priority audience(s), keep in mind the vision and health or social problem. Then consider:

  • Who is most affected
  • How many people are in the audience
  • How important it is that the audience change their behavior
  • How likely it is that the audience will change their behavior
  • Who controls the behavior or the resources required for a behavior change

Step 3: Identify Priority Audience Characteristics

Identify the socio-demographic, geographic and psychographic characteristics of each priority audience. Include their communication preferences and other opportunities to reach them. 

Organize priority audience information in a table (see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).

Step 4: Identify Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices

Understand what the priority audience knows, thinks, feels and does about the problem in order to determine the audiences’ stage of behavior change. This allows the program to tailor messages and activities based on the audience’s knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

There are a number of ideational factors that commonly influence individual behavior and should be considered when examining the audience’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

The situation analysis, stakeholder workshop and any additional quantitative or qualitative research will indicate what the priority audience currently does in reference to the problem and what the audience knows, thinks and feels about the problem or desired behavior. Keeping in mind the ideational factors, examine that research to understand each priority audience. Ask questions such as:

  • What does the priority audience already know (knowledge) about the problem?
  • How does the priority audience feel about the problem (attitude)?
  • How does the priority audience see their role with respect to the problem (self-image)?
  • Does the priority audience feel at risk of having the problem? How at risk do they feel (risk perception)?
  • What are the community’s beliefs and attitudes toward the health problem (social norms)?
  • How capable does the priority audience feel about being able to take action to address the problem (self-efficacy)?
  • What emotional reaction does the priority audience have towards the health problem (emotions)?
  • What level of support does the priority audience believe they would receive from family members or the community (social support and influence)?
  • How capable does the priority audience feel about discussing how to reduce the problem (personal advocacy)? 

Add this information to the table (see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).

Step 5: Identify Barriers and Facilitators

It is crucial to know what prevents or encourages the priority audience to practice the desired behavior. Identify barriers and facilitators of change in the literature and list them in the table (see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).If the desk review does not adequately identify behavioral factors, conduct additional qualitative research (interviews, focus groups) with members of the priority audience. Some important barriers to consider include:

  • Habit: People are comfortable doing things the same way they have always done them.
  • Fear: People expect change to bring negative consequences.
  • Negative experience: Some audiences may have had a bad experience, such as with the health care system, and thus may be cynical or resistant to change.

If the desired behavior requires adopting/utilizing products or services, consider issues of availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability.

 

Step 6: Consider Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing the priority audience into sub groups according to at least one similar characteristic that will affect the success of the SBCC effort.  Look at the selected priority audience and decide if it is similar enough that it can be effectively reached by the same set of channels, messages and interventions. Ask the following questions about the priority audience to decide if segmentation is necessary:

  • Are any audience members particularly difficult to reach, requiring a different set of channels?
  • Do any audience members have distinct views or concerns about the problem?
  • Do any audience members require a different message to reach them effectively?
  • Are any audience members at greater risk? 

If yes, the audience may need to be segmented further.  See the audience segmentation guide for more information on how to identify and prioritize audiences so that messages and interventions can be most effectively targeted.  

Some urban women of reproductive age may have different concerns or views about family planning. One group might be afraid of side effects while another group does not use family planning because they do not know where family planning services are available. These groups would require different messages and interventions and should be segmented if resources allow.

Step 7: Identify Key Influencers

Based on the priority or segmented audience, identify the key influencers. Search the situation analysis, stakeholder workshop and any qualitative research findings for indications of who strongly influences the priority audience’s behavior (see Audience Focused Literature Review Chart Template under templates). Influencers can be individuals or groups. Their different roles – as friends, family, leaders, teachers, health providers and of course, the media – often determine their level of influence. Consider the following factors to help identify influencing audiences:

  • Who has the most impact on the priority audience’s health-related behavior and what is their relationship to the priority audience?
  • Who makes or shapes the priority audience’s decisions in the problem area?
  • Who influences the priority audience’s behavior positively and who influences it negatively?

Step 8: Organize Influencing Audience Information

For each influencing audience identified, search the literature to identify information about them and their relationship to the priority audience. Look for:

  • How strongly the group influences the priority audience
  • What behaviors they encourage the priority audience to practice
  • Why they would encourage or discourage the desired behavior
  • How to reach them

Organize information on influencing audiences in another table for later use in the SBCC strategy (see Influencing Audiences Template under templates):

Step 9: Develop Audience Profiles

Review the notes about each audience and try to tell the story of that person. Audience profiles bring audience segments to life by telling the story of an imagined individual from the audience.

The audience profile consists of a paragraph with details on current behaviors, motivation, emotions, values and attitudes, as well as information such as age, income level, religion, sex and where they live. The profile should reflect the primary barriers the audience faces in adopting the desired behavior. Include a name and photo to help the creative team visualize who the person is. Answers to the following questions can lead to insightful profiles that help the team understand and reach audiences more effectively: 

The audience profiles will feed directly into the creative brief process and will be an integral part of the SBCC strategy. See the Samples section for an example of an audience profile.

Templates

Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template

Audience-Focused Literature Review Template

Influencing Audience Template

Samples

Sample Audience Profile

Tips & Recommendations

  • Talk to audience members. Do not rely solely on the project team’s beliefs or what program staff and health workers say or assume about the audiences.
  • Put yourself in the audience’s shoes. To truly understand what audiences know, think and feel, set aside assumptions and preconceived notions. 
  • Work in teams. The collaboration among team members (four or five people recommended) will provide richer and deeper insights into the issues. If possible, include people who have direct experience working or living in the community. 
  • Find other ways to gather information. It is important to recognize that some documents may have information gaps that will require additional inquiries (formative research) to fully understand the potential audience. Interviews with local experts (e.g. medical and public health staff) can help explain the issue and identify those most at risk or affected by it.
  • Incorporate the communication channels prioritized during the stakeholder workshop. Also consider other opportunities to reach audiences, such as places (e.g., schools, clinics) and events (e.g., health fairs, community events). SBCC strategies can take advantage of such opportunities to connect with audience members about the topic.
  • The priority audience’s perception about how the community views an issue may differ from how the community actually views the issue. The perception of what the family/community thinks often will be the deciding factor when it comes to taking a health action. This can prevent the individual from taking the best action. Addressing the misperceptions with your program or campaign could lead to a more successful behavior change intervention than one that does not address misperceptions.
  • Audience profiles should represent the experience of real people. This will help the program team better understand the audiences they are trying to reach and ensure that audience members see themselves in the messages developed for them.
  • No two audience profiles should look the same; the best profiles use qualitative research as a source. Profiles are living documents that should be updated when new information becomes available. 

Lessons Learned

  • Designing messages and activities with shared characteristics in mind increases the likelihood of audience members identifying with the issue and feeling able to address it.

Glossary & Concepts

  • Priority audience refers to a group of people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. It is the most important group to address because they have the power to make changes the SBCC campaign calls for. Sometimes this is also referred to as the intended audience.
  • An influencing audience is made up of those people who have the most significant and direct influence (positive or negative) over the priority audience. The influencing audience can exist at different levels: at the family level, community level (e.g. peers, relatives, teachers, community or faith-based leaders) or national or regional level (e.g. policy makers, media personnel, government leaders). 
  • Demographic information is statistical data (e.g. age, sex, education level, income level, geographic location) relating to a population and specific sub-groups of that population.
  • Psychographics are the attributes that describe personality, attitudes, beliefs, values, emotions and opinions. Psychographic characteristics or factors relate to the psychology or behavior of the audience.
  • Ideation refers to how new ways of thinking (or new behaviors) are diffused through a community by means of communication and social interaction among individuals and groups. Behavior is influenced by multiple social and psychological factors, as well as skills and environmental conditions that facilitate behavior. 
  • Ideational factors are grouped into three categories: cognitive, emotional and social. Cognitive factors address an individual’s beliefs, values and attitudes (such as risk perceptions), as well as how an individual perceives what others think should be done (subjective norms), what the individual thinks others are actually doing (social norms) and how the individual thinks about him/herself (self-image). Emotional factors include how an individual feels about the new behavior (positive or negative) as well as how confident a person feels that they can perform the behavior (self-efficacy). Social factors consist of interpersonal interactions (such as support or pressure from friends) that convince someone to behave in a certain way, as well as the effect on an individual’s behavior from trying to persuade others to adopt the behavior as well (personal advocacy).
  • Gender refers to the socially and culturally constructed roles and responsibilities deemed appropriate for men and women. Such constructions influence how males and females behave. In many cases, the way a community defines gender roles and expectations disadvantages women and girls. For example, if community norms dictate that boys should eat meat and vegetables while girls get rice and porridge, mothers will have difficulty ensuring that girls get enough of the right foods to be healthy.
  • Barriers to change prevent or make it difficult to adopt a behavior. Barriers come in many forms – emotional, societal, structural, educational, familial, etc. 
  • Facilitators of change make it easier to adopt a behavior. As with barriers, they can take many forms. 

Resources and References

Resources

A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy

Conducting a Social Marketing Campaign

Leadership in Strategic Communication: Making a Difference in Infectious Disease and Reproductive Health

Ideation

The Transtheoretical Model

Theories of Behavior Change

References

 

Haziran 20, 2019

This article first appeared on Freakonomics radio

The interesting take-aways for LGBTI campaigners:

  • Information is used by people depending on their existing views: The same piece of information, or explainer video, or real-life story, etc. will be used to REINFORCE attitudes, including negative ones, rather than challenge them.  It was pretty clear so far that information alone doesn’t change people. This article suggests it might even be counter-productive!
  • People live in closed social circles with people who are like them, so influencing others is increasingly difficult. OK, we all know this. But while it will be near impossible to get homo/transphobic people into an LGBTI-supportive group, it is much easier to get them into an unrelated group (say on fashion or make up or cooking or traditional handicraft) that will be LGBTI supportive when the time comes. It’s much more beneficial to invest into finding these groups than trying to get your target group to come to your “obvious” platform.
  • “The equivalent of 10-year-old lab rats hate broccoli as much as 10-year-old humans do. In late adolescence, early adulthood, there’s this sudden craving for novelty … And then by the time you’re a middle-aged adult rat, you’re never going to try anything new for the rest of your life.” Don’t waste your time. Concentrate on the period in life when we’re genetically engineered to explore new territories (physical or mental).
  • One of the key barriers to change is overconfidence in their own opinions. Rather than avoid the conversation or “bust the myths” by providing the “correct information” yourself, ask people to explain their own attitude and they will start loosing confidence because chances are that they won’t be able to come up with something totally convincing. And when they are off-balance, change can happen.

Full article:

Here’s an interesting fact: legislators in several Republican-controlled states are pushing to eliminate the death penalty. Why is that interesting? Because most Republicans have typically been in favor of the death penalty. They’ve said it’s a deterrent against the most horrific crimes and a fitting penalty when such crimes do occur.

But a lot of Republicans have come to believe the death penalty does not deter crime — which happens to be an argument we offered evidence for in Freakonomics. They also say the lengthy legal appeals on death-penalty cases are too costly for taxpayers. Some Republicans also cite moral concerns with the death penalty. So, a lot of them have changed their minds.

We’ve all changed our minds at some point, about something. Maybe you were a cat person and became a dog person. Maybe you decided the place you lived, or the person you loved, or the religion you followed just wasn’t working for you anymore. But changing your mind is rarely easy. Although if you’re like most people, you would very much like other people to change their minds, to think more like you. Because, as you see it, it’s impossible for the world to progress, to improve unless some people are willing to change their minds.

On this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio: how to change minds, or at least try to.

Robert Sapolsky is a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University. He describes himself as half-neurobiologist and half-primatologist; he studies both neurons in petri dishes and wild baboons in East Africa. Sapolsky has a lot of experience with changing his mind. He was raised as an Orthodox Jew before he decided, at age 14, that “[t]here’s no God, there’s no free will, there is no purpose.” He used to be a classical music snob; then he married a musical-theater fanatic and director. Today, he often serves as rehearsal pianist for his wife’s productions.

Sapolsky has noticed something about mind-changing: it’s easier to do when you’re younger. In a survey he put together to look at people’s preferences in food, music, and so on, Sapolsky found that people do indeed become less open to novelty as they get older. Someone who hasn’t eaten sushi by age 35, for example, likely never will. He also found that humans are not the only animals that exhibit this behavioral pattern.

“[Y]ou take a lab rat and you look at when in its life it’s willing to try a novel type of food — and it’s the exact same curve!” Sapolsky says. “The equivalent of 10-year-old lab rats hate broccoli as much as 10-year-old humans do. In late adolescence, early adulthood, there’s this sudden craving for novelty … And then by the time you’re a middle-aged adult rat, you’re never going to try anything new for the rest of your life.”

There are a lot of reasons why it may be easier to change your mind when you’re younger. It could be the fact that your brain is simply more plastic then — something scientists assumed for a long time but now are starting to question. Or it could be that your positions are less entrenched, so it’s less costly to change them.

Or it could be that the stakes are lower: the fate of the world doesn’t hinge on whether you are pro-broccoli or anti-broccoli. But as life goes on, as the stakes rise, changing your mind can get more costly.

Several years before the United States invaded Iraq, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, signed onto a letter in support of such a move. At the time, Fukuyama was well-established as a prominent political thinker. In addition to writing a landmark book, he’s done two stints in the State Department. So his views on the Iraq War were taken seriously.

But as the invasion drew near, Fukuyama started to have second thoughts.

“My main concern was whether the United States was ready to actually stay in Iraq and convert it into a kind of stable, decent country,” Fukuyama says. “But even I was astonished at how bad the planning had been, and how faulty the assumptions were, that we were going to be greeted as liberators and that there would be a rapid transition just like in Eastern Europe to something that looked like democracy.”

In February of 2004, Fukuyama attended a dinner at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. The featured speaker was Dick Cheney. The crowd greeted the then-vice president with a big round of applause.

“And I just looked around at the people at my table and I said, ‘Why are these people clapping?’” Fukuyama says. “Because clearly this thing is turning into a huge fiasco. And that’s the moment that I decided, you know, these people are really nuts. I mean, they’re so invested in seeing this as a success that they can’t see this reality that’s just growing right in front of their eyes.”

Fukuyama paid a heavy price for his change of heart on the Iraq War. He was seen as having abandoned the neoconservative movement and lost close friends in the process. But to this day, he is surprised that so few of the supporters of the war remain unwilling to admit it was a mistake.

There’s another factor that may contribute to our reluctance to change our minds: overconfidence — our own belief that we are right, even in the absence of evidence. Just how much unearned confidence is floating around out there?

Consider a recent study by Julia Shvets, an economist at Christ’s College, Cambridge who studies decision-making. She and some colleagues surveyed over 200 managers at a British restaurant chain. The managers averaged more than two years on the job and their compensation was strongly tied to a quarterly performance bonus. The managers were asked to recall their past performance and to predict their future performance.

Shvets found that only about 35% of the managers were able to correctly say whether they fell in the top 20% of all managers, or the bottom 20%, or another 20%block somewhere in the middle. Forty-seven percent of managers were overconfident about their standing.

And these were people who had detailed feedback about their performance every quarter, which is a lot more than most employees get. How could this be? This is where memory comes into play, or maybe you’d call it optimism — or delusion.

“People who did worse in the previous competition tended to remember slightly better outcomes. People seem to be exaggerating their own past performance in their head when this performance is bad,” Shvets explains. “So what we conclude from this is that people, when given information about their past performance, use memory selectively. They remember good outcomes and they tend to forget bad ones.”

So maybe it’s not so much that people refuse to change their minds — or refuse to “update their priors,” as economists like to say. Maybe they just have self-enhancing selective memories.

Sothere are a lot of reasons why a given person might be reluctant to change their mind about a given thing. Selective memory, overconfidence, or the cost of losing family or friends. But let’s say you remain committed to changing minds — your own or someone else’s. How do you get that done? The secret may lie not in a grand theoretical framework, but in small, mundane objects like toilets, zippers, and ballpoint pens.

Steven Sloman, a psychology professor at Brown, conducted an experiment asking people to explain — not reason, but to actually explain, at the nuts-and-bolts level — how something works.

Chances are, you probably can’t explain very well how a toilet or a zipper or a ballpoint pen work. But, before you were asked the question, you would have thought you could. This gap between what you know and what you think you know is called the “illusion of explanatory depth.” It was first demonstrated by psychologists Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil.

“[P]eople fail to distinguish what they know from what others know,” Sloman says. “We’re constantly depending on other people, and the actual processing that goes on is distributed among people in our community.”

In other words, someone knows how a toilet works: the plumber. And you know the plumber; or, even if you don’t know the plumber, you know how to find a plumber.

You can see how the illusion of explanatory depth could be helpful in some scenarios: you don’t need to know everything for yourself, as long as you know someone who knows someone who knows something. But you could also imagine scenarios in which the illusion could be problematic, such as in the political domain.

Sloman and his collaborator Philip Fernbach basically repeated the Rozenblit and Keil experiment, but instead of toilets and zippers, they asked people about climate change and gun control. Unsurprisingly, most people weren’t able to explain climate change policies in much detail. But here’s what’s interesting: people’s level of confidence in their understanding of issues — which participants were asked to report at the start of the experiment — was drastically reduced after they tried, and failed, to demonstrate their understanding.

“It reduced the extremity of their confidence that they were right,” Sloman says. “In other words, asking people to explain depolarized the group.”

Matthew Jackson, an economist at Stanford who studies social and economic networks, used to believe that different people, given the same kind of information, would make decisions the same way, regardless of past experiences and influences.

That, however, is not what Jackson’s research suggests. In one experiment, Jackson had a bunch of research subjects read the same batch of abstracts from scientific articles about climate change. He found that people reading the same articles could interpret the articles very differently, depending on their initial positions.

In fact, information, far from being a solution, can actually be weaponized.

“There was a group of about a quarter to a third of the subjects who actually became more polarized, who interpreted the information heavily in the direction of their priors, and actually ended up with more extreme positions after the experiment than before,” Jackson says.

In other words, a person’s priors — which are shaped by previous experiences, influences, and social networks — play a big role in shaping current beliefs and decision-making processes. Steven Sloman, the Brown professor, thinks that the third factor is particularly important.

“[W]e believe what we do because the people around us believe what they do,” Sloman says. “This is the way humanity evolved. We depend on other people.”

So if our beliefs are shaped by the people around us, one antidote to inflexible thinking is simply, balance. Unfortunately, a great many of us are quite bad at creating diverse, well-balanced networks. People are prone to surrounding themselves with people just like them.

“We end up talking to people most of the time who have very similar past experiences and similar views of the world, and we tend to underestimate that,” Matthew Jackson says. “People don’t realize how isolated their world is. You know, people wake up after an election and are quite surprised that anybody could have elected a candidate that has a different view than them.”

You can find the full Freakonomics Radio episode, “How to Change Your Mind” at Freakonomics.com. You can also listen on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform.

Go to the profile of Stephen J. Dubner/ Freakonomics Radio

WRITTEN BY

Stephen J. Dubner/ Freakonomics Radio

Stephen J. Dubner is co-author of the Freakonomics books and host of Freakonomics Radio.

 

Learning to Listen

Nisan 12, 2019

My grandmother used to say that “if you have one mouth and two ears it’s because you should listen twice as much as you speak”.

Today I know this is a bare minimum.

But listening is easier said than done. This article published by ActBuildChange.org  provides useful advice on how to listen better, so we can win over people’s hearts and minds.

When every conversation can spin into an argument, we are retreating to spaces occupied by people who only affirm us. We are losing our ability to listen to difference.

This is a serious problem for the state of our world. Once we stop listening, we stop learning and we lose our ability to empathise. This helps grow difference and division, them and us, hate and fear. This fire is spreading across our world and we will all burn if we are not willing to engage.

Here are some ways to help you find your ears again.

1. We need to get close

If you want to change the world you must get close to it.

As well as getting close to the people we serve and love, we need to get close to the people who are against what we stand for and those who stand still. You can not change the world at a distance. Working on issues of immigration, it was only when I got close to young people with irregular status did the work take on new urgency and meaning. It was only by getting close to political power, could I understand their agendas, limitations and struggles.

2. Be willing to get uncomfortable

Change comes through uncomfortable conversations. Where there is tension between two people and it is not all smiles and nodding. For example, that uncomfortable talk you are avoiding with your boss. You need to have it. Or the neighbour who stares at your headscarf. You need to address that. The local shopkeeper who looks at school kids like thieves, rather than children. Sit down with that shopkeeper. Lasting change comes through uncomfortable dialogue.

Not only do I believe you can speak with these folks, you can have good conversations with them. You can walk away feeling energised, inspired, understood – if you’re willing to listen.

3. Be Present

You don’t need to fake paying attention if you are in fact paying attention. Don’t multitask. Put your phone out of reach and be present in that moment. If you do not want to be in the conversation get out of it. Do not disrespect that person’s story, vulnerability and time by not giving them anything but complete focus.

4. Everyone is an expert in something

If your mouth is open you are not learning.
Buddha

Approach every conversation with child-like curiosity. Always be prepared to be amazed and you will not be disappointed. Never assume because of someone’s class, race, faith or job, that you can’t work and learn from each other. We need curiosity and hope in all human potential.

5. Keep your assumptions at home

Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand. Most of us listen with the intent to reply.
Stephen R. Covey

Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

When talking to people who vote differently to you, worship differently to you, have more or less money; share your story. Ask them to share theirs. Allow yourself to see what you do have in common. It’s likely that you both have been through struggle and joy. You both love your brothers, sisters, partners, more than anything else in the whole world.

Use open-ended questions: who, what, why, when and how.

If you ask a complicated question expect a simple answer. If you ask a simple open question, you allow that person to describe how they really feel. Simple, open questions will give a much more interesting response.

6. Your opinion comes last

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Rumi

We seem to be much more concerned with personally broadcasting our opinions, than conversing with people different to us. All this loudness stops us from hearing the quiet, the nuanced and the subtle.

Put your opinions last. When you do that, people become less defensive and more open. They are likely to speak with greater honesty and a will to understand you too.

7. Speak to people on the other side

Ubuntu… speaks of the very essence of being human…My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.
Desmond Tutu

If you take anything away from this post, act on this. Think in your mind to someone who you see as different to you, morally superior, young or old, fill-in-the-blank. Find out more about that person you may have negatively stereotyped. Ask them for a tea. Together make it your intention to understand each other. Don’t persuade, defend, interrupt – just listen.

In South Africa this is called Ubuntu.

We are all part of a much bigger whole. Through understanding and empathy, we will no longer feel threatened. By talking and listening and getting that balance of conversation right, we can drop our swords and reach out towards each other. It is slow and challenging work, but it is our only hope of healing our world and building peace.

A Guide to Changing Someone Else’s Beliefs

Mart 14, 2019
Listen to this story

 

 

Changing minds is hard to do: When our most dearly held opinions — things like political convictions, religious beliefs, morals, and core principles — are challenged, our brains put up one hell of a fight to protect them. Research has shown that when deeply held beliefs are called into question, the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions, kicks into high gear as if we were encountering danger, leaving us in no mood to consider a difference of opinion.

And yet people convincing other people to believe things is what makes the world go around. Whether you’re selling a product, angling for a promotion, or running for office, the odds are good that your job requires you to influence and persuade people in some capacity. And outside of work, many of our social relationships are built on shared beliefs: We often get along best with people who agree with us.

The same science that helps us understand how beliefs are formed can actually help us get better at changing them. The first thing you need to understand about persuasion, explains Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, is that what you’re saying matters far less than who you are.

“Most of us think that the message and the merits of the message are the things that will convince people,” Cialdini says. “That’s usually not the case. Very often, it’s the relationship we have to the messenger. It’s not always about the argument, but about the delivery.”

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s much easier to influence people who are already close to you. This is in part because their brains are already primed for the right chemical reaction. Neuroscientist Paul Zak has spent most of his career researching oxytocin, a neurotransmitter associated with love, happiness, bonding, and — as Zak’s research has demonstrated — trust.

“It makes you more sensitive to social information,” he says. “I can more effectively persuade you if I flood your brain with oxytocin.” If you’re trying to convince a friend, family member, or partner of something, your odds are better if you soften them up with reminders of your closeness: Warm temperatures, eye contact, and touch all prompt the release of oxytocin. “Give them love, give them affection,” Zak says. “Tell them, ‘I really want to help you understand this thing.’”

Of course, you can’t just go around hugging everyone you need to sway to your point of view. But even for acquaintances and other loose ties, you can still use psychology to your advantage. Cialdini says that understanding a few universal principles of human behavior can help make you a master influencer.

“People want to give back to those who’ve given to them,” Cialdini says. “That’s the principle of reciprocity.” A 2002 study via Cornell University found that when restaurant servers brought customers a mint or candy along with their bill, tips went up almost three percent. If they added an additional mint to the tray, tips went up even more.

“If the server puts one mint on the tray and then turns and says, ‘You know what, you’ve been such great guests, here’s another mint,’ tips go up 20 percent,” Cialdini says. “The key is personalizing what you give; that can change people dramatically.”

“You can make the case that if an idea is unique, people will want it.”

But coaxing open someone’s mind isn’t as easy as just buying their affection. Instead, make them feel listened to. Pay attention to your friends and coworkers, and give gifts that are simple but meaningful. Learning someone’s coffee order and surprising them with a cup, for example, could have a much bigger effect on their willingness to listen than giving them a Starbucks gift card.

Another strategy: Use the rules of supply and demand to your advantage. The rarer something is, the more people want it, and the more they’re willing to pay for it. This same principle, Cialdini says, can apply to belief and influence.

“To some extent, you can make the case that if an idea is unique, people will want it,” he says. This might even offer an explanation for why some people are more susceptible to fake news or conspiracy theories or why they’ll cling to information that’s been resoundingly disproven. “They’re now in possession of a piece of information or knowledge that not everyone holds, and it sets them apart,” he says. “It explains why we’ll believe ridiculous things.”

The perception of scarcity becomes a more powerful incentive for people to get on board with your ideas “if you can make the case that unless we move now, the benefits of this cause or approach will be lost to us,” Cialdini says. “‘We have a limited time in which to elect people who are favorable to our side; we’ve got to move’ — that spurs people into action.”

If you’ve read this far, you’ve likely already experienced another principle of persuasion psychology: authority. Cialdini and Zak are published authors with advanced degrees — experts in their fields — so you’re likely more willing to accept what they have to say about the science of influence at face value.

“When people are given an expert’s position on, for instance, difficult economic problems, the areas of the brain associated with critical evaluation flatline,” Cialdini says. “If an expert says it, we don’t have to think about it.”

If you’re trying to influence someone’s opinion on a topic that you’re well-educated in, that’s a good time to brag about your resume. “Mention your background or experience or degrees,” Cialdini says. “If you can get people to believe you’re an expert and get them to see you as trustworthy, no one can beat you.”

That trustworthy part is key: You can be the most educated, qualified person around, but it won’t matter if people don’t trust you. To that end, Cialdini recommends a shortcut that may seem counterintuitive: “We’re trained to begin with our most compelling arguments — strongest ones first,” he says. “To establish trust and credibility, you should begin by describing the weaknesses in your case.” People might be taken aback, he explains, but they’ll like that you’re being straight with them. “Then, you show how the strengths overwhelm the weaknesses, and you win the day.”

You can also use a person’s history to your advantage — after all, no one is more persuasive to us than, well, us. Tailor your pitch to match things they’ve done or said in the past. (That might mean doing a bit of digging on a LinkedIn or Twitter feed — just don’t bring it up to them in a way that seems creepy or off-putting.)

“Align your recommendation with a statement of theirs,” Cialdini says. “Like, ‘I really appreciated what you wrote about equality and fairness. That’s why I’m asking you to move in the direction of greater diversity.” No one wants to be seen as going back on their word, so this tactic works especially well on social media. “The more public it is,” Cialdini says, “the more powerful that commitment to consistency.”

But one of the best strategies for changing someone’s beliefs is also the simplest: We’re far more easily influenced by people we like or have things in common with. Again, this is where an internet search can be your friend: If you find commonalities or shared hobbies with someone, it can be helpful to mention them before you launch into a sales pitch. Even if it’s as basic as rooting for the same sports team or binging the same Netflix show, you’ve established a common bond.

You can also try genuine compliments. “Not only do people like those who are like them; they like people who like them and say so,” Cialdini says. “If it’s a phony compliment, people will see though it, so wait until you find something you really like about what a person said in a meeting, a position they took that you agree with, or a good job they did on a task and then tell them so.”

You don’t need to employ every one of these tactics every time you’re working to persuade someone. Sometimes, just one strategy fits the bill; other times, a situation might require a combination of persuasion methods. But the most important thing to remember when it comes to changing beliefs is that the facts are sort of secondary: The human element is what matters. “The mistake people make is using logic. For normal humans, data and evidence isn’t the way to change a mind,” Zak says. “We’re social creatures, and we’re fascinated by other humans. It’s not about the story. It’s about the storyteller.”

WRITTEN BY

Kate Morgan

Kate is a freelance journalist who’s been published by Popular Science, The Washington Post, USA Today, Slate, and many more. Read more at bykatemorgan.com.

Old and New Power – Distributed action in modern times

Mart 13, 2019

NEW POWER

How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—and How to Make It Work for You
by Jeremy Heimans & Henry Timms

Heimans, CEO of Purpose, which “builds and supports social movements,” and Timms, executive director of the 92nd Street Y, debut with an illuminating discussion of how technology and our rising expectations have enabled us to achieve our goals on a greater-than-ever scale. Old power, write the authors, depends on expertise and what you own or control, as in Fortune 500 companies. New power relies on connectivity and the desire to participate and collaborate, as in Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook (as well as protest movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter and terrorist groups like the Islamic State).

Using online engagement, crowdsourcing, and peer-to-peer approaches, new power offers a fresh means of participation and a “heightened sense of agency” for all involved. The authors detail how power—old, new, or a combination of both—is now exercised by people, companies, and movements to quietly shape our lives in impactful ways.

Old power has the top-down voice of a corporate press release; new power soars through “meme drops,” which “spread sideways, coming most alive when remixed, shared, and customized by peer communities”—e.g., in the ice bucket challenge and Pepe the Frog.

Old power thinks of what makes an idea stick in people’s memories and imagination. New power wonders what makes an idea spread. To determine what makes an idea spread, the authors propose the acronym ACE:

Actionnable: the idea needs to have a clear call to action, something that can be done by anyone.

Connected: the action needs to connect you to others

Extensible: people need to be able to customize the action, to make it fit their own formet

It is often in this last dimension that most so-called “participatory” actions fail.

The impact of these thoughts on SOGI campaigning is immense:

In a world where people distrust institutionalised power more and more, established organisations and movements find it increasingly difficult to mobilise. Most major recent mobilisations, from #MeeToo to the Climate marches have been generated outside of movements.

Moreover, basic messenger theory tells us that people don’t trust sources which they feel have a vested interest in an issue. This bias to put more trust in close social circles has increased lately, with social apps like Yelp even specialising in channelling opinions. So mobilisation from “within” is increasingly un-strategic.

So it seems that organisations would have everything to gain from moving away from models of old power, and many organisations have

Yet, most of LGBTI+ organisations rely on a MODEL of new power but still remain within the VALUES of old power. In other words, organisations want everybody to participate but cling on to their monopoly on the content. The increasing complexity of the issues of sexuality and gender doesn’t make distributing the discourse easier: in a post-gender, non-binary, intersectional world, the gap between “politellectuals” (those with the intellectual capacity to draw the political concepts) and the “crowd” deepens, making meaningful participation more difficult across the divide.

 

Reason to Change

Ocak 22, 2019

We mostly think that we can bring about change by relying on people’s reason. But as  social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote in The Righteous Mind, “Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.”

This is an edited excerpt of an article from thewholestory

 

For decades, economists assumed that human beings were reasonable actors, operating in a rational world. When people made mistakes in free markets, rational behavior would, it was assumed, generally prevail. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists like Daniel Kahneman began to challenge those assumptions. Their experiments showed that humans are subject to all manner of biases and illusions.

“We are influenced by completely automatic things that we have no control over, and we don’t know we’re doing it,” as Kahneman put it. The good news was that these irrational behaviors are also highly predictable. So economists have gradually adjusted their models to account for these systematic human quirks.

Campaigners instinctively understand certain things about human psychology: we know how to grab the brain’s attention and stimulate fear, sadness or anger. We can summon outrage in five words or less. We value the ancient power of storytelling, and we get that good stories require conflict, characters and scene. But in the present era of tribalism, it feels like we’ve reached our collective limitations.

So our collective challenge in changing hearts and minds is: how can we avoid reinforcing the polarization of attitudes? How can we constructively use the conflict between opposing sides, to advance the debate and not entrench existing attitudes?

The lesson for  anyone working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words.

There are many ways to complicate the narrative, as described in detail under the six strategies below. But the main idea is to feature nuance, contradiction and ambiguity wherever you can find it. This does not mean calling advocates for both sides and quoting both; that is simplicity, and it usually backfires in the midst of conflict. “Just providing the other side will only move people further away,” says social psychologist Peter T. Coleman in his book The Five Percent. Nor does it mean creating a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and their opponents. That is just simplicity in a cheap suit. Complicating the narrative means finding and including the details that don’t fit the narrative — on purpose.

The idea is to revive complexity in a time of false simplicity. “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete,” novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says in her mesmerizing TED Talk “A Single Story.” t’s impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.”

As researchers have established in hundreds of experiments over the past half-century, the way to counter the kind of tribal prejudice we are seeing is to expose people to the other tribe or new information in ways they can accept. When conflict is cliché, complexity is breaking news.

As LGBTI activists, we are often drawn to simplify the stories. First because we need to mobilise our supporters. And mobilisation requires to be simple, sharp, action-focused. Secondly because we are drenched in attacks from our opponents, which are all but simplified, if not simplistic; so we react by doing the same. Thirdly, because simplifying helps us to make sense of a world that often just looks too absurd to grasp.

But if we want to have a deep and wide impact at changing attitudes, bringing complexity back into the debate might be a non-negotiable parameter.

 

Will truth be defeated? What can be done when 12 million Americans believe Obama is an alien lizard?

Ekim 30, 2018

On February 12, 2014 the New Zealand Prime Minister proudly announced on TV that he could medically prove that he was not a …lizard.

Although this made everyone laugh, the sad truth is that he had to respond to a constitutional request of a citizen who demanded that the PM proved that he was not “a lizard alien in human shape trying to enslave the Human race”. And sadder even, he was not alone. In 2013, 4% of the US populations (that’s 12 million people), believed the alien lizard myth, and that Queen Elisabeth and Barack Obama were among them.

Funny?

If you draw a parallel with the myths and urban legends surrounding LGBTI people, it is not. “Abuse of children”, “witchcraft”, “demonization”, are just a few of the myths that are being used to persecute, and often kill, LGBT people. Hardly is there an earthquake that is not blamed on “gays”, in places as different as Italy, the USA, Haiti or more recently Indonesia.

From firm belief that planet Earth is flat, to certainty that HIV can be cured with garlic, there are countless urban legends and myths that resist all forms of argumentation.

Some campaigners will argue that it is education to rationality that will over time overcome legends and myths. But if education might be a necessary condition, it is by no mean sufficient. Actually, in a lot of cases the more educated people are the better they are equipped to justify their beliefs. Education might make it more difficult for people to hold crazy beliefs but once they do, they will use their education to cling to them even more.

That is one of the reasons why having our campaigns systematically target “people with higher education” might be something we should put serious research in, and not just assume that they are more progressive, or easier to convince.

Social research into human behavior has shown that people make their distinction between true and false, or right and wrong, on the basis of the group they (want to) belong to, and not on the basis of what they know is true. Hence religious dogma and “alternative facts”.

And with the choice of communications channels being more and more in the hands of the users (no more sitting in front of the 8 o’clock news), people live in a social bubble and the influence of the “in-group” is getting stronger and stronger.

Social media research shows that the bubbles are tighter than ever, with very little flow between opposing bubbles.

So your “truth” is unlikely to reach your target in the first place. And if it does, it is likely to be dismissed.

So is truth once and for all a loosing game?

“Providing information” and doing so on one’s Facebook page is definitely not the most effective thing to do when it comes to changing people, but there might be some other options to consider:

The most obvious move is of course to reach beyond your own “bubble” and identify the “bubbles” that are closest to you: the first tier. Human rights groups, women’s liberation forums, and all your natural allies.

But some of the “second tier” bubbles are harder to identify, although this is often where the biggest gains can be achieved. If you aim at early adopters of new trends, discussion forums on technological progress could be a good target. If you aim at young modern women, you might want to try discussion forums on fashion or modern lifestyle. When you know that a new series with an LGB or T character hits the net, it might be a better use of your time to participate in the discussions on mainstream discussion forums rather than on your own channels.

But even so, the basics of campaigns communication still apply and aggressively trolling these circles will be counterproductive, only alienating enemies even further. Communication has to be smartly framed, and this takes a bit of preparation.

Counter-intuitive as it may be, “truth” won’t change people.

If we want to have even a slight chance to change hearts and minds, we have to be good at becoming part of our target’s reference groups. And this requires going out of our bubbles and take the conversation where people are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too many cooks in the kitchen?

Şubat 2, 2018

Most are familiar with the saying “Too many cooks spoil the broth”, meaning that when too many people start deciding on something, it normally ends up messy.

The typical coalition pitfalls will be familiar to most readers: turf wars, conflicting interests, resource constraints and so forth. From a communications perspective, these are often expressed in challenges like:

  • How will the coalition present itself publicly?
  • How will they reach agreement on positioning and messaging?
  • How will the groups share their lists and how will newly-acquired supporters be distributed amongst the partners?

This excellent article from Greenpeace’s MOBLAB shares interesting insights about how to navigate those waters and suggest a creative solution: create a common portal and let each coalition partner develop their own content from there.

Read more HERE

What does “Campaigning” really mean?

Kasım 20, 2017

How Plato can help us redefine campaigning

Article from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation
September 29, 2017 SMK Team

We all know that campaigning has been going through a bit of a rough patch, with the lobbying act and all. However, I was still taken aback when someone referred to campaigning as the “C” word. A little strong, maybe. However, as I go round the country talking to people as part of the foundation’s Social Change Project, it becomes increasingly clear just how much of a problem language can be.

A woman in Manchester, who has an incredible track record of combating gun crime in her community, says she didn’t know what to call herself for a long time. She resisted the tag “community activist” because it made her sound angry and confrontational, and she isn’t. In fact, she is a highly sophisticated change-maker.

Another woman, this time in the Midlands, leads a charity for vulnerable adults. She doesn’t recognise the term “campaigning” because she understands it to connote challenging power from the outside. She works closely with her local authority – a relationship not without its trials – but she is on both the inside and the outside. She is, if anything, a negotiator.

The people who seem most comfortable with the term “campaigner” are those who work in professional roles for charities. They like the term and want to own it. Their gripe is that their organisations don’t understand campaigning and don’t give them the permission and space they need.

The Social Change Project has an ambition to detoxify the language around campaigning: to “reframe” the word, if you will, and consider new terminology and positioning that can make all parties feel more comfortable with campaigning and able to support it. Few would argue that people shouldn’t have voice and agency, and be able to shape their world. But what can we call this important endeavour?

Our early conclusion is that terms such as “activist” and “campaigner’” seem too oppositional and confrontational: spirited but unsophisticated. Meanwhile, being a “social entrepreneur” or “innovator” feels too passive politically, too commercial. Do we go for the neutral territory of “change-agent” or “change-maker”? Does anyone really use such language or know what it means? And sometimes campaigning isn’t about change. Sometimes campaigners are trying to maintain the status quo. Think Remain.

I was pondering this with a friend, who came up a nice idea. Campaigners should think of themselves as modern philosophers, he proposed, in line with the model of philosopher kings in Plato’s Republic. Plato believed political office should be held by philosophers, who are defined as having knowledge, not power, and whose role it is to ask questions in pursuit of what is good. I like it: rather than thinking of campaigning as speaking truth to power or pursuing change, we should think of it as being about asking questions.

Recognising that change is about us all the time, our job is to ask “is this change good, right and fair?” Of course, this will entail holding those with power to account, but it moves the core purpose of campaigning upstream. We are not pursuing change or opposing things for the sake of it. We’re not just angry people. We are asking questions in the interests of making society better. And what on earth can be wrong with that?

How pledging to act with other people could change the world

Temmuz 1, 2017

We wanted to share this very interesting article that offers valuable suggestions on how we can create stronger movements, without needing to form bigger organisations, nor formal alliances (which always get bogged down in internal politics, ego issues, etc.).

The suggestion developed here is to invite collective pledges on a specific action. The “if you will I will” approach leaves everyone free to choose the rest of the tactics deployed by each. It also is a very clever way to activate the “social proof bias”, which suggests that people’s attitudes and behaviors are mainly modeled on what they see happening in society.

A good food for thought for LGBTQI activists!

 

By Gail Bradbook

This piece was originally posted on Compassionate Revolution in June 2016:

Compassionate Revolution was launched in summer 2015 as a grass-roots run platform for hosting pledges of collective action- “I will if you will”. The pledges can be acts of art (like mass graffiti), acts from the heart (like group meditations or modelling kind behaviour in politics) and acts of civil disobedience (like tax or rent strikes, work to rule, blockades etc). Here’s why this initiative is so vital at this time.

According to political theorists like Hannah Arendt and Gene Sharp, power is always located in the collective – i.e. amongst all of us ordinary folks. This is true, despite the fact power may seem to be centred in Whitehall or in the billionaire owned media, or in the City of London or any other places we feel we have no power over. Since we are being pushed around by an Establishment, increasingly disdainful of true democracy and definitely without our or the planets interests at heart, the fact that we don’t wield our power as a collective can be a real stick to beat ourselves with! Over inability to assert our power implies that it is our collusion with or passivity which allows the system to stay in place…

We hear “Why aren’t people on the streets” when the latest scandal erupts. And “People are so apathetic, nothing will ever change”.  These statements presuppose two things:

– that actions, demonstrations, blockades and so forth emerge spontaneously, when in fact they are always organised. When Rosa Parks sat on the “white” part of the bus in segregated America, spurring a wave of similar acts of defiance, the event was carefully orchestrated by the civil rights movement- it was no spontaneous act. Campaigns for change need to be organised, this doesn’t imply central management, but it does imply a body of people committing to an action and calling for others to join in. The “system” has worked hard over many years to erode the organisations that are able to mobilise people, like trade unions. Fortunately the internet offers new mechanisms for more nimble, grass roots organisations to mobilise people. Horizontal, distributed networks have increased power.

– that people are passive because they don’t care. The passivity of the population is ensured by a number of mechanisms – sure it includes distraction through mind numbing media and socially acceptable drugs. Passivity can also be maintained by providing a vested interest in the status quo, however this is constantly being undermined through economic forces and the erosion of public services. Gene Sharp, in Power and Struggle, argues that obedience is often merely habitual and sharing examples of disobedience will encourage others to join in.

The civil rights movement in the US mobilised only 1% of the US population. A recent university study shows that when 3.4% of a population rises up a revolution is possible. This is about 2.2million people in the UK, (bear in mind around 10 million people vote Labour or Green and that beyond party politics many movements have a complaint about neo-liberal capitalism at their heart (the environmental, peace, anti-austerity and economic justice movements for example).

So the question is, if we argue that 2.2m people in the UK would like a rapid redistribution of wealth and power (a revolution) how are we to go about organising that?

Tim Gee, in Counterpower suggests that social change happens through the 4C’s:

The raising of Consciousness about an issue, the Coordination of different organisations, a stage of Confrontation (civil disobedience) and Consolidation of gains by having detailed policy solutions ready and energy to drive them home.

Within the current landscape we possibly have too much consciousness raising – the echo chamber of sharing on social media, of this issue and that disturbing fact and so on. The solutions offered are generally to pay an organisation some money and to support the re-sharing of information (what I call, tongue in cheek, the pyramid selling of sh*t information!). Perhaps 2.2m already know enough but need encouragement and example to act? Coordination amongst groups can be weak, as is the spreading of confrontation, despite incredible efforts by some amazing campaigners, in the face of media lock down, on reporting successful actions.

So how does the “ordinary, progressive, left leaning” individual decide to get involved in an action and commit to doing so? How could organisations best coordinate and share resources, without needing to form coalitions, requiring the merging of cultures and detailed agreements? Conditional commitment- the use of pledges “I will if enough others will” offers a simple way forwards.

Pledging to join collective action is not new. The labour movement transformed when wild cat striking was replaced by organised unionism “I will strike if you will” is the basis of a strike ballot.

The successful rent strikes of 1915, through “Mary Barbours Army” involved the pre-agreed actions of groups of women in tenement blocks. Those involved placed their pledge ‘RENT STRIKE. WE ARE NOT REMOVING.’ in their windows. “This is how they organised the resistance: one woman with a bell would sit in the tenement close, watching while the other women living in the tenement went on with their household duties. Whenever the Bailiff’s Officer appeared to evict a tenant, the woman in the passage immediately rang the bell, and the other women put down whatever work they were doing and hurried to where the alarm was being raised. They would hurl flour bombs and other missiles at the bailiff, forcing him to make a hasty retreat.”

The Women’s Tax Resistance League (part of the movement of suffragettes), formed in 1909 with the slogans ‘No taxation without representation’ and the more direct declaration: ‘NO VOTE, NO TAX’. 100 members were willing to take up this form of protest. A two-tier approach was adopted, which meant that some took action immediately (40), while others declared they were willing to become tax protesters once the total number of members reached 500. (However, the total never exceeded 200 – this was before the days of social media!)

The current successful rent strikes in UCL have been designed and organised by conditional commitment expert and activist Roger Hallam. First it focused on one hall, through face to face contact, by asking people how they felt about rent and the condition of the hall and whether they would strike if 100 people did it together. By the deadline 150 had agreed to strike and the story went viral (35,000 shares of a Guardian article). Then numbers increased to 700, half through online sharing.

The Keystone Pipeline pledge of resistance is possibly the most successful current example of conditional commitment. By March 2014 there had been 398 arrests of peaceful protestors who had pledged to undertake acts of civil disobedience in their opposite to the Keystone Pipeline, which would transport the dirtiest tar sands energy across North America. A further 162 were arrested in 2015 and by June 2015 over 97000 people had pledged their willing to participate in peaceful actions which might lead to arrest.

The current challenge is to get pledging / conditional commitment at the forefront of our collective psyches. Organisers of actions could spend time considering how to mobilise a greater number of people. For example those at home can support a Direct Action against an organisation (for example by participating in a telephone blockade of the organisation targeted). Roger Hallam encourages organisers to think about escalating their actions to achieve greater outcomes each time and involve more people. He has given detailed information about what supports this process. Dissent can be designed!

As grass roots movements and organisations gain confidence in conditional commitment, it will be possible to agree “cross fertilisation” of movements – encouraging those focussed on one action to support the simpler pledges of another, building cooperation and numbers. This itself can be done as a conditional commitment- “We will involve our network in your action if you will involve yours in ours” or “we will work together on a joint action if 6 other organisations agree to be involved”.

In this way, escalating actions and mobilising across networks, in a joined up but loosely held strategy, could be the process for seeing the big changes required.

So the Compassionate Revolution website can host pledges of action – we are trying to offer a range of pledges so that people can exercise their muscles of “peaceful mischief” and feel part of a collective (not all actions are illegal and we de-risk for the majority). A new action can be advertised to those who have already joined another actions. If we demonstrate the viability of this approach maybe Avaaz and others will step up to offering civil disobedience to their bigger databases. We need to normalise these approaches and we have social media on our side to reach the numbers. Join a pledge or several?:

123