This morning, NPQ is proud to present the first of a regular series of columns by the FrameWorks Institute on how to improve the effectiveness of our messages on contentious social issues. This one is written by the esteemed Susan Nall Bales, who will walk us through the uses and abuses of narratives in communicating about immigration. While each column may use the example of a particular social issue, you need not be in that field to benefit from the instruction.
Struggling to find a path of action in the midst of the Reagan administration, Edward Said, the noted Palestinian American literary critic, warned: “The challenge posed by [the perspectives of Reaganism] is not how to cultivate one’s garden despite them but how to understand the cultural work occurring within them.”1
Struggling in the midst of the Trump administration, advocates can easily find themselves overwhelmed by the rate and volume of cultural products being generated. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the issue of immigration. A barrage of news has dramatically shortened the conceptual distance between crime, terrorism and immigration. The contemplated presence of even an imaginary wall reinforces the cognitive distinction between “us” (the public) and “them” (immigrants). And this is happening every day in every form of media, as we are subjected to daily demonization of immigrants who came to our country as children, who have temporary residency, or who come from countries with travel bans. This is the new cultural product of our time.
What are progressive policy framers to do? How should we think about what is being shaped and reconfigured by these activities? How can we think strategically about how to improve our cultural production to combat what is now in our drinking water? How can we make our ideas stickier and more persuasive?
Advocates are subjected daily to polls that purport to provide answers. But if you don’t understand how an engine works, you can’t repair it. What is the framework of interpretation that will help immigration reform advocates evaluate the cultural products in circulation and choose a better option? The same formula of theory plus evidence-based practice that is required for good policy development is needed to inform our framing efforts.
A good theory of cultural production should identify the questions we need to ask and point us in a direction to find answers. Sound practice should deliver answers in the form of evidence to drive our subsequent work. We should be able to kick the tires of our cultural products and make sure they hold up. How might we go about this?
In their popular synthesis of the social science of opinion formation and change, Made to Stick,2 Chip and Dan Heath offer a succinct theory that can be adapted across social issues. It looks like this:
If we apply this theory to immigration, we can discern what kind of data we need to collect to drive an effective communications strategy. Not just any old poll or more data, but a refined recipe of data that can be subjected to particular questions. Drawing from FrameWorks’ multi-method investigation of how Americans think about immigration,3 let’s look at how each step of the theoretical model is answered in a systematic research process and how this totality results in a plan of action.
First, we must reduce the message to its gist, focusing on the key aspects of the immigration system that Americans need to know in order to effectively evaluate solutions. FrameWorks does this by interviewing thought leaders on a given topic and synthesizing their recommendations into a coherent draft narrative—what we call the “untranslated story.” This differs markedly from common practice, which tends to equate what is popular and resonant to the communications deliverable. On immigration, FrameWorks’ method yielded this composite:4
Put simply, as the National Academies of Science and others have attested, the United States needs to do a better job integrating immigrants into society and providing opportunities so they can achieve and contribute. In an ideal world, this simple set of messages could be delivered by advocates around the country and prove a potent cultural product. In reality, research shows, these messages will dissolve and dissipate in public discourse if left untranslated, leaving little trace.
What prevents these simple messages from sticking? That is the challenge that the Heaths posed in their theoretical model, and the challenge that FrameWorks pursues via long-form interviews that examine the enduring beliefs and conceptualizations that Americans routinely bring to bear on the subject of immigration. FrameWorks uses the heuristic of a “swamp” of cultural models—a rich ecosystem of ideas that are grown and fed over time, that thrive or decay, become dominant or recessive—to explain what “eats” the expert message. Stubborn and persistent but also assailable and manipulable, cultural models are the overlooked obstacle that advocates ignore at their peril. Psychological anthropologist Bradd Shore explains that “the work of a policy framer is to change the salience of the models.”5 By changing the model that is foregrounded, we can move from an understanding that is “fuzzy” to one that becomes the default understanding, or the go-to way of thinking.
Americans “otherize” immigrants, perceiving differences instead of similarities. This strong conceptual drive to label immigrants as “them” predisposes people to believe reports of law-breaking, dole-taking, and job-wrecking.
The United States is perceived as a zero-sum society in which benefits to one group automatically subtract from another. The jobs that go to immigrants are not perceived to grow the society, but rather to drain the system of benefits that could go to native-born workers.
Americans are fatalistic about the world in general but even more so about the contemporary effects of immigration. Immigration is seen as a sudden “surge,” not a regularly occurring chapter in the history of world migration. The system of administration, when thought about at all, is assumed to be broken, corrupt, and beyond remedy—part of “the government.”
When asked to think specifically about the immigration system, most Americans have little to offer. The system is a “black box” in which people must learn English, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and possibly undergo a background check; few Americans articulate a more in-depth understanding of how the system works.
Americans do tell an “us” narrative in which they readily embrace the idea of a nation of immigrants. But this story relies on the immigrants of today resembling those of the past. Islamophobia, terrorism, and economic insecurity all conspire to paint today’s immigrants as “not like our grandparents.”
The “us” reform narrative is undermined by the coherence with which the dominant models are assembled and, by contrast, the fragmentation of the alternative story. In an analysis of 300 materials drawn from 90 leading immigration groups, FrameWorks researchers found that the Restrictive/Punitive narrative7 consistently included logically linked American values plus causes of the problems and solutions. The Moral/Expansive narrative8 had numerous narrative holes: no causes, few solutions.9 In sum, the Restrictive/Punitive story—the essence of today’s cultural product on immigration—is advantaged by both content and form.
Far from “breaking our audiences’ guessing machines,” immigration advocates in our sample were trying to argue people out of them. Often attempting to “prove worthiness” by painting individual portraits of immigrants or by asserting that young immigrants arrived through no fault of their own, the stories being told only reinforce the dominant narratives.
The most important work that immigration reform advocates must do is to disrupt the Them narrative and establish an Us story. This is the reframing prerequisite. Again, our research practice provides the fuel to spark the engine. While much of the “swamp” of cultural models works against progressive thinking, if activated, there are also important cognitive assets that can be recruited and fed. The very same people that contend that immigrants are largely law-breakers and job-takers can argue with equal vehemence that Americans should show respect for all people and celebrate diversity. People move seamlessly from one way of thinking to another, depending upon the cultural model that is activated or primed. Opinion is frame-dependent.
When we take another look at the Swamp of Immigration, we find a strong cluster of “Us” thinking that can be recruited. In subsequent testing, FrameWorks refined the priming of this humanistic cultural model as follows: “We need to treat everyone with the compassion they deserve as human beings. No matter where they were born, all people are entitled to the same basic respect.”
When reminded of our shared humanity, Americans became significantly more supportive of a path to citizenship, a liberalized visa system, and the use of social services to integrate immigrants into American life. They become more likely to see immigrants as a boost to the economy rather than a burden, and they become less supportive of deportation and inhumane treatment of immigrants. Importantly, when this moral appeal was framed as “rights,” it lost its positive effects on many policies. Similarly, the pragmatism many Americans expressed in the cultural models interviews also proved evocative and potent. When reminded of immigrants’ contributions to society, people remembered that immigrants contribute skills and spur economic growth rather than depressing it. Both nudges served to break people’s guessing machines in ways that opened them to a deeper and richer conversation about fixing the immigration system in ways more consistent with the expert view.
But now what? Still lurking in the Swamp of Immigration is the “black box”—the lack of understanding most Americans have about how the immigration system works. Most Americans struggle to imagine any immigration system at all, let alone the complex set of laws and policies that make the current system dysfunctional. Cognitive holes like this are opportunities to explain how systems and processes work through explanatory metaphors—simple, concrete, and memorable comparisons that draw on people’s everyday knowledge of how the world works.
FrameWorks researchers developed a “job description” for an immigration metaphor and then tested six candidates to see if they could boost people’s knowledge and attitudes about an improved system. One metaphor—the Sail—demonstrated statistically significant impacts on multiple measures. Here’s what this metaphor looks like: “Immigration is the wind in our country’s sails. It’s the labor, skills, and ideas that move our country forward. Right now, our sails are poorly positioned, and our policies are letting valuable wind power go to waste. When we fix immigration policies, all of our wind power can be used to move our country forward.”
When exposed to this metaphor, people were more likely to agree that immigrants contribute important skills to our society, that we need a flexible immigration system, that the system will grow the economy, and that the problem with the current system is that undocumented people can’t fully contribute. The Sail metaphor got everyone into the boat, further overcoming “us vs. them” reasoning.
If we want better policy conversations on immigration, or any social issue, we need to use an instruction manual and assemble our communications strategy in an orderly fashion. Only then can we understand how the opposition is driving the discourse and what we can do to change direction. Chip and Dan Heath offer one well-supported roadmap to guide our efforts; FrameWorks’ original research lets us run our strategy on all cylinders.
For fuller explanations of cultural models in the Swamp of Immigration, see Getting to “We”: Mapping the Gaps between Expert and Public and Understandings of Immigration and Immigration Reform and Finish the Story on Immigration Reform: A FrameWorks MessageMemo.
In this story, immigrants are routinely portrayed as taking jobs away, and enhanced border patrols and restricted visas are seen as necessary to protect American workers.
In this story, current US immigration policy is typically portrayed as ill-aligned with economic needs and a path to citizenship is required to advance economic development.
The Daily Yonder reminds us that rural Americans seem to be the last minority that can be impugned with impunity.
Turku School of Economics (TSE) is a unit of the University of Turku conducting research and education in business studies and boasting internationally renowned research groups. TSE has established strong ties with the business world, is responsible for the university’s research and education in business-related studies and prepares the ground for more effective societal use of the research data produced at the university. Turku School of Economics offers many kinds of adult education opportunities for the development and lifelong learning of individuals as well as various organizations. Our clients are businesses, municipalities and organizations in the public sector in addition to private persons. Our service provision comprehensively covers education offered by the Open University to short courses and even the Master of Business Administration (eMBA) programme. Not only that, but we assemble tailor-made training and development programmes, too. The pivotal content of what we offer rests in the various areas of business know-how. In our adult education programmes, what is essential is the utilization of a high level of academic expertise for the development-related requirements of our clients. TSE website
First I would like to thank you for taking time to answer my questionsIts a real honor for me to be able to do this interview with you Sarah Also I would like to give you my compliments when it comes to the new ep it sounds really awsome, I must say I think its a really strong song Malediction. I know alot of people were really happy when you were going to work with Dani again , I myself was stunned due I am a huge Cradle fan I love your work on every album your an amazing singer I am proud to be able do this intervew. Well lets start!
This Is My Curse" is about the SICK, disgusting FUR industry. How C**Ts want to wear a dead skinned is just sick. No respect for life. People think these animals are killed in a painless way? No, they are skinned ALIVE and treated like shit. I do not think ANY human with a heart could think this is ok but to then wear it because its part of fashion? The human race has a lot to answer for.
Dan is working hard at Legacy London, his recording studio but most of us retain a normal working life. We are writing a new album though and we do have shows coming up. We are not taking a break but are looking for good, honest management.
For our bass player Ablaz, its drinking and partying ha ha ... For me, just working, catching up with friends and being home with my husband and cat. I spend so much time online, I do not have time for a hobby right now but when I do have time, its shopping ;) Dan, I guess he doesn't have any hobbys right now because he works so hard in the studio, recording bands. Damjan is at Uni but has a few other metal/punk bands and I guess his main hobby is drumming, I think its his life and as for Azz, the other guitarist, well, I can't answer for him. Stamp collecting?? ;)
People inspire me, situations, bad people and bad situations. I like to make people think about their actions. Humans are pretty disgusting in my eyes, so selfish and nasty and they make for good writing. I write a lot about betrayal, child abuse, animal abuse. Its very rare I write positive songs simply because happy songs rarely make good songs. As for writing, well, metal, in general. We do not aim to sound like anyone and whatever will be, will be! We write and if we love it enough and feel we can make it better, we keep it. All our tastes are varied but mine and Dan's are more extreme.
5 In addition to this new ep I heard you helped Dani filth on Midnight in the Labyrinth. Could you mabye tell us a bit how that idea came up and how do feel with singing the old Cradle songs ?
Well it was strange getting the email from him, seeing as I hadn't talked to him since late 2008 as I moved to Australia. We didn't end on bad terms but there was no contact between him, me and Paul. Some things are best left unsaid. So, getting the email with the offer to do this album, I had to talk to some people, decide if it was the right thing for me and of course COF. Singing the old stuff again, well, made me feel a bit wierd but nice wierd! Dani and I chatted a bit but its was like, business as normal. That what it is, business. I think Dani just wanted me, the original singer. I think he felt it didn't feel right to have just anyone. I am glad we both decided to work together again.
Well apart from Malediction, the ep that just came out, we are writing the new album slowly, have 7 tracks, a title and the art sorted, so I guess next year for the next full length but I am hoping people will stop stealing our album and actually buy it and support us and music. Its dying, the scene, due to the damage it causes bands and record labels.
7 How do think the response has been on the ep so far as the first track has been out awhile now :) ?
I think its doing well. I hope people paid for it ha ha But the reviews have been great but, you can not please the world, someone will always have something nasty and immature to say. can't win them all ;)
8 Looking back at your career a lot of people know you from Cradle of filth, how do you view upon that people often associate you with them is it a natural thing for you ?
Well I was there for 14yrs, part of the furniture. I am grateful people have some kinda loyalty towards me, I am glad the fans have been so great but the press, well, they couldn't give a damn, never acknowledged what I did for COF but oh well, move on.... onwards and upwards I hope. Therion and COF did a lot for my singing career but I did a lot for their sound. I am proud of what I have done and grateful for all that has happened, good and bad. I learn from it.
DO NOT SMOKE!! Always warm up your voice, do not have dairy and take your voice for granted, you can damage it very easily. Limit the drunk, late nights and remember, once it is gone, the voice really is gone. Your voice changes as you get older, grow with it. Get a good "In Ear" System, it could save you and protect your ears!!
10 On this record you have worked with friends from both Soilwork and Cradle, mainly Dani and Martin Powell in fact, What did they bring musically to you how do you feel about working with them again :) ?
Bjorn has an amazing voice, I see him as a real, talented singer. It was a honor to work with someone as talented as he and he just made that song so much more passionate for all of us. Dani, well, the theatrics, he is an entertainer and me and him, well, we gel well. Like salt and pepper ;) Martin Powell is a great friend and ALWAYS there if I need something AND he is amazing at what he does, trained and knows more than most about music. He is currently in Uni and will become a doctor of music soon, very intelligent lad but, we know each other well, he knows what we, as a band need and he is very open and hard working.
12 Personally I feel a bit like its has a sound like early Nightwish? I do not agree. I do not sing like her and I do not feel we sound anything like that kind of music BUT I respect others point of view.
Just metal. We are not goth, not symphonic, we are just metal but our moods change, so sometimes heavier metal and sometimes lighter metal.
Yes, fans or haters, take a chance, you never know what you may be missing but, thank you for even reading, means a lot and see you on the road, we hope ;)
Sarah thank so much for letting me do this interview with me it's real honor Best of luck on Tour! and I am Looking forward to the new Ep as hell :)
Thank you loads and sorry you had to wait :/(P.s..please use up to date band pic, I do not like to exclude anyone) xxx