How to test your communications
This is a resource to help you test your messages. It is designed for campaigners who have little or no experience with message testing.
Topic
Communications & Media
Creating change requires engaging audiences, communicating messages, and inviting people to join in action. The resources here will help you get clearer on what communication channels to use and how, how to develop compelling framing and messages, and the skills required to engage media (traditional and new forms) effectively.
Framing the economy: How to win the case for a better system
The PIRC, the New Economics Foundation, NEON and the FrameWorks Institute have launched two story strategies that progressives can use to shift thinking on the economy. They’re built on values and metaphors that encourage the hope that change is possible and increase people’s support for progressive policies.
Framing Equality Toolkit
This toolkit is a short guide to strategic communications, based on extensive research and building on the experience of activists and communicators from around the globe. It aims to provide a framework rather than a blueprint; helping you to ask the right questions rather than giving you the right answers.
Where now for the environment movement? Weathercocks and signposts ten years on
Weathercocks and Signposts, a report from WWF, critically reassesses current approaches to motivating environmentally-friendly behaviour change.
Common Cause for Nature: A practical guide to values and frames in conservation
Common Cause for Nature contains many lessons based on academic research on how to spark behaviour changes. The analysis showed that there are competing sets of human values within each of us which can be encouraged and discouraged by language and experience.
How to change the story on social media: ACF Community Toolkit
The Australian Conservation Foundation has created this terrific guide for its’ supporters on how to communicate on social media more effectively offering lots of tips about values, language and storytelling.
How to tell compelling stories that move people to action: Narrative Handbook
Learn how to tell emotionally compelling stories, use the right frames, values and metaphors to shift the public conversation and take people where you want them to go and engage and strengthen the values that will engage more people more deeply.
Communicating Race Class Video with Anat Shenker-Osorio
Anat Shenker-Osorio shows how to apply research findings around communicating about race and class to the increasing white nationalism, xenophobia and race-based attacks that punctuate politics around the globe.
Winning Words About Work Communicating a progressive agenda about work and beyond by Anat Shenker-Osorio
Anat Shenker-Osorio (ASO Communications) presents an exploration of the language used to communicate about work. She outlines a number of key lessons for communicating a progressive agenda, on work and beyond.
The importance of journalism in democracy by Leonore Taylor from Guardian Australia
Lenore Taylor, editor of Guardian Australia, presented at Progress 2017 on the world of fake news and click-bait. She ends with a powerful call to protect quality, fearless and independent journalism.
Being Purpose Driven
Nothing precedes purpose. The starting point for every organisation or movement should be the question ‘Why do we exist’? A number of tips for focusing an organisation on vision and purpose. An excerpt from Purpose Driven Campaigning, based on Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church.
ChangeMakers Podcast Series 2
The ChangeMakers podcast is short series podcast that tells stories about people who are striving for social change across the world.
Live tweeting at rallies and marches
Twitter is a very useful way to share your story outside traditional networks. Increasingly Twitter quotes and photos are used to embed in traditional media, and with a small amount of effort you can get your event trending. This will alert politicians and media to your issue.
What ChangeMakers can learn from Brooklyn Nine Nine
Who knew that TV could teach you how to change the world! Embedded in Brooklyn Nine Nine’s approach to sitcom writing are a few lessons about how we can successfully communicate important, difficult issues to a wider audience.
Is personalised political communication manipulative?
“Personalized political communication” refers to when the medium for a message is a person, not media such as television, pamphlets, or billboards. The electoral arms race is seeing a renaissance of PPC and greater engagement of voters in campaigns and the political process.
Art and Campaigning: Lessons about the effective use of art in campaigns
Lessons about the effective use of art in campaigns from three activist artists: Tom Civil, Arlene TextaQueen and Van Thanh Rudd. Lessons include: Build strong culture; Represent ethically; Consider your audience; Court controversy; Always remember the visuals; Value the labour of artists.
The 21st-Century Advocacy Playbook
Build strong advocacy teams using this checklist to assess your team’s readiness to campaign for—and win—change in the modern landscape.
6 Elements of Open (People-Powered) Campaigns: Template
Is your campaign about people, or staff? Distributed, or centralised? This worksheet outlines six factors to think about when analysing how ‘open’ your campaigns are, from the participants of MobLab’s Open Campaigns Camp.
Four magic steps to creating shareable, purpose-driven social media content
This MobLab guide sets out to help digital campaigners and practitioners apply tried-and-true methods of making social media content that actually spreads.
Email to recruit new Facebook likes
An example of a great email from SumOfUs to recruit new Facebook followers.