Why UNHCR is experimenting with communications
By Ann Christiano and Annie Neimand
When we’re deeply invested in an issue, our first impulse is to raise awareness of it — to ensure that everyone cares as much about the issue as we do. When we’re faced with something as profound as protecting 66 million displaced people throughout the world, it makes sense to think about how we can raise awareness to enlist more support for refugees’ profound needs.
New awareness campaigns are launched every day, but little if anything is different after. People who know more or are more aware are not more likely to act. Consider, for example, the Occupy Movement, or countless campaigns that work to raise awareness of particular conditions or diagnoses. Awareness can be part of change, but unless it’s connected to a call to action that gives people something specific to do that they believe will make a difference, it’s useless. This idea–that more information will result in better decisions or new actions–is referred to in academia as the information deficit model. But we often refer to it as a majestic unicorn. Unicorns are beautiful and lovely, but were never real. And the information deficit model was debunked nearly as soon as it was captured.
People aren’t failing to act to help refugees because they don’t know about the issue. They don’t take action because they don’t care or they don’t know what to do that will make a real difference.
UNHCR is driven by its mandate to protect refugees. The Innovation Service is charged to work within UNHCR to identify new ways of thinking that can improve UNHCR’s effectiveness. However, innovation is a fluffy buzzword that people tend to associate with apps, gadgets, new technology, and data science.
Unfortunately, this association obscures the real work of the Innovation Service, which values new ways of thinking and approaching challenges even more than it values new technologies. Behavioral and cognitive science and insights from published academic research can be as powerful as anything coming from Silicon Valley. Academic research can offer insight into what motivates people to care and to take action. Putting this deep reservoir of knowledge to work can offer new insight to challenges that have previously seemed insurmountable — and help UNHCR move beyond awareness.
We are working with UNHCR’s Innovation Service to dive into science that helps explain, for example, how worldviews shape behavior toward refugees. Or what motivates prejudice, and how to address it. Exploring what social, behavioral, and cognitive science has to say about these topics provides a different type of foundation for addressing barriers the organisation faces in serving its mandate and will reveal new messages and calls to action.
We’re also deeply interested in the power stories have to affect how people think about an issue. We know that stories drive empathy, and during our visit, we interviewed countless people who believe the most important thing they can do is help someone understand what it would feel like to lose everything and flee for your life, like a refugee. As the Innovation Service has adopted a stronger storytelling culture, this theme has dominated their stories.
Work by Christopher Booker has identified seven-story structures that nearly every story ever told adheres to. They are: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches (or Riches to Rags), Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Rebirth and the Quest. UNHCR stories that are designed to drive empathy almost always follow the riches to rags structure. This creates two communication challenges: the first is that people may stop paying attention to the stories the Innovation Service is telling because they follow predictable arcs, and also end predictably. It’s also possible that people who care about refugees are checking out of stories that are deeply sad because they empathise with the experience, but want to avoid feeling unpleasant emotions.
The second is that these riches to rags stories may uphold a master narrative about refugees that portrays them as always in need — and may be less effective in helping the organisation protect refugees. Too few stories show the strength and benefits refugees can bring to new communities, or highlight aspects of refugee life beyond their struggle. This master narrative is easily exploited by those who don’t support refugees. We’ll work with the Innovation Service to test this idea and experiment with new story structures that can help show dimensions and context that can reveal new aspects of the refugee experience, and also connect with emotions like triumph, pride, and curiosity.
When we visited UNHCR during the discovery phase of our partnership, we discovered that while everyone we talked with understood the importance of strategic communication to serve the mandate, communication was siloed to one team within the organisation. We plan to experiment with building a different understanding of communications throughout the organisation. One where everyone recognises the role of communication in their work and can apply basic principles to a more thoughtful and effective approach to communication. And one that measures belief and behavior change, not awareness.
This begins with using a four-question framework to help people think more strategically about communication.
These questions are:
- What do we want to be true that isn’t true right now? What would be different if more refugees were protected?
- Whose behavior change is critical to making that happen? This is about targeting a narrowly defined audience whose action or behavioral change is fundamental to your goal.
- What would they believe if they were taking that action? In other words, what does that narrowly- defined audience care about most and how can you include that in your messages?
- Where are their eyes? (or ears). Answering this question helps ensure that your tactics will connect with where they are, whether you’re using social media, posters, face-to-face interaction, or the news media.
In the coming year, we’ll experiment with three ideas to help UNHCR Innovation Service use communication as a tool.
1. Use cognitive and behavioral science to develop a communication strategy that both raises the profile of UNHCR’s Innovation Service and serves the mandate to protect refugees.
2. Identify the kinds of stories the organisation is telling, and experiment with new structures as a way of changing the narrative around refugees and building more support for overcoming profound challenges they face.
3. Establish a culture of communication in which each member of the Innovation team can answer the four questions and tell stories about their work that change how people see refugees.
We are eager to get to work. Like the people who walk through UNHCR’s doors each morning and work in the field every day, we are here to serve the mandate and build better protection for refugees. As we experiment with the Innovation Service on their communication, we will work with them to share what we are learning throughout the organisation. As these ideas take hold, we believe that we can help the UNHCR build support for refugees throughout the world.
— Ann Christiano, Director, Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications and Frank Karel Chair in Public Interest Communications
— Annie Neimand, Research Director, Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications
