frank Lessons in Communications

“Public interest communications” as a term may seem confusing to some people hearing it for the first time. One might ask shouldn’t all communications be done with the audience/public’s interest in mind? Or inversely, shouldn’t public interest or justice-oriented work inherently communicate to impacted people and communities? As a communications specialist who has now attended two years of the premier conference in the public interest field, frank, I understand public interest communications as community-focused and research-driven communications that promotes sustained and positive social change. Coming to my work at the Center on Privacy & Technology with a background in direct action organizing and movement journalism has shown me how stories can transform our understanding of the world. How testimony can sway lawmakers. How lived experiences and qualitative data can strengthen and give meaning to cutting-edge research. How communities can come together to resist systems of policing and punishment. At the Center, we do deep, original research that academics, policymakers, and communities can learn from and use to resist forms of surveillance. This work is done in service of the public interest.

The public interest communications field is an ever-changing ecosystem and there is always more to learn. Annually for the past ten years, the Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications has convened frank, a gathering for people within this field who use strategic communications to drive social change. It brands itself as “the gathering for people who change the world” and while the language sounds a bit dramatic, it is true. It’s frank even. Both the speakers and attendees reflect who is at the cutting edge of communications, academia, research, journalism, and activism. I virtually attended frank in 2022 and 2023 and its sessions, presentations, and interactive workshops gave me so much to ponder about the future of this work and the movement strategies we are working in support of. Here are two sessions whose lessons I think about the most in my public interest communications work:

In a 2022 session, “Learn new research” Professor Diane Wong of Rutgers University-Newark explored questions about; What is cultural organizing? How can artists and cultural work contribute to community power and social change? And what is the best way to tell stories that emerge from these community movements? This interactive workshop encouraged participants to work collaboratively to learn more about how cultural activism can address gentrification as it intersects with issues of race, class, gender, citizenship, policing, and mental health in immigrant communities. Professor Wong’s scholarship melds social scientific research methods with qualitative approaches that prioritize the experiences of organizers on the ground. Professor Wong emphasized the importance of strong networks of care and partnership between community organizers and communications practitioners. Similar to how journalists build trust with sources, the session introduced the idea that academics and storytellers must do the same by building sustained relationships with the communities they are working with, not parachuting in and out of affected communities. For example, when editing an interdisciplinary special issue of Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies on Asian American Abolition Feminisms, Professor Wong solicited entries from not just scholars, but activists, organizers, cultural workers, and artists as well. An entire breakout discussion emerged from the question, “How can we think more expansively about academic and non-academic collaborations?” Workshop participants concluded that to build effective coalitions and collaborations: accountability structures and goals must be developed for every party involved, partnerships should be driven by shared goals rather than personal interests, and everyone must recognize what unique expertise everyone else is bringing to the table.

This year, Aaron Colverson and Anna Sampson led an arts-based interactive workshop “Addressing the social challenges of the climate crisis: arts and play as means to social responsibility.” The workshop asked the question of what happens when people of different lived experiences share space and time to attend to the climate crisis? Through creative prompts and exercises, participants were able to work together to name the social challenges of the climate crisis our world is facing. One of the main challenges was the feelings of isolation, doom, and helplessness that the climate crisis raises for a lot of people, even amongst those actively working to fight it. In the face of these daunting feelings, participants worked together to make playful and creative artistic responses. This was a particularly engaging session because a lot of communications professionals are instinctively artistic, with an eye for design, and naturally collaborative. Everyone was keen on trying new things and coming together to talk about this very daunting topic, which I found really encouraging and unique for a professional conference. I left the session thinking more about tactile and artistic ways to engage audiences in work about difficult political and social topics.

These two sessions really speak to frank’s objective of convening public interest communicators to think and work together to answer the question of how to create and write public interest communications that will carry us into the future of this work. They also demonstrate how wide-ranging and imaginative this gathering is. The 2022 sessions hinged around the theme of “imagining a new future” and the 2023 sessions focused on “the long view” of this work. The intersectional and interdisciplinary approach of the frank gathering leaves participants with a better understanding of how we operate as individuals in part of a bigger public interest ecosystem all working together for positive change. Both our work and our success rely on each other. frank reminds us that the path to our collective progress is being empathetic communicators in our professional and personal lives. Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson of them all.