“But what should we say instead…?”
When PACE embarked on the Civic Language Perception Project, it was because we were detecting a disconnect between how the “professionalized” space talks about democracy and how those we seek to serve and inspire think about and experience it. We suspected that at best, we (“the professionals”) were talking past people, and at worst, we might actually be speaking in ways that furthered the divisions, disillusionment, or disengagement that many of us thought we were trying to solve for.
This American experiment in democracy is arguably the one thing shared by all 330 million of us who live here. While large numbers believe it is in crisis or under threat and/or are dissatisfied with how it’s functioning, overwhelming majorities of Americans purport to care about and believe in democracy.
Our data seem to bear this out: people’s perceptions about civic values are significantly (at least 2x) more positive than negative on every concept we surveyed, save one: privilege.
Given the widely shared positivity, I had hoped we might be able to identify some ways to speak across the chasms of our divides in ways that transcend differences and reflect shared values. A common question PACE is asked is “If these words aren’t landing with people, what should we say instead?”
Turns out… that question seems much harder to answer than we might have hoped. When we disaggregate the data in various ways, we see some significant nuances based on a number of characteristics (race, education, and political ideology among them). Take for example this “heat map” which shows the positivity of words (vertical axis) within a number of demographic groups (horizontal axis). The redder the box, the higher positivity that group has toward that word; the bluer the box, the lower the positivity.
While there are a few exceptions (such as unity), the relative lack of consistent positivity (red) across the horizontal spectrum suggests to us that very little is “transcendent,” at least on its face.
It may be easy to be positive on a term in theory, but true sentiment in reality likely depends largely on who is saying it, and in what context. “Unity” is often a great example of this. As such, part of what we wanted to understand with this project was how much of peoples’ sentiments are about the messages themselves, and how much the messengers delivering them might impact their perception. In the chart below, the “% differential” column on the right side shows us that the impact of messengers tends to range between 7% and 36%.
So while we may hope for “universal” messages, our data suggest most things seem to be too context-specific, audience-specific, and messenger-specific to be strongly cross-cutting across a diversity of Americans’ identities and experiences. In lieu of those desired “universal” messages, this project did lead us down the path to a few areas of recommendations–two of which I want to highlight here.
First, we asked our partners at Citizen Data to help us consider what words may be “moveable” or “open to branding” compared with those that may be “deeply entrenched” and therefore unlikely to shift without significant cultural interventions. To do this, we asked them to help us understand the relationship between perceptions and associations– that is, where people might say they feel “negative” about a term, but “warm” toward the group they associate that term with (and vice versa). Their analysis suggests there is a lot of opportunity to brand (or rebrand) terms, and interestingly, terms that suggest “first principles” — like citizen, democracy, patriotism, liberty, justice, and unity– show potential to transcend ideological associations and bring diverse Americans together.
Second, we turned to the wisdom of our community. We have known all along that we are far from the only people grappling with the challenges of civic language, so we wanted to learn from civic funders and practitioners who are pondering, testing, and experimenting with civic language in their own work. Through a series of sessions last fall, we heard from over 60 civic leaders about how particular language challenges are impacting their work and how they are actively navigating them. The result is a report Civic Language Guidance: Wisdom from the Field, which shares 24 points of guidance and tangible examples from grantmakers and organizations. One area of guidance, for example, focuses on using language already in the vocabulary of the communities and populations you’re trying to reach. It shares the experience of an organization that rebranded a youth civic engagement event to “Do you hear me now?” which directly connected with young people’s desire to be heard, seen, and valued as active community contributors–all sentiments that civic engagement can help embody.
So, what should we say instead?
Sorry, dear reader. I don’t have the answer to that question– except to know that there is simply not one answer that exists. But I do hope this project provides you with the tools to come to your own answers based on your own goals within your own communities–and that our collective ability to communicate to diverse audiences throughout our country grows stronger as a result.
