The failure of raising awareness for refugees in a world of data and disinformation
The limits of information in communicating refugee issues
In 2015, I wrote an article discussing the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) recently released Annual Global Trends Report which highlighted what I called “the insane fact” that worldwide displacement had totaled nearly 60 million people. I commented on these numbers explaining the failure of this numerical discourse as a medium to gauge the reality of the situation:
“Yes, these are indeed the numbers representing the world’s refugee crisis. They’re unfathomable in my opinion. What do 60 million people even look like? When you imagine 60 million displaced persons, does it look that different from 40 million or 20 million? The numbers are so large it can be difficult for some people to put that staggering “60 million people” into visual terms that can be fully understood.”
The paradoxical need for numbers to explain the gravity of displacement, coupled with the failure of these numbers to register to our audiences, continued to bother me. Why wasn’t this data having an impact on policymakers or governments to do more? Where was the emotion that I hoped would elicit action?
Fast forward to 2017 — to a world where disinformation and hate speech floats at the top of our newsfeeds, and suddenly “insane facts” didn’t matter. Welcome to what many call the “post-truth” world, where daily posts exhaust people’s emotional resilience before they have time to act.
In the Stanford Social Innovation Review article titled “Persuasion in a “Post-Truth World”, authors Troy Campbell, Lauren Griffin and Annie Neimand explain that it is no longer enough for messages to rely on facts and data to support arguments around social issues. They explain that “by moving beyond facts, using smart storytelling, and crafting solutions that don’t require audiences to sacrifice their values, organisations will be better equipped to move the needle on ideologically or politically sticky issues.”
The challenges for communicating strategically on social issues such as migration, climate change, and displaced populations have become more apparent. The consequences of sowing confusion and fueling disinformation can be catastrophic to the cause itself, destroying the role that trust plays for policymakers and the public pertaining to social causes.
This year was also the year UNHCR Innovation Service looked deeper at this paradox and set out on a path to better understand how the human mind interprets the usefulness of information and the complicated role of communication when it comes to humanitarian innovation and refugee issues. We started digging into the assumptions we had about what worked effectively in highlighting the plight of refugees in addition to persuading audiences to invest in innovation. We were on the offence. We sought to understand how we could overcome these barriers and the collective shutting down of compassion against the backdrop of the highest level of displacement since World War II.
The failure of numbers
Paul Slovic, a well-known psychologist and editor of the book “Numbers and Nerves,” argues that it is not in our psychology as human beings to interpret and respond appropriately to the large numbers seen in catastrophes. But, we can respond to another person’s story and use this as a medium for compassion and response. In his research, Slovic and his colleagues have found that as the number of victims increases, or people in need of aid, the less compassion people will have.
In “Numbers and Nerves” Slovic and his co-editor Scott Slovic state, “in order to make the data mean something (and perhaps even count for something), it seems vital that quantitative discourse be complemented with other modes, such as story and image, which so forcefully inspire human audiences and shape our moral compass. Many of the crises that face individual societies and that challenge all of humanity today are either preventable or correctable.”
The atrocities and crises that are causing refugees to leave their home countries don’t often “feel real” which creates a barrier to data and information being processed cognitively. Slovic describes this as the psychic numbing of the public’s mind, explaining that “our capacity to feel is limited,” in the journal article “Psychic Numbing and Genocide.”
This is not to say that numbers and statistics don’t have any role to play in the work of UNHCR’s Innovation Service. We have to communicate these numbers as they are a crucial aspect of UNHCR’s work to inform the media, governments, and public — but we should be wary of the limits of human rationality to act on this data. If our target audience is “prey to feelings of inefficacy” as Slovic’s research has shown, even when one person does understand the magnitude of challenges represented by numbers, there will still be barriers to effective action in addressing these issues.
We must come to terms with the fact that to communicate effectively in light of compassion fatigue, we need to be more innovative and creative in our storytelling strategies. I mentioned above that I have struggled in interpreting the scale of need within humanitarian work, often dense with statistics on displacement and funding gaps. This does not mean we should limit ourselves to stories simply focused on one person (because that also falls short and is susceptible to stereotypes) but rather we should design our communication efforts with strategy and intention to help people care and inspire action.
What strategies can we use to persuade people that we need new ways of thinking in the humanitarian sector? How can we utilise the insights provided by academic research to counter xenophobia and disinformation online? These are just a few of the many questions we will begin to explore as team. It is not that the human mind is inherently insensitive, but that numbers fail to catalyse the scale of momentum needed to address the challenges of today.
In the end, we need to find ways to balance data and raw information with counter-narratives and storytelling methods.
We need to find the right words to depict the magnitude of what we are trying to communicate, whether that be the importance of humanitarian innovation or action required to address the challenges of refugees — our fellow humans — around the world.
Data isn’t everything — where do we go from here?
Reflecting on the past twelve months, it was a year of discovery for us. We were able to question a lot of the assumptions we had about our communication strategy and bring in experts to assist us in research around public interest communications. While we came to many conclusions, we were also faced with even more questions. Where empathy and data fall short, we have found a new space for science and research to answer our questions.
We’re beginning to understand how UNHCR Innovation Service can experiment in communications — and no, that does not mean just having a fancy website. If this was the year of discovery, the next will be the year of testing and doing in this field for us. We want to continue to test how behavioural science, psychology, data, research and value-based decision-making methodologies can be used to structure the way we communicate about refugee issues and humanitarian innovation.
One early takeaway is that communication is integral for each person in our team — whether they are working on connectivity, data, energy or protection. Everyone communicates, and everyone should know how to communicate strategically, especially around what many consider the complex processes around innovation.
There is this predictable language of change where we talk about “innovation” and also the word “disruption” in the humanitarian sector. But all innovation is not progress, and all disruption does not lead to results that have good impact. We have to train ourselves to know the difference, and one of the ways we can do that is in the way we are communicating and evaluating the work we are called to do.
The humanitarian sector does not offer many models for what it looks like to learn in public, but innovation necessitates the potentiality of being wrong and learning through doing. We certainly haven’t figured it all out yet, and we need to be ready to admit that, while also taking the time to ask those around us: what should we be doing differently?
We want to move away from stylized ‘innovation’ jargon into a space focused on creating a community or dare I say, movement around humanitarian innovation. In many ways, the word movement is characterised principally by the community which forms it. And while at the heart of the community are those who truly believe and have the will to bring new ways of thinking into this sector, we also have to be ready to allow critics into this space. When we are looking at the discernment about where we are going, it is crucial we listen to those who can see what we can’t see, to get feedback from those who disagree with us and to open ourselves to those difficult conversations.
Maybe empathy isn’t the end all to be all for communication and social change. Maybe data shouldn’t be the only factor driving our decisions and how we work. Maybe the cognitive apprehension of numbers fails to push us forward to take action — even when morally we know we should. We are still learning.
Community will be critical for us moving forward. Changing individual behaviours and instilling action-oriented goals will be core to how we view our communications. It will be vital to recognise that decision-making should be about more than just data and numbers when careful judgments and direct interventions are required. More importantly, though, innovation will continue to be about changing mindsets and critically engaging those who have traditionally been the “them” in the “us versus them” showdown.
If there is one thing we hope for the next turn around the sun, it is less of the divisiveness within the “us versus them” dichotomy — whether that be in our politics, our societies, our conversations, and how we behave in our organisation. If we can come together, even for just a moment, there is the possibility for better impact. Our hope is that by moving past raising awareness and investing in public interest communications, we can begin building a movement that is less about numbers and more about changing perceptions. We are laying down empathy and facts and picking up new instruments: emotions and science.
Data may be useful in evaluating the world and empathy perhaps a decent fundraising tool, but they will wash past audiences and fail to ignite the action we truly seek in having an impact for refugee communities. So, I’ll leave you with this. In humanitarian innovation, where big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and financial tech reign — words still matter. They may be one of the few things left that drive people to take action around the issues they care about.
In an effort to move past communication strategies that simply “raise awareness” of an issue, the UN Refugee Agency and the University of Florida partnered to better understand how science can connect individuals with calls to actions that will result in lasting difference on the issues that matter most. To discover more from the publication and partnership — follow The Arc here.
