Climate Change and Oceans 

Dear Colleague - 

As you'll see, our numbers were impressive in 2011. But counting reports, videos, and hits doesn't get us to larger questions of impact in the field. This past year, FrameWorks began to think more carefully and strategically about how we identify, measure, and bring to scale our impacts on individual social issues and the larger nonprofit sector. Strategic Frame Analysis™ is more than eleven years old and we've taught thousands of influential leaders how to strengthen their capacity as opinion-leaders by aligning their communications with empirically-vetted framing research. Each of these engagements harvests data that have helped us measure the kind of change we're making in the field. Whether it's helping scientists at Woods Hole explain the impact of global change on ocean acidification to a non-science audience or helping education reformers do a better job of explaining how the lack of fairness in the distribution of resources undermines our country's future, FrameWorks has been working alongside social change groups to bring the American public into the conversation.

It is our goal over the next year to share these impacts in order to build an appreciation for the critical role that strategic framing plays in science translation and issue advocacy. This newsletter begins that theme of measuring the change we are making. As we close out 2011, we offer up some preliminary findings and a thank you to our funders, organizational partners in the nonprofit sector, and the incredible staff at FrameWorks who pushed the envelope of public discourse in 2011!  

FrameWorks continues to build its suite of products, expanding our core products but keeping up with the pace of new digital technologies as we explore how best to deliver framing advice and provide multiple opportunities to try on the reframes. Among our most popular and effective products over the last year have been our trigger videos. Check out the Child Mental Health video we did for the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative in Alberta, Canada. In addition to our reports, eWorkshops, Framebytes, videos, and blog, make sure to check back with us in 2012 to see the video games and ePublished multi-media reports we're creating.

One of the most comprehensive projects FrameWorks has ever undertaken is sponsored by the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative in Alberta, Canada. Here, FrameWorks conducted original research on three interrelated topics: early child development, child mental health, and addiction. We facilitated key sessions at four province-wide symposia, led a six-month intensive Study Circle on early brain development followed by a spokesperson training with key leaders in the region, and evaluated the impact of the training. 

Eager to document the impact, our sponsors produced a video showing clinical practitioners, advocates, and scientists adapting FrameWorks' research and recommendations to their issue areas. In this video, you can hear leaders in these sectors describe how reframing the science of early child development and child mental health have transformed the landscape of public discourse in the province.  Because of their skill in applying the framing research, Albertans are hearing new explanations of how the brain works and why early investments matter.  Now that's impact! 

From CSPAN, to community centers, to the Colbert Report, immigration moved into the center of the public spotlight in 2011. FrameWorks has three years of research on how Americans think about immigration, and this year we brought it directly to nonprofit leaders and scholars, helping them frame their scholarly work for greater public engagement. In assessing our work on immigration, once again, we went beyond the numbers and conducted a case study on the impact of our work.

• With funding from The California Endowment, FrameWorks conducted research on how to frame more effective communication about immigration in the United States.

• In 2010, the Institute led a six-month long Study Circle dedicated to helping nonprofit leaders lead more productive public conversations about immigration. While there may be a strong inclination among immigration advocates to strike a fairly strident tone in reaction to the recent immigration proposals in Arizona and Alabama, framing principles caution against this approach. We discuss the challenges of framing immigration and our work with immigration advocates in a recent case study of this work that demonstrates how nonprofit leaders are able to use the Institute's recommendations to broaden public thinking on issues.

• What happens when the immigration debate is about the children of immigrants? How do we frame a conversation at the intersection of immigration and early child development?  At Voices for America's Children's 2011 regional meetings in Atlanta and New York, we tackled this very question. FrameWorks staffer Tiffany Manuel presented the Institute's research on immigration and child development.

When Ann Lochner died in February 2011, framing lost a good friend. For more than a decade, Ann had been among the earliest adapters of each new stream of FrameWorks' research. She read framing research, played with it, discussed it with colleagues and used it in her everyday work.

Now you have the opportunity to help FrameWorks call attention to important frame changes in the field of practice. On behalf of its Board of Directors and staff, the FrameWorks Institute has created its first award in Ann's memory - recognizing early adapters who incorporate framing research into their practice.

Ann was among the first group of practitioners ever to be trained by FrameWorks. The year was 2000 (more or less), and FrameWorks was supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to help Kids Count projects translate their issues to a broad public. They met in San Francisco to hear FrameWorks' early explanations of frames, values, metaphors and social math.

"I want to learn this," Ann Lochner proclaimed to the group. "This is at the heart of what advocacy is all about."

For a while, Ann contemplated returning to graduate school to study communications. But, convinced that she could not find in the academy the full array of framing theory and practice that she sought, Ann became a master framer by studying the FrameWorks tools and research.

As a result, North Dakota Kids Count produced some of the best communications about kids in the country. And when Ann moved on to Minnesota, she brought framing to bear on the issue of youth development and out-of-school time. Now part of the way she thought about social change, framing became an essential tool that Ann used, explained and shared in all her professional and coalition activities.

In recognition of her creativity and pragmatism, each year, FrameWorks will assemble a guest panel of judges to review nominations for recipients of the Ann Lochner Early Frame Adapters Award. The recipients will:

• Have their work posted on the FrameWorks' website
• Receive a cash award of $500
• Receive travel funds to join the FrameWorks staff at a briefing, workshop or conferral

Awardees will be judged on the following criteria:

• Effective incorporation of new FrameWorks' research into their work/or
• Effective incorporation of existing FrameWorks' research soon after exposure to that work (in workshop, study circle or self-study)
• Understanding of the FrameWorks approach, as evidenced in nomination explanation

Nominations can be for organizations or individuals and are due April 1, 2012. Awards to be made in the late summer. 

Kulkarni came to FrameWorks because of his interest in translating science. He has served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy Fellow at the United States Environmental Protection Agency and has also held a position at the Center of American Progress. He writes about public understanding of science in his personal blog. Given FrameWorks' continuing interest in creating public narratives that deepen appreciation for science, Kulkarni offers a valuable conversation about how scientists can access and use framing. Watch this space for more about how we need to change science communications! When he's not thinking, writing, and reading about science, Kulkarni trains and competes in triathlons and is always up for a game of pick-up soccer.  We're glad to welcome Prajwal to our team - and offer his first book review as evidence of his fit at FrameWorks!   

A 1974 Science paper by the Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky transformed - some would say invented - behavioral economics. It turns out people do not robotically apply logical, consistent rules from one situation to the next. We get emotional, ignore facts, fabricate evidence, and contradict ourselves. Kahneman and Tversky's work spurred decades of research into biases and errors in decision-making, leaving the rational agent model of economics by the wayside. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman's current take on judgment and decision-making, draws from decades of psychology research to tell an engaging, accessible story.

Kahneman describes "how the mind works" as the interplay between two characters he names System 1 (S1) and System 2 (S2). S1 operates automatically with little effort, happily passes judgment on incomplete evidence, and is really in charge. S2, as calculating and logical as it may be, is merely a "supporting character." We fail over and over again at thinking statistically, predicting the future, and even remembering our own experiences. Most of these flaws can be traced to S1, who cares more about the coherence of a story than the quality of its data. Why do you think rural, low-population Republican counties have the lowest

 kidney cancer rates? Chances are you focused on the fact that these counties are rural and Republican. You probably did not realize that small counties are simply more likely to yield extreme outcomes. Rural, low-population Republican counties also have the highest kidney cancer rates! That's S1 for you: bad at statistics, good at causal stories.

For those engaged in science communication, Kahneman's book can clarify why many communications strategies fail. Frequent repetition breeds familiarity and is not "easily distinguished from truth." Put another way, familiar words are more believable because they activate S1. If you've heard something from a trusted source repeatedly, why think about it too much? Kahneman's discussion on loss aversion and risk assessment can also help communicators understand how statistics go awry in public thinking. People spend much to avoid a sure loss - bad is stronger than good - and respond according to how the risk is framed. A vaccine with a 0.0001% chance of permanent disability elicits a yawn, while a vaccine that causes the same in one of 100,000 children produces outrage. The latter triggers an image of a unique child harmed by a vaccine, something all reasonable people want to avoid.  

For all this erudition, Kahneman maintains a very humble goal. He aims not to change how we think or see the world, but simply to make us more self-aware and provide a vocabulary to discuss human judgment. Thinking, Fast and Slow more than accomplishes this goal. - Prajwal Kulkarni