As we navigate the many looming challenges in our world—climate change, health disparities, and more—it can be tempting to frame issues as a ‘crisis.’ But research shows that crisis framing typically only serves to fuel anxiety rather than sparking meaningful action. Read The New York Times article, featuring insights from FrameWorks’ CEO, Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor, and other experts on the effects of crisis framing—and why pushing fatalism does not work: https://lnkd.in/dZxBuJVf
Our work at the FrameWorks Institute aims to uncover how people think about a range of social issues and how our communicate can shape these understandings. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how framing affects the world of public health. I had the chance to talk about this with Jeneen Interlandi at The New York Times as part of her reporting on what she describes as the United States’ “epoch of crisis.” Here are some of what I see as the top insights from her piece: 1. This framing – crisis here! crisis there! crisis everywhere! – shapes how people see problems and what they do in response. It triggers a sense of fatalism, a mindset that assumes problems are too large to fix or too deep to do anything about. But FrameWorks research — in-depth, years of ongoing assessment and analysis— reveals that we can flip fatalism on its head and inspire action by highlighting solutions and explaining how they work and what they do. 2. As Dr. Joshua Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tells Interlandi, tangible solutions are key to inspiring reforms. “Do you have a story to tell that will inspire urgency? A workable solution? The data to make your case? If you don’t, hitting the panic button isn’t likely to help much.” I love that! 3. At the same time, data alone do not move people to act. Some of our most pressing challenges are not considered urgent—no matter what the data say—and therefore do not get addressed at a scale that matches their gravity and severity. Interlandi points out that for instance, “Even a deadly disease is a crisis only when we treat it like one. If that’s difficult to believe, keep in mind that heart disease has killed nearly 100 million people in the time it took Covid to claim seven million or so.” 4. How we frame an issue matters. If we label people as “others” we are less willing to devote resources to solutions that address problems. If we only talk about the enormity of the problem, fatalism sets in, and people tune out and lose hope. To be effective, people need to believe that, “change is not only desirable but also eminently possible.” 5. Interlandi points out that invoking the word “crisis” has delivered some durable public health wins, but also some moments of misdirection or nativism, “Crisis gave us the F.D.A., the C.D.C. and the Environmental Protection Agency. But it also led to racist and ineffective quarantines. It gave rise to vaccine hesitancy.” 6. Interlandi wraps it up by cautioning against too much anxiety-hyping by pointing out, “when everything is a crisis, nothing can be; and that while crisis itself can be a powerful tool, it works best when used wisely.” At FrameWorks, we’re trying to have more of these framing conversations with those who need strong messaging to fight headwinds in 2025...and shape the future of our discourse and culture. What sort of framing conversations would you find helpful right now? Send me your suggestions in the comments.