![]() The idea of people being restricted and restrained, locked in, by the economy can be particularly effective in countering the idea of ‘selfmakingness’, forcing people away from the idea of poor people making bad life choices towards seeing the economy as the determinant. Using metaphors that ‘stick’ can also help – ‘stickiness’ is a concept beloved of the communications industry. Here a more credible messenger might help: it seems that non-political messengers (bishops seem to be ideal) are vastly more effective than bipartisan messengers. While connecting your messages with values can be helpful in shifting thinking – justice and compassion, especially together, are the strongest values. The key is to pick out positive messages and exclude all negatives from communications. Having first exhorted people to ‘understand what you’re up against’, the research recommendations focus on how to reframe issues. ‘Without affecting public thinking sustained change isn’t possible.’ Reframing poverty: 8 Ways to Open Minds The view that poverty is always with us will induce an unhelpful fatalism. The view that poverty arises from individual choices – what Frameworks rather unfortunately calls ‘self-makingness’ –will lead people to blame the poor for being poor rather than taking collective responsibility as a society. ‘If you understand what’s out there, you can be strategic in how you communicate rather than triggering barriers.’ For example, people who hold the view that our society is prosperous and poverty doesn’t exist any more – it’s something that existed in Victorian times or in Africa – will tend to ignore messages about poverty. The challenge, he says, is to figure out what’s out there. ‘Without affecting public thinking sustained change isn’t possible.’ ![]() If you don’t try to shift public thinking, you will do this work forever as political parties come and go. Lobbying bypasses the middle two, says Kendall-Taylor. The Frameworks theory of change looks like this:Ĭommunication > Discourse > Thinking > Policy You say, “Poverty needs to be addressed.” They think: “Poverty isn’t that bad here.”’ It stands between the things we say and the things people take from our messages. Culture is ‘a shared set of models/ways of thinking. He describes himself as a ‘psychological anthropologist’ – someone who looks at how culture influences the way we think, and how different ways of presenting messages affect how people think about social issues and what they are prepared to do about them. The Framework Institute’s Nat Kendall-Taylor is himself an engaging presenter. The findings of the research were presented at well-attended conferences in London and Edinburgh (I was at the London one). The aim of the JRF/Frameworks research is to understand how the public thinks and then deliberately exclude the negatives from messages about poverty, focusing instead on the positives, in the hope of being able to change public opinion and create a climate in which sustained policy change is possible. Caroline Hartnell convenes the Rethinking Poverty blog What is the JRF research trying to achieve? ‘We need to change what we’re doing.’ A sentiment no one could disagree with. ‘The definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result,’ said JRF CEO Campbell Robb. ![]() Their Talking about Poverty project with the US-based Frameworks Institute focuses on changing the way we talk about poverty, how we present our messages. JRF is taking a different path – contrary to what JRF’s Chris Goulden suggests in his blog, also published today. Rather than seeking to assign blame for the problem of poverty, a more productive approach is to focus instead on building the society we want – a good society.’ ‘This division means that policies to address poverty have always had limited support. This story chimes well with the findings of five years of extensive research by the Webb Memorial Trust, summarised in Barry Knight’s book Rethinking Poverty: What makes a good society? ‘The first step in rethinking poverty is to rethink whether we should use the word “poverty”, a word that divides people emotionally and politically,’ says Knight. ‘The first step in rethinking poverty is to rethink whether we should use the word “poverty”’ ‘I said to someone living on $2.50 a day, “what’s it like living in poverty?” His answer was: “I don’t live in poverty.”’ It seems that the very poor don’t want to be associated with poverty. ![]() ‘The problem with the word poverty is that it embodies so many negatives,’ said journalist Stephen Armstrong, author of The New Poverty, speaking at Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s (JRF) ‘Talking about Poverty’ conference in London on 30 January. Talking about poverty – is being careful about language enoughĮvent reports Related Tags: Rethinking Poverty
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