Breaking the Frame Susan Nall Bales has a lesson for progressive groups: Message matters.
By Chris Mooney Issue Date: 3.24.03
When communications consultant Susan Nall Bales talks to environmental groups, she tells them that they can't fix government policies until they first fix themselves. For Bales, that means these groups must become acutely conscious of the stories that they're telling and the hidden chains of reasoning their narratives can set off in the public mind.
In explaining their issues, environmentalists tend to predict a wide range of disasters: catastrophic weather phenomena, species extinction, tropical pests heading north, you name it. The canonical example is probably Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book The Population Bomb, which began: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." The point is not whether environmentalists have science on their side; many of today's disaster forecasts, such as global warming, may well be accurate. But Bales can demonstrate why doomsday scenarios, factual or not, alienate voters.
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