Do the words of the powerful and influential simply reflect the thinking of most people? Or do the way our leaders frame ideas and information set the agenda? It can be both, writes Jess Berentson-Shaw
In my last column for the year I want to reflect on the power of words, both for good and bad. It just happens to be the work that I do most days – exploring the power of words to surface particular ways of thinking about the world, our big issues, and about evidence – so a fitting end to the year in which words have been a powerful force and a feature of our conversations.
A year of words
This year – a year in which the global pandemic many experts knew would come actually came – the Prime Minister’s words shaped our thinking, feelings and actions.
Her words, and the related words of people in the civil service and science community, helped us to see each other and our responsibility to each other’s health. They also framed the evidence, what we knew and what we did not, clearly, and succinctly. They were words that helped encourage people to act on that evidence.
Conversely, the Prime Minister has recently told us her words held no power to shift the thinking of most New Zealanders on matters of housing policy and systems. In this case, what people think about issues like housing and tax appears to be shaping the Prime Minister’s words.
Last week our major media outlet Stuff told us they looked at their words and found they had shaped how New Zealanders think about Māori, and not in a good way, in fact in deeply harmful ways. It was a clear articulation that the dominant stories (the frames) used across media shape the way we think about each other, about problems in the world, what causes them and how we should fix them. Since then we have heard that these stories the media tells simply reflect what many ill-informed people think, conversely, we hear that the media gets to shape attitudes through their framing.
Frames are prepackaged stories, narratives, and mental models that we all have about the world.
Which is true? Do the words of the powerful and influential simply reflect the thinking of most people? Or do their frames set the agenda for what people think? It is both. But first, it is good to understand what framing even is and how it affects thinking.
What is framing and how does it influence thinking?
Framing is a catch-all term that researchers and communicators use to describe techniques we all use to communicate and explain issues.
Frames are prepackaged stories, narratives, and mental models that we all have about the world.
Frames are neurological associations between ideas, words, images that have built over years of living, talking and listening. Many frames are shared across society, while some are unique to specific groups. We cannot avoid using frames as frames are part of how we navigate our world and the information in it.
… when newspapers constantly report about the crisis in the housing “market” they are framing housing as a consumer product …
The social psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, calls frames part of our fast thinking system of information assessment. Frames allow us to understand what someone is saying and the explanation they are providing for an issue without having to slow our thinking down and relearn everything we know.
For example, when newspapers constantly report about the crisis in the housing “market” they are framing housing as a consumer product and ultimately explaining that the solutions to the crisis are primarily market-based ones.
Frames are engaged at a very fast and subconscious level and even when we are using a particular frame we may be unaware exactly what we are doing because this is the water we swim in.
Ways in which people frame, or how we frame, range from the use of particular values to drive conversations through (the Prime Minister talks a lot about kindness for example, while other leaders talk about finances or money), metaphors, and even specific words.
“Tax is the price we pay for living in a society” is an example of a metaphor that frames tax in a very particular way, explaining it as something we want to avoid, that is loathsome.
Ultimately, it is an unhelpful way of explaining tax. It surfaces particular thinking in people that is unlikely to lead to their support for, for example, wealth, housing, land or other capital tax – which research is clear we need to address inequality.
Yet there are very different ways of framing the role of tax in society. For example, when we say tax is how we pay it forward to the next generation, research shows this surfaces very different thinking in people. It explains tax in a totally different way.
Cognitive psychologists and linguists, social scientists, communication experts find that the frames that are used influence how people think about issues quite differently and lead to quite different actions.
In our own research, my colleague Marianne Elliott and I have found that different and specific framing techniques can significantly shift how people come to understand and think about many complex issues.
In our most recent work on justice reform “How to Talk About Crime & Justice”, we found that, while many people in New Zealand hold quite punitive views on what should happen to people who commit crime, reframing the conversation, using particular values, metaphors and something called explanatory chains, shifts people into deeper thinking on the issue.
Reframing crime and justice, using tested explanatory techniques, helps people better understand both the social causes of crime and the need for effective preventative and restorative responses from policy makers (as the evidence supports).
How does framing shift people’s thinking?
We are often asked if framing is a manipulation of people’s thinking? What the research tells us is that people do not think just one way about complex issues. People’s thinking has more depth and complexity to it than we often realise.
What particular frames do are surface the different ways people have of thinking. So, while dominant frames, that are repeated over and over, particularly by powerful people, and the media, may surface one (shallow) way of thinking about, for example, Māori, other frames can surface different ways of thinking that people already have.
This deeper thinking may get little exercise though so it can be undeveloped and a bit well flabby. Such thinking needs more support, more exercise, and this is the role of people with the power to frame who want to do better with their words.
Setting the frame
Cognitive psychologists and communications researchers have found that while people in the public eye and the media do simply reflect some of the thinking or mental models that the public hold, such ‘elites’ have enormous power to shape the public’s attitudes and thinking.
People in politics have both shaped our attitudes and thinking on COVID-19, for example, and been subject to the shallower thinking of the public on issues of housing.
“When politicians seek to frame an issue, they must be aware of and consider the possible reactions, motives, and beliefs of the polity. As such, framing is not a unidirectional relationship from political elites to citizens. Rather the assumed beliefs of citizens define acceptable and popular frames on issues of political import.” (Celestin Okoroji, Ilka H. Gleibs, Sandra Jovchelovitch, 2020)
This is of course what we have seen this year.
People in politics have both shaped our attitudes and thinking on COVID-19, for example, and been subject to the shallower thinking of the public on issues of housing.
However, what the evidence suggests is that if the power lies with so-called “elites” to shape thinking then the onus is on them to use their frames for the good of the collective and in the service of pragmatic and effective action to address the crisis we face. Whether that be on climate, environmental degradation, poverty, justice reform or housing. Because, as I said, it is not possible to avoid framing, there is no such thing as a “neutral frame”.
Our brains, soaking in communications from the moment we are born, automatically use frames everyday.
For those in power who both support a more inclusive, more equal and more just society, a healthier planet and a decarbonised economy, there is work to be done with their words.
First, they must understand the most shallow and unhelpful of people’s thinking so they can avoid it. Then they must look for the deeper and best of us and frame that which is already there.
The potential for good work here is manifold. Bring on 2021.
