Communicating in crisis— creating narratives that inspire change
Featured in the Washington Post, CNS researcher examines how we talk about crises and offers tips to better our narratives and inspire change
Images of overcrowded hospitals, maps of wildfire destruction, real-time twitter updates of political upheaval. It seems that over the past year, stories of crisis and catastrophe follow us everywhere we go— so much so that the term “doomscrolling” (the act of almost obsessively consuming news of suffering and injustice on social media) gained global popularity. Many of us feel overwhelmed, not knowing how to create positive change.
Ezra Markowitz, Environmental Conservation, recently published an article in the Washington Post discussing what decades of social-science research tell us about the effectiveness of different approaches to catastrophe story-telling. In particular, he details four ways to improve how we talk about crises and encourage powerful action.
From "After 2020, we need to talk about how we talk about catastrophe:"
First, avoiding overt crisis and catastrophe frames does not mean playing down the urgency of...