Workshop Materials
Pre Workshop
For the online workshop, please download these exercises below and print them out. (For in-person workshops we’ll bring all the materials for you.)
Your Issue
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t7i7DLVhEtm8cMaDSh3NF5rAlPKF3E3amWUw6p2LsLc/edit?usp=sharing
ID Frames
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wes6tM1W47FDTuF4rAqUbV8GCKban1IRihRldvx2tLU/edit?usp=sharing
I Care Statement
https://docs.google.com/document/d/100WDXovKZwYwD7cambi7RRDAg65ReS0iEK9eJNX39MQ/edit?usp=sharing
What How and Why in Reverse!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mfMQ49Te5Nu7Bdwb6pIT6HmpGk0KpyV04I3qslJ_kpA/edit?usp=sharing
Post workshop
After the workshop you may find these documents helpful.
Post Workshop Meditation -a list of common questions with answers. These put the in-person and online workshops in perspective. If you do nothing else, read this!
… and these are blank or expanded versions of our workshop materials:
“Why” Worksheet – a blank version that helps you connect to the core values you’ll need to frame messages. (A Download)
Stop, Drop and Roll: Message Builder Checklist (Download) In conjunction with the Why Worksheet, the SDR Message Builder will help you create and refine your message and avoid common mistakes. (A Download)
Stop, Drop and Roll Message Builder -Expanded -This expanded version makes sure you’ve covered every base. Pick your issue and have at it!
More perspective:
The Psychology and Other Resources tab above has more resources for learning about framing.
The Conservative Strategy tab gives you perspective on how conservative messaging went off the rails.
Recommended reading and video
Pew Center Political Typology Quiz -(Website) where exactly are you in the political landscape?
Framing
George Lakoff
Online
George Lakoff on Trump’s moral challenge to liberals. A great introduction to framing on the Tavis Smiley Show (video).
A follow on to that video an a Tavis Smiley podcast.
Framelab Podcast -Join Lakoff and guests discuss issues and challenges we face as we make framing mainstream.
Citizens Communication Network -Join Lakoff and others around the country putting framing to work on Lakoff’s facebook page. Great content daily!
Articles by George Lakoff
Framing 101.(Article) A quick guide to framing.
Don’t Underestimate Trump (Article) Despite the title, is about the most compact treatment of what framing is, why Republicans have been so successful at it and why Democrats have ignored the science (no surprise, the reasons have to do with how our brains are wired). A great way to start your framing journey.
How conservatives use language to dominate politics. (Article)
Democratic Strategies Lost Big Heres Why and How to Fix It (Article) A critique of the Democrat’s failure to use effective communication with some nice background and tips on framing.
Books by George Lakoff:
The Little Blue Book. (Book) A practical treatment of framing and progressive communication.
Don’t Think of an Elephant. (Book) Lakoff’s classic -must reading, many examples of issue framing.
Moral Politics. (Book) Lakoff’s scholarly presentation of his theory of framing in the political context.
Thinking Points. (Book download) by George Lakoff, similar to Don’t Think of an Elephant. This is a free Download of the book, distributed with permission.
Cognitive Psychology
Besides framing, century of cognitive research concludes that though the human brain can think rationally, it was not evolved to do formal reasoning, but to keep us alive long enough to reproduce. This “good enough” reasoning helps us avoid danger and coalesce into social groups and is driven primarily by our emotions and values; understanding quantum physics is a nice by product. In other words our rational brain, in many ways, evolved to rationalise what our emotions and values have already decided.
The Little Book of Revolution (Book) by David Akadjian. a surprisingly good intro to framing for the neophyte.
Thinking Fast and Slow (Book) by Daniel Kahneman. Summed up: People don’t think the way we think they think. A broad survey of Cognitive Psychology relating to decision making. Our brains evolved to keep us alive and “System 1” makes quick evaluations based on learned frames and plenty of flaws. Though the more thoughtful and deliberative, “System 2” is capable of formal reason and logic, most people are not trained in it.
How Great Leaders Inspire Action (Video) by Simon Sinek. The full version of the excerpted video used in the workshop.
The Gardens of Democracy (Book) by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer – an extended version of this NY Times op-ed about a single, extremely powerful conceptual frame. Hanauer is a 1%er who deftly takes down the current system of wealth concentration.
The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Book) by Steven Sloman & Philip Fernbach (March 14 2017)
Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us (Book) by Jack Gorman & Sara Gorman (Sept. 2016)
Tools
While not primarily books or articles on psychology, the following items offer many ways to tune up your communication. It’s one thing to say it; another to say it well!
Cracking the Code by Thom Hartman. We highly recommend this book. Chock full of practical communication tips especially using story and sense modalities.
Influence by Robert Cialdini
A Window into the Conservative Side
Know what you’re up against. The Powell Memo and the GOPAC Memo mark two important milestones in the way conservative strategists approached policy and messaging. These changes away from civility and fact-based communication and towards using psychology to manipulate voters were the catalysts that resulted in our current hyper-polarized political climate.
Lewis Powell
Written by former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, the significance of the Powell Memo (Article, 1971) in the genesis of extreme economic conservatism cannot be overstated. The Powell Memo sets the basis for the positions modern conservatives take on the economy. The wide acceptance of the memo in conservative economic circles enabled conservatives to spend hundreds of millions to create think tanks and endow economic chairs at universities with the purpose of feeding “economic experts” to the media. The memo was fundamental in making corporate power and the conservative economic worldview dominant in America.
Frank Luntz
Luntz is the conservative strategist who helped Newt Gingrich (see GOPAC Memo below) usher in the corrosive, divisive, take-no-prisoners style of Republican messaging. Luntz can often be seen on CBS News as a consultant, though he is only sometimes identified by CBS as such -and never as the author of this pivotal and profoundly disturbing document.
GOPAC Memo (aka, Language: A Key Mechanism of Control) (1996). Created by Luntz for Newt Gingrich, it was a short list of words -a pocket-sized conservative cheat sheet- that put conservative language into overdrive. If you’ve wondered where the viciousness of conservative communication came from, here’s where it took off.
Words That Work The architect of conservative framing outlines how he believes words make all the difference. The first half of the book is practical and contains some insight; the second half is, on the surface, a look at issues. The conservative bias is obscured, but now that you know framing it’ll be obvious. If you buy this, buy it used so Luntz does not get your money!
GOP Health Care Framing A look at how a specific issue is framed from a conservative perspective.
Books
Anderson’s and MacLean’s books below will tell you exactly how and why wealthy individuals, and conservative strategists convinced people to believe in a dangerous alternate reality and vote against their self interest —and the interests of their communities and nation.
Democracy in Chains – Nancy MacLean
MacLean explores the historical and racist roots of the conservative takeover of hearts and minds.
Evil Geniuses -Kurt Anderson
In Fantasyland, Anderson explores the rich history of weird ideas peculiar to America. Evil Genuises can be seen as a companion volume for our current time. (Walter Issacson suggests they be read as a boxed set). From the publisher:
When did America give up on fairness? The author of Fantasyland tells the epic history of how America decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get richer, and nothing should ever change—and charts a way back to the future.