Blog

Exercise on Framing: Refugees fleeing Central America at the Border Wall

admin
Wed 2018-12-12
The border wall is a hot topic right now in the news. Exercise:

(1) What are the policy choices? What are all the different frames you can think of — the different ways to focus on the story — that you hear?

Important: people can usually take either side within a frame:

Take relief => the frame is that taxes are an affliction. "No new taxes" and "The rich should pay more" => both positions treat taxes like an affliction, opposite positions within the same frame.

(2) [usually easy] Which of these frames is more focused on the values you want to emphasize?

Techniques: 
language and frame

Facts Do Work — Bricks or Artillery?

admin
Fri 2018-12-07
When you have political conversations, how do you use facts? Do you lob them at opponents like artillery? And then your opponent digs a deeper trench to avoid the blast? If you use facts like artillery, your opponent will dig trenches and build bunkers: facts work in the story you use them. Or do you architect a building of shared values, and build it by placing facts like bricks, building up the story of your values? A story people are welcome to explore if they are curious — not a battle for you to win and them to lose. Facts work there too.
Techniques: 
Facts: When They Work, When They Fail
conversational frame

The Need to Reach Across the Aisle

admin
Thu 2018-10-04

Have you given up on communication techniques to politically opposed voters? Don't bother with active listening, don't bother with framing, because it's hopeless?

The results of how the we handled Kavanaugh should change your mind.