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Does Your Message Have the Same Old Frame? Message Framing and Health Disparities
NPHIC Annual Conference September 2007
Susan D. Kirby, [email protected]
Sponsored by the Southern Center for Communication, Health & PovertyA CDC-Designated Center for Excellence in Health Communication and Marketing
www.southerncenter.uga.edu
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Message Framing
• Gain vs. loss framing• Usually aimed at direct health behavior audience
• Strategic frame analysis• Used for policy and societal mobilization
audiences
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Gain versus Loss Framing
• Gain = Lives saved • Loss = Lives lost• Gain promotes risk aversion
• Prefer small certain gains to large possible gains• Best for prevention behaviors
• Loss promotes risk seeking• Prefer possible large/small loss to any certain loss• Best for detection or screening behaviors
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Gain versus Loss Framing
• If ‘certain’ of screening outcome• Gain framing is more effective
• If ‘uncertain’ of screening outcome• Loss framing is more effective
• Pointing out health disparities• Creates negative reaction
• Cultural targeting • Enhances effectiveness with “right” frame• Not more effective if combined with ‘wrong’ frame
• More disparity research needed
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CVD versus Diabetes35 Overweight AA Male
‘Certain’ CVD
You can add years to your life if you get tested and treated for CVD today
‘Uncertain’ Diabetes
You can prevent losing a leg, foot, or toe by getting tested and treated for diabetes today
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Strategic Frame Analysis
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How We Process Information
• Mental shortcuts help us make sense • Communication has cues about where
to fit information into existing knowledge
• Helps us connect to shortcuts or “dominant frames”
• New information seen through dominant frames
• Our understanding is frame-based• Not fact-based
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Strategic Frame Research
• Identifies deep values, beliefs, and assumptions
• Studies their impact on policy preferences
• Uncovers ways to change how issues are framed
• Communication shift attitudes and behaviors
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Why It Matters …
• Perceptions shaped by core beliefs
• New thinking challenges core beliefs
• If challenged we revert to familiar
• Makes it hard for people to hear new messages• We have to connect people to a different frame
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By connecting an issue to an existing valued high-level frame, we can reframe how people think and feel about an issue.
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‘Estate tax’ is one way to frame tax debate
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‘Death tax’ reframed this tax debate
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Framing Strategy Includes
• Connecting issue w/ valued frame
• Thematic not episodic context• Simplifying model or metaphor• Social math• Messengers• Visuals• Tone
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Framing Levels• Level One
• Big ideas, like freedom, justice, community, success, responsibility
• Level Two• Issue types, like the environment or child care
• Level Three• Specific issues, like rainforests or earned
income tax credits
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Level One ExamplesWe want to live in a society that is …
• Authentic• Caring• Committed• Community focused• Competitive• Connected to others
• Increasing Knowledge
• Nurturing• Positive in Outlook• Responsible• Safe/ Secure
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Level Two
• Level 2 frames can focus on issues like children, elderly, education, friendship, or corporate America
• Level 2 can also be a new or novel way of grouping issues together
• Prisons and education• Children and corporate America
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Building a Framing Story
• Connect your issue to a Level 1 value• Ask what kind of world people want to live in
• Ask what would that world look like?• Level 2 connected to level 1
• Many issues can fit into Level 2 for different purposes
• Level 3 specifies how Level 2 is achieved
• Tell a story linking levels 1 to 2 to 3
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Linking Levels Together
Tobacco• Level 1 - We want to live in a truthful
society• Level 2 - Companies are honest about their
products• Level 3 – Policies that require disclosure of
product contents
Cancer• Level 1 - We want to live in a hopeful
society• Level 2 - Diseases like cancer can be cured• Level 3 – Program to identify cancer cures
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Context
Families should handle their own stuff, We should stay out of it. The family bubble.
Andy needed the support of others, and a solid town like Mayberry to avoid abusive situations as a single parent
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Numbers – Social Math
• GOOD - In the 60s, about 11 of 25 kids walked or biked to school. By 2001, only 4 of them were getting exercise that way.
• BETTER – Today lots of schools are ere farther away from their students. Now walking or biking to school is the equivalent of doing a 5K race or more - twice a day.
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VisualsWhat are youth doing today?
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Metaphor or ModelBrain Foundation = Architecture
• Early experiences affect the architecture of the maturing brain.
• The quality of that architecture establishes either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all following development
• Getting things right the first time is easier and less costly than trying to fix them later.
=
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Disparity-related FramingThe Dominant Frames We Know
• Individual responsibility• People are the ones who decide if they smoke!
• In-Community responsibility• It’s that community’s fault!
• Poverty isn’t the problem• Education is problem with poor health choices!
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Disparity Framing Research
• Disparity focus increases stereotyping
• Stimulates negative reactions in all parties
• ‘Quality of Life’ resonates• ‘Community conditions’ also
• Civic wellbeing resonates• Cost prevention resonates
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Disparity Framing Research
• Physical and org structures are useful terms
• Include ‘elderly as examples’ • Stay solutions focused
• Community needs to involved• Use close to home examples
• ‘Patchwork with gaps” metaphor• Does not trigger stereotypes
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• Focus messages on solutions not the problem - early in the message
• Avoid negative stereotypes
• Do not repeat the current ineffective frames
• Repetition, repetition, repetition
More Framing Advice
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Resources
• Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Health Education Buck: Message Framing and Reducing Health Disparities. Schneider American Behavioral Scientist. 2006; 49: 812-822
• FrameWorks Institute Report• http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/clients/commhealth_civicwell
being.pdf
• Berkley Media Studies Group• Kirby Marketing Solutions at www.kirbyms.com• Southern Center for Communication, Health &
Poverty at www.southerncenter.uga.edu
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Question and Answer
Small Group Activity