Session 19: Strategic Communications, the Media, and Public Will
Monday, March 18

Efforts to introduce Family Centered Community Building must take into account the powerful influence of mass communications. In particular, important new research shows that news coverage (both print and broadcast) has a profound effect on what issues people believe to be important (agenda-setting); the lens through which they interpret issues (framing); and whether they use this information in making judgments about social groups, policy preferences, and electoral politics (priming). In short, the mass media, and especially the news media, powerfully shapes the ways in which people relate to their communities.

The challenge for community improvement advocates is to develop strategic communications capacity that can be utilized to influence the shape and scope of public discourse and policy. There are several important conceptual and methodological tools that can be utilized to help families and communities communicate more effectively. In this section of the course we focus on strategies that frame and reframe an issue or a specific initiative so that it can be both understood by confederates as well as move the public policy and community change process forward.

Major Themes to Be Covered

1. The importance of mass communications to community-building efforts. We call special attention to the role of the news media given its stature as the primary source of public affairs information.
   
   
2. The significance of social cognition for public understandings of social issues. Thus, the ways in which people think about issues -- that is, the metaphors, language, imagery, and messages they rely on to sort through the torrent of public information in modern life - has a profound effect on the kinds of public policies and programs they are willing to endorse.
   
   
3. A major challenge for community building advocates is the development of appropriate strategic communications capacity with which to influence public perceptions. In particular, the ability to identify dominant frames and develop strategies to forward alternative frames of understanding.
   
   
4. The importance of mass communications for social movements. How and under what conditions strategic communications can mobilize the citizenry to engage in collective action on issues related to Family Centered Community Building development.

Students Will Learn

1. How communications and mass media influence what and how Americans think.
   
   
2. How to identify the ways in which community-building issues are framed and how to develop communications strategies to move a specific issue framework.
   
   
3. How to "reframe" community-building issues in a way that moves public will and encourages community investments in families.
   
   
4. The connection between strategic communications and social movements.

Suggested Readings: