The best Harvard Business review article I've ever seen?
Side-by-side test of a 'good' strategy visualisation slide vs a 'bad' one of the same strategy. Both still pretty basic design most people could pull off in G-Slides.
By João Cotter Salvado and Freek Vermeulen. via @firetail.bsky.social
..by Yewande O. Addie @rti.bsky.social , @maccahanson.bsky.social , Emily Melnick, Melody Mohebi, and Annie Niemand.
How to measure something as complex (and hyped) as 'narrative change'? Concise article on latest thinking:
- 3 'buckets' (Culture, StratComms, Organising) & how they blend
- 4 steps to start with (most only do #1 & #2)
- 4 principles ("Focus on contribution > attribution")
ssir.org/articles/ent...
In another case of "actually quite good comms by EU leadership?!"
This disinformation 'factcheck' post is:
✅ Lighthearted
✅ References the lie without repeating it
✅ Ascribes motivation to the liars to help innoculate Vs future disinformation
✅ Squeezes in proactive message
I sense the shadowy hooded figure of @avtorres4.bsky.social behind this... 👏👏👏
Great blog for people like me and most of the orgs I work with who worry about compromised US tech services but feel: "well, even if it's not legal, at least you'd be wrong with everyone else".
Along with very practical steps and Martijn's own experience this gives a lot of reassurance its possible
Freud museum collection: "This intriguing Metal figure of a porcupine with quills sat on Freud’s desk from 1909 onwards. Its individually crafted quills are decorative but sharp."
Politics of arms-races aside, I am unequivocably in favour of EU figures using original and (you've got to hand it to VDL) baddass heavy-metal language.
Is "steel porcupine" literally Freudian? Can't find any other reference. @freudmuseumlondon.bsky.social
www.freud.org.uk/collections/...
In his 1874 essay On Nature, this was one of the main problems with making "appeals to nature" that philosopher John Stuart Mill pointed out. "Either it is right that we should kill because nature kills; torture because nature tortures; ruin and devastate because nature does the like; or we ought not to consider at all what nature does, but do what it is good to do." In other words: if the premise of the appeal to nature is correct that anything "natural" must be better, because it's natural, then we have to be willing to embrace everything that comes from nature. If we aren't, well, we probably don't really believe something is inherently better because it's natural.
151 years ago John Stuart Mill had a response to "natural = better" that works equally well for conservative anti-gender, survival-of-the-fittest arguments as it does for your in-laws' opinions on groceries & medicines.
Great shout by @amandaruggeri.bsky.social www.bbc.com/future/artic...
A few years ago, we worked with NEON, @350.org, and a bunch of grassroots groups across the UK on Framing Climate Justice. We wanted to work out how to communicate about climate change in ways that would lead to wide-scale action, and stay grounded in racial justice values
framingclimatejustice.org
Exhibit #1 (when it selfishly dawned on me, anyway) was that sharing pronouns also helps people with 'unfamiliar' (i.e. ethnic minority) names.
Exhibit #749 of 'making life easier for minorities eventually makes life easier for all of us': the only images anyone can 'see' today on BlueSky are the ones with Alt Text.
💯 - its not just defeatist it feels a bit like a lazy copout, their weaknesses are prob more instructive than their (uneven, as you say) strengths.
It's been pernicious in my sector of progressive communications ppl too, did a short vid about it with counter+examples
youtu.be/wQiAy34JlA4?...
🤣 what you learning?
...that 'lack of audience interest' isn't just something that campaigners should throw our hands up at, we know that media perceptions of audience interest are in large part driven by campaigns & conversation they see online, often by intentional activism (Tibet, Darfur & Kony show it's possible)
Why is "the world's worst humanitarian disaster" (150k dead, 11million displaced) getting even less than usual media coverage?
Summary of brutally honest & practical journalist feedback for NGOs by @markgalloway.bsky.social for @bondngo.bsky.social.
I'd add...
www.bond.org.uk/news/2025/01...
A Dutch court today ruled that Prime Minister Dick Schoof’s government must ramp up efforts to cut nitrogen pollution in protected nature areas, handing Greenpeace Netherlands a significant legal win.
👏 Fantastic BBC Wales documentary tonight following a brave undercover journalist infiltrating the vile Patriotic Alternative group.
Also includes a shout-out for @hopenothate.org.uk from a PA activist who lost his job at HMRC after we exposed his violent racism:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Graph shows world maturity on left vertical axis & time on horizontal axis & 2 lines, one showing the old world dying & another the new world struggling to be born - in between in 'the time of monster's - filled with monster emojis
"The old world is dying & the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters" Gramsci more relevant than ever! I developed a power mapping tool based on Gramscian hegemony with academic & activist colleagues. We could see neoliberal democracy coming apart / losing its hold...
![Billboard poster by Instagram: [Dutch] "Instagram tieneraccounts hebben onze sterkste, ingebouwde bescherming" [English] "Teenage Instagram accounts have our strongest, in-built protection"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ptuvhkrofjmpd4qclabatf2v/bafkreifmpd6vkylarupkqr7nq3k4evz5mr43zax6k53uzbnub3aexqqrcm)
Billboard poster by Instagram: [Dutch] "Instagram tieneraccounts hebben onze sterkste, ingebouwde bescherming" [English] "Teenage Instagram accounts have our strongest, in-built protection"
Politico Brussels Playbook newsletter "presented by TikTok: **A message from TikTok: All accounts belonging to our under-16 users are automatically set to private and restricted. This means that they can't access direct messaging, their video content cannot be downloaded and only friends can comment on their videos.**"
Social media firms' advertising strategy in the EU:
🇳🇱 In the Netherlands (ban on phones in school just started nationwide) Instagram's ad emphasises "strongest, in-built protection for teenage accounts"
🇪🇺 In the Brussels bubble's favourite newsletter, TikTok (despite imminent US ban) very similar
...and the only times a 'rebel alliance' lasted was when power sharing was done by democracy. This may be cherry picking to fit my priors but its worth repeating with the rise of 'realists' on both left & right.
h/t via Amanda Taub's always-excellent The Interpreter: www.nytimes.com/column/the-i...
Violent Origins and Authoritarian Order: Divergent Trajectories after Successful Rebellions. Abstract Existing research demonstrates that many authoritarian regimes originating in violent rebellion are exceptionally durable. By contrast, conflict scholarship emphasizes the difficulty of reestablishing order after civil war. Using original data on every regime founded by successful rebellion worldwide from 1900–2020, we demonstrate that rebel regimes follow divergent trajectories: the vast majority are either long-lived (20+ years) or short-lived (less than 5 years). The structure of the founding rebellion explains these divergent trajectories by shaping power- sharing dynamics in the new regime and the nature of conflict recurrence. Regimes founded by unified rebellions (single rebel group) become highly durable autocracies because members credibly share power within the same rebel group. By contrast, regimes founded by fractured rebellions (multiple rebel groups) are usually short-lived. Leaders must attempt to share power across armed rivals, many of whom defect and stage subsequent rebellions. Other rebellion characteristics, like social revolution and leftist ideology, cannot explain these differences.
Its become unfashionable/naive to say it, but democracy is still the 'least worst' way of protecting a revolution.
A very timely study from @kbclarke.bsky.social @annemeng.bsky.social @jackpaine.bsky.social analyses 84 times a regime has been overthrown since 1900...
osf.io/preprints/os...
This is a great shame, particularly given disruptive climate protests generate support for more moderate groups.
shorturl.at/SJOoE
FYI people interested in climate/transition messaging @dorameade.bsky.social @foeeurope.bsky.social @elliecusack.bsky.social @ellie-may-says.bsky.social @davekitching.bsky.social @barnabypace.bsky.social @ziibiing.com @naomiaklein.bsky.social @crisortunity.bsky.social @fraserjfstewart.bsky.social
...but the most effective by far at converting in-principle support into supportive action (at least in a limited digital test with UK audiences) was a "Reclaim and replace" framing, riffing off of Take Back Control.
...some dabbled in 'national energy independence'-type arguments...
...or pointing out that renewable energy (or at least the parts that work) were already publicly owned (or at least funded) anyway...
...or to emphasise the inevitability/viability of the public ownership option...
...some making the comparative case that the benefits of public ownership can be felt in being faster, fairer, greener, and cheaper than the private sector...
...and among advocates there was a mix-and-match of metaphors, some for a public sector that was 'unshackled by profit'...
...which found that there were several powerful (but often unintentional) metaphors being used in the debate about whether renewable energy should be 'driven' by the public or private sector. The vehicle/travel metaphor was sometimes comically frequent (12 uses in one US Cabinet Member's interview!)
