Archives: News

Everything that (I believe) is wrong with the often used statement ‘voice for the voiceless’

I grew up in India. Compared to most, I grew up privileged. I received a good education; I was’nt discriminated against for being a girl, no-one told me what to wear, what to think and above all I was free to make my own life-choices. The last, in itself, is a privilege anywhere in the world.

But, I was surrounded by people who didn’t share my freedoms and, my teenage years were filled with righteous indignation. What, I’ve learned over the years is that the temptation to speak for those who may seem to be voiceless or suppressed is tempting but dangerous.

Feeding the fire

If you google the statement giving the ‘voiceless a voice’ or being a ‘voice for the voiceless’ you’ll find numerous well-meaning organizations aiming to do just that. And while it is a noble sentiment it simply fuels the fire of pained silence.

Why? Firstly, I have found through my interviews with people who on the surface often seem to lack a voice – don’t. They lack the space to express it. They lack an audience who cares or can make a difference. Secondly, giving someone a voice simply occupies the space where their own voice could’ve been. I find it diminishes their agency.

And lastly, what most people I’ve interviewed – whether it is a woman who’s suffered domestic abuse or a child who wants to go to school but cannot because they have to work or get married – share is not the wish to be given a voice. Their voice is often loud enough! They simply want to be heard. And if those of us who care or want to make a difference are busy trying to give them a voice, who is actually listening?

What Facebook got right

I believe that’s why Facebook is such a success. I’m not a fan of the devious machinations the company gets up to. But, admittedly, they are providing a stage to people, who are frequently judged and marginalized, to voice their stories and opinions. Of course, on Facebook that voice comes at a hefty price. I’m not saying that theirs is the model to follow. What I am saying is that they’ve touched a nerve. A very sore spot.

How can we translate what they do to development discourse? I, for one would like to focus on setting the stage and making space for diverse stories to be heard. Not in my voice, but in the voice of those who are telling it. And through my work I’d like to make sure that the right people are listening.

setting the stage

Book Review: The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall

This is by no means a new book. But it crossed my path recently and I found it to be quite a good read. Especially if you are in the business of content creation or storytelling. Whatever format that may be in, videos, text, images etc.

I must admit I had to plough through the first three chapters. But after that it really drew me in. At the heart of the book lies the fact that stories are a way for us, human beings, to understand and break down the world around us. Our brains are constantly working hard to piece together bits of information into coherent stories that give our lives, and what is happening around us, meaning.

In the chapter ‘The mind is a storyteller’ he writes:

The human mind is tuned to detect patterns and, it is biased toward false positives rather than false negatives. According to psychologists, this is part of a ‘mind design’ that helps us perceive meaningful patterns in our environments. Our hunger for meaningful patterns translates into a hunger for story.’

And not just any story. We seem to thirst for stories with happy endings and a good strong moral on which we can base our lives.

But that’s not all. He also explores conspiracy theories. Afterall, they are stories too. They help their readers make sense of the world around them. Of them, he writes ‘conspiracy theories – no matter how many devils they invoke – are always consoling in their simplicity’.

Usually there is a bad guy or guys that need to be defeated for the problem to simply go away. While Gottschall does not delve into the heart of conspiracy theories, I find that his ideas do offer some insight into the rise of conspiracy theories. Particularly now, with social media laying bare all the sufferings from around the world we need a bad guy to vanquish to make everything better. Quickly.

This book offers a deep insight in the mind of a storyteller i.e., every human being. Every minute of our lives are embroiled in stories of our own making or those we’ve learned from books, the internet, tik-tok or youtube. So, it is a good read for those of us who are creating stories to draw in people so that they can take positive action – whether that is towards mitigating climate change or supporting human and animal rights.

What I primarily took away from this book was just how intrinsic storytelling is to our living experience, right down from the caveman with their paintings to us with our books and blogs. The medium may change by the need for stories will not. Without stories we simply cannot exist.

Breathing life into buzzwords

The development sector is buzzing with buzzwords (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I, along with numerous others resort to using them so that our content can belong in the world we are trying to reach, and belong to the people we are trying to reach. So, when the readers read a familiar buzzword they know (or have to assume they know) what we are talking about. These words, we hope, convey gravitas, that we know what we’re talking about and that we have our finger on the pulse.

There are a lot of studies written on the use of buzzwords not just in the development sector but for all sorts of marketing. I am not trying to rival any of these studies or go into the academics of semantics. I would however like to question whether at this time, when so many of our conversations are online, when so many hearts and minds are reached online and not in a pub or a café, we should be reevaluating our use of buzzwords?

Leaving gaps for misinformation to thrive

I’m not about to wage a war on buzzwords. They help the reader find what they are looking for. What I’m questioning is perhaps the context surrounding them. Take for instance the buzzword ‘innovative’. It is omnipresent within and without the development sector. I use it too. But I often see it floating adrift without a context that might set that particular ‘innovative’ apart and anchor it to that particular text. To one person innovative might mean one thing and to another something completely different.

At the same time buzzwords are also useful because they spare the reader from trawling through reams of complex information. But they need very distinct and tailor-made content surrounding them. Without it, these terms and other kinds of jargon leave a lot to the imagination of the reader and for the large part they are very ambiguous. Perhaps we as the writers presume too much of our readers? And while this can be seen as a testament to the bond between the writer and reader, because our reach (thanks to social media) has exploded, sometimes our bond with the reader wears thin. And more often than not, this results in large gaps between what is written and what is then understood by the reader.

I believe it is in these gaps that misinformation thrives. Something, we can all acknowledge is a growing problem.

Of course, I’m not insinuating that the ambiguity of buzzwords is to blame for the spread of misinformation. I think, however, that they do contribute to it. Not just that; they alienate people who may not be privy to these seemingly coded messages, creating a bit of an ‘insider’ feeling.

Illuminate not eliminate

How can we fill these gaps? We’ve established that we can’t eliminate buzzwords, particularly in an age powered by search engines that rely on keywords. We could, instead, illuminate them. Buzzwords can gain or lose their power based on the words that precede and succeed them. For instance, as author of the paper ‘Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse’, Andrea Cornwall writes “Embedding words in chains of equivalence that secure meanings that would otherwise be pared away… can give tired buzzwords a new lease of life.”[1]

She also, poetically describes words as constellations when she writes “Thinking of words in terms of constellations rather than in the singular opens up further strategies for reclaiming ‘lost’ words, as well as salvaging some of the meanings that were never completely submerged.”

I recommend her paper, if you’re battling buzzwords too.

To illuminate buzzwords we need to surround them with context that sheds light on what we precisely mean in that particular instance. This I find is especially vital since content and context should anyway be tailor-made to its target audience. Personally, I’m striving to find that balance between breathing new life into the buzzwords by surrounding it with ‘words in chains of equivalence that secure their meaning’ and not using contexts that have been done to death. Buzzwords are merely bait, it’s the context (or frame) surrounding them is the real catch.

——-

[1] Andrea Cornwall (2007) Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse, Development in Practice, 17:4-5, 471-484, DOI: 10.1080/09614520701469302

FAQ on the Climate Crisis by people who don’t have the time to research it

Arctic Glaciers I recently had an eye-opening conversation about climate change with a childhood friend of mine. We happened to start discussing some of projects I’d been working on. At some point in our conversation I suddenly realized that I spend so much time talking to people who are already embedded in the topic and the looming climate crisis that I had made a horrible assumption. I had assumed that most people know about the intricacies of the looming crisis.

This friend of mine is a neurologist, she teaches neurology and she’s studying epidemiology in her free time. So, she’s busy! She doesn’t have the time to delve into the climate crisis too. She’s too busy solving the health crisis.

That got me thinking, perhaps I could write down some questions that came up and make a sort of FAQ on the climate crisis for those people who don’t have the time to research it on their own.

I’m not a climate scientist, but as a communications and research consultant it is my job to know how to find answers to the questions and communicate them in an accessible fashion.

If you have questions you’d like to add to the list or sources that provide easy information, please feel free to email me!

Read the FAQ here.

Gender Equality in Climate Change Communication

I recently joined a very informative webinar hosted by the Reuters Institute of Journalism and the University of Oxford on the ‘Missing Perspectives of Women in the Covid-19 News’. Speaking on the issue was Luba Kassova of AKAS. Her presentation was based on a report that AKAS had written for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Juliana Romao for Unsplash

Of the many insights I gathered from the talk, and later reading the report, here are three of my key take-aways. I am aware I am drawing parallels, but I believe we could use these findings to ensuring gender equality while talking about climate change too. Both, in how we engage with women as readers and protagonists.

Women are more interested in the local angle

According to the study, women are more likely (than men) to be interested in the local angle. The report recommends covering local dimensions of the story to improve engagement among women. Especially topics that worry women the most like, unemployment, healthcare, crime and gender violence. Particularly in the global south.

Women are drawn to news that has a human-interest angle

Somewhat related to the point mentioned above, the report suggests including more news stories that “offer micro-angles anchored in human interest stories emphasizing the humanity in this crisis.” Rather than focusing on the macro-level. The report finds that only 9% of the many international stories they researched on Covid-19 had a human story within them. They also found that surprisingly few women were the main protagonists in these stories. Consequently, one of their many recommendations was to make sure women were quoted often in news articles as experts.

Non-profit organisations frequently use human-interest stories to engage their audience. I have written many myself. So, it’s nice to have the research to back up the efficacy of this kind of communication.

Facts are overtaking both men and women

According to Luba the detached facts took over the human aspect of the Covid-19 coverage in the news articles that they tended to be less ‘emotionally engaging’. That is not to say that the study recommends dispensing with facts. According to the report putting facts within a human-interest frame, adding an individual’s story to it, makes the fact memorable. Especially to women.

Of course, this is but a quick glimpse into the fascinating report. I’ve merely skimmed the surface of things. It is a valuable resource on improving how we communicate about climate change and how we can direct our efforts to engage more women and add more women’s voices to the narrative. You could read the whole report here.

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of The Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

I highly recommend this book. Particularly if you still carry your childhood fascination for dinosaurs into adult life. As I do. Paleontologist, Brusatte, manages to distill a vast amount of complex information into an accessible book. He also explains complex geological concepts and research findings with great ease. He peppers the book with anecdotes that lighten what could be a dry read. And the passion with which he pursues his subject echoes in each page of his book.

The narrative around dinosaurs is often one of failure, that they died at the peak of their time on Earth. However, in the Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs, Brusatte views these beasts, that have captured our collective imagination, as an evolutionary success. At a time when the Earth’s core came bubbling over, and on more than one occasion baked its inhabitants, dinosaurs managed to survive, evolve and become monstrous marvels that somehow survived millions of years. Of the sauropods (the Brachiosaurus, the Brontosaurus etc.) he writes that one of the reasons why they managed to grow as large as they did was as because they “weren’t competing for the same plants but dividing the resources among themselves.” The scientific term for this, he says is niche partitioning.

I am inclined to agree with him. This book was first published in 2018. But I am reading it now in the midst of a pandemic and at the brink of a climate catastrophe. And that brings me to my main take-away from the book.

The Earth’s warming, the seas heating and melting icecaps aren’t a new phenomenon. This has happened before and will happen again for sure. But our behaviour has exacerbated the process tremendously. What took a couple of a million years in the time of the dinosaurs, in the era of human beings has just taken a couple of millennia. Us human beings haven’t lived a fraction of the lives of the dinosaurs. Evidently, the Earth will renew itself and new life will blossom. Will human beings be a part of that new life? Like dinosaurs will we evolve and reinvent ourselves and perhaps partake in some niche partitioning?

So, it seems to me that the climate isn’t in crisis, human life is. Shouldn’t we call it what it is? Who knows, it just might elicit the response we need to address it.

Sweden: What Could Climate Change Communicators learn from the Covid-19 crises? (Part 2)

Waiting for an interview — Steve Halama for Unsplash

It’s no secret that ever since the Coronavirus shut down most of the world, Sweden has been an outlier. As a resident of Sweden, it’s been interesting to see the narrative that has been swirling around the Nordic country’s approach to the lockdown. Actually, ‘interesting’ is putting it mildly. I’m not going to throw my hat into the ring and fight for my point of view on whether the decisions have been wise or unwise. I definitely don’t have the expertise to comment. What I can comment on are the questions that are being asked about the country’s approach and my take-away on what people like myself, who communicate about different crises, could learn from it.

Sharing the same story

In Sweden, like most other countries, there seems to be one overarching narrative that seems to be over-shadowing the seemingly smaller stories. This, I understand, is the nature of the storytelling beast: If something appeals to the audience, the writers will churn out more of it. It’s easy. For example, in India, lack of a livelihood is forcing hungry migrants stuck in locked-down cities to return to their home-states. Some desperately walk for miles to get home. Each individual story is heart-rending and heroic. And international news is rife with these stories.

Similarly, in Sweden, the narrative that the Swedish government is experimenting with herd-immunity by not implementing a lockdown has eliminated all other lines of questioning. I recently watched a BBC Hardtalk interviewer ask the country’s most quoted epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, about why so many of the country’s elderly had lost their lives to the virus.

However, instead of pursuing a line of questioning that would actually lead to a new, more relevant response i.e. systemic cost-cutting that had led to poor management, the interviewer pursued the herd-immunity line of questioning that every international media house has done to death.

New questions, new voices and new stories

Consequently, very little was added to the narrative of the country during that interview. Which, to me, seems like a missed opportunity to shine a spotlight on a problem that sorely needs to be addressed.

So, what can we learn from this for communication around the climate crisis? The Covid-19 crisis like the climate crisis touches every corner of society and will only get worse if the issues that need to be addressed aren’t. Simply because the questions aren’t being asked. I find that if we are to tackle something so ubiquitous, we cannot afford to stick to a populist line of questioning. For instance in the Hardtalk interview Anders Tegnell could’ve been asked about what was being done to address the disproportionate number of fatalities within minority communities. Perhaps then the global narrative around Sweden might have experienced a bit of a detour.

To institute global change that will tackle a scaled-up version of the Covid-19, which the climate crisis is fated to be, we also need to scale-up the questions we ask, the voices we hear and the stories we tell.

What Could Climate Change Communicators Learn From the Covid-19 Crisis? (Part 1)

Social distancing is not a new phenomenon. In the 1600s when the plague hit the UK Charles II issued public rules an d orders that included quarantine and social distancing. Of course, we’ve come a long way from the middle ages. Thankfully, we don’t have to rely on priests and rumours or even town criers to learn what’s happening in our own country or distant lands.

Indian papers — Photo by Rishabh Sharma for Unsplash

But as we learned from past catastrophes, I am certain there is a lot we could learn from our present plight. I, for one, am observing and learning from the vital role clear and actionable communication plays in how successful an approach is within a particular context. This crisis, unlike the SARS or Ebola crises, is omnipresent and every single country needs to face it head-on. Hence the aspects that do work and those that don’t could be used to improve how we communicate about climate change the world over.

Over the coming weeks I’d like to document what I’ve observed and some of my key take-aways.

Revisiting the basics – language of information

This is something I took a little for granted. I thought “we know what language we need to use there’s no need to revisit that”. But the current situation has made me look at it with fresh eyes.

In Stockholm, Sweden, for example, a high percent of Somali-Swedes died after testing positive for Covid-19. It’s emerged that the areas hosting larger multi-cultural populations seem to be a lot more susceptible to the disease. Upon examining why this is the case, the governing authorities have found that one of the contributing factors is that the ever-changing information and guidelines around the situation, disseminated by the government, are primarily in Swedish. Information relevant to Stockholm in Somali or even English (I rely heavily on google translate and The Local in Sweden) is sparse.

After realising this, amongst other things, Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT introduced English subtitles to their current affairs programme. And several different public and private organisations are now making information available in English and several other languages, including Somali.

Will this reduce the number of Somali-Swedes being infected? Time will tell. I hope it does.

In the face of a pandemic, it becomes clear just how important it is to revisit and critically identify the languages of one’s target audience down to the smallest minority. Is the information accessible to absolutely everyone? I believe, this lesson holds true for communication regarding the climate crisis too. Every single individual needs to be in the loop. Or at least have access to it, should they choose to learn more about it.

COVID-19 has shown that in times of crises it could save lives.

Book Review – ‘Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel’ by Carl Safina

In his introduction, Carl Safina writes “When a poacher kills an elephant, he doesn’t just kill the elephant who dies. The family may lose the crucial memory of the elder matriarch, who knew where to travel during the very toughest years of drought to reach the food and water that would allow them to continue living.”

Elephants at a watering hole in Namibia — Photo by Richard Jacobs on Unsplash

The book isn’t about poaching. It is a well-researched look into how animals, primarily elephants, wolves and killer whales, communicate. Safina’s enthusiasm and curiosity are palpable throughout the book, making it an easy read.

When I started reading it, I must admit that I was worried it would be highly anthropomorphised. In fact, rather than making anthropomorphic assumptions he vigorously questions and examines his subjects’ behaviour. For example, in the chapter ‘A Perfect Wolf’, he delves into the story of Yellowstone’s legendary ‘Twenty-One’ – The wolf who never lost a fight and never killed a vanquished foe. Of this Perfect Wolf, he writes “Twenty-one’s restraint in letting vanquished rivals go free seems incredible. What could it be? Mercy? Can a Wolf be magnanimous? And if so, why?”

At the same time, it is hard not to draw any parallels with human communication and motives. He writes “Certainly, projecting feelings onto other animals can lead to us misunderstanding their motivations. But denying that they have any motivations guarantees that we’ll misunderstand it. Not assuming that other animals have thoughts and feelings was a good start for a new science.”

Although this book was published five years ago in 2015, according to me, if you work with animal welfare, conservation or just love animals, this book is a jewel. It opened my eyes to the depth, wonder and intricacies of communication amongst animals. And also, to the genuine dedication of the people who surround them and how far they’ll go to protect them.

Taking a Trip Free of Eco-Anxiety and Flygskam

Shame as a motivator has been studied for years by psychologists and may serve as an impetus for change. But in this age of eco-anxiety is it really empowering us to make the changes we need to make?

Sweden ranks among the top 5 most sustainable countries on many a sustainability index. This can be witnessed in several aspects of life, not just flying. Our homes are heated with the garbage we produce. So much so, that the country ran out of garbage and has had to import it from other countries. And almost every busy high street has a second-hand shop that is bustling with eager shoppers looking for a hidden gem.

I’ve lived in Stockholm for the last two years. I moved here from the Netherlands and I see a growing number of young professionals feeling guilty about jetting off to some exotic location for their holidays. Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist, isn’t the only Swede to shun the skies and take on the high seas in light of the climate crisis. There has been a distinct drop in passengers at Sweden’s airport. The BBC reported that between January 2019 to April 2019 the number of passengers at the country’s busiest airports fell by 8%. A term has been coined for this pervasive feeling – flygskam – or flying shame.

From shaming to sharing

Shame as a motivator has been studied for years by psychologists and may serve as an impetus for change. But in this age of eco-anxiety is it really empowering us to make the changes we need to make?

Personally, as a woman, I am very familiar with the debilitating aspects of shame impinged on our gender by society. It isn’t very empowering. So, I’d like to approach reducing my carbon footprint less out of shame and more out of a genuine desire and urgency to make a positive impact. I try to reduce my carbon footprint by not owning a car, taking public transport and using trains for short trips and holidays. And I tend to take a more adventurous view to a little weekend getaway. It’s an adventure on its own to take a holiday without a trip to the airport – without breaking the bank.

I’ve found that many parts of the world have many options that are waiting to be explored.

All aboard!

The train service across Europe is extremely well organized; anyone who’s taken a gap year around Europe can attest to it. Many countries power their trains with renewable energy. The trains within the Netherlands, for example, are powered by 100% wind energy. When I lived in The Netherlands, my husband and I took weekend trips to off-beat destinations around the country. The Dutch train service even offers weekend deals. And if you don’t speak Dutch you could use google translate to navigate the Dutch website.

Of course, if one doesn’t live in Europe, one will need to fly here from someplace. Holidays afforded to most working folk are brief and taking a ship may not really be an option in terms of time. But then instead of hopping from country to country by flight one could cut the carbon footprint of a holiday by taking the hi-speed train, say from Frankfurt to Copenhagen. Nothing beats watching the beautiful countryside speed by. If you’re in Stockholm, you could take the train to neighbouring capitals like Helsinki or Oslo. Or even take a trip up north to see the Northern lights. These trains can be quite reasonably priced if booked well in advance. I once booked a return trip to Copenhagen on a very comfortable train for $40.

Not just in Europe

That said, train travel isn’t just efficient in Europe. In India too, the country with the fourth largest train network in the world, trains weave through and connect many parts of the country that are otherwise unreachable by plane. Having grown up in India, I must admit it used to be a hassle to stand in serpentine lines waiting to book your ticket. But with the train booking going online this time-consuming step has been cut out. You get to see a lot more of the country this way.

These are just a few of the ways I circumvent using the plane. But I do have to take it when I have to visit my family in India. But rather than riddling myself with the shame, I offset my CO2, an option provided by some airlines, and I find ways to contribute to the sustainability index of the country I am visiting. For example, in India, where water is scarce, I avoid wasting water and indulging in long showers, and wherever I go I don’t buy omnipresent disposable plastic bags and bottles. However, inconvenient it may be at the time.