Resource Type: Experiments

Research confirms that humans are story-based creatures. We live in narrative contexts, and information presented in narrative form often has a deeper, longer-lasting impact on our understanding and behavior. But is the climate advocacy community doing enough to leverage our best storytelling media to connect to and activate new (and existing) audiences? And for members of the creative community, how can we ensure our work will result in meaningful social impact? Join the teams from this Lab and the Climate Story Lab team (a project of Exposure Labs and Doc Society) with three creatives working in film, virtual reality, and digital media, for a webinar exploring how to effectively tie together critical climate stories and real social impact.

This conversation highlights findings from two reports focused on how the climate advocacy community can support equitable climate resilience (the ability of communities to adapt and thrive in the face of impacts from climate change) in climate policies and programs, as advocates nationwide are pushed to think beyond a frame of “simply” climate mitigation: Making Equity Real in Climate Adaptation and Community Resilience Policies and Programs: A Guidebook and Mapping Resilience: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate Disasters.

Have you ever heard the old(ish) adage, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast?” For well-designed campaigns, it need not be an “either/or.” This webinar explored ideas around cultural strategy: what it is; how it dovetails with strengthening narrative capacity; and how organizations can integrate cultural elements into their campaign work.

In the lead up to the 2018 election, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) worked with the Analyst Institute to test the effectiveness of environmental and social pressure messages to increase voter turnout among their members. They also tested which mode of contact was most effective at increasing voter turnout: mail, SMS, or both. Results form the tests found:

The GOTV efforts increased voter turnout by 0.4 percentage points.
Both messages increased voter turnout, with suggestive evidence that the social pressure message was more effective.
All three modes of contact (mail, SMS, or both) led to increased voter turnout. Layering SMS and mail did not seem more effective then mail and SMS alone.