How to Communicate With Your “Anti-audience”? Communicate Beyond Your “Digital Fences”
Turkey has experienced one of its historic firsts recently: The President’s Office announced Turkey’s withdrawal from a human rights treaty, widely known as the “Istanbul Treaty” by the President. As the first binding Council of Europe treaty to prevent domestic violence, the convention named after Turkey’s biggest city, due to the country’s leading role in its creation. Turkey was the first CoE member state to ratify the treaty in 2012, and now it is the first to leave.
As I’ve been witnessing closely the dramatic transformation of Turkish politics and the preposterous rhetoric used by Turkish politicians for years, this decision hasn’t surprised me that much but what shocked me the most was those street interviews to see the public’s reaction to this decision. Most of the interviewees were fiercely supporting the decision, condemning the treaty for undermining the Turkish family values, encouraging divorce and homosexuality. Some of them were going even further, calling this treaty “the Trojan Horse”, designed by the western world, to destroy Turkish society. (Again, the lead signatory of this treaty was Turkey) And when those people were asked whether they read the treaty or they knew what it was about, the answer was, “No, I don’t know, I didn’t read. But I know it’s bad.”
Fact Resistance
Sure it wasn’t the first time I faced the existence of “fact resistance”, “confirmation bias” or “motivated reasoning” plays out in real life. Still, those blunt and resentful answers against the treaty, without even reading it, made me think about a big challenge that lies in front of the communications professionals working in the public policy and politics area. How can we break resistance against the truth and facts or confirmation bias in today’s societies and convey complex problems clearly and effectively to the general public?
I started my solo brainstorming by focusing on the description of confirmation bias: “The tendency for people to seek and accept information that confirms their existing beliefs while rejecting or ignoring that which contradicts those beliefs.” For most of us, daily news intake is not aimed at learning what’s happening in the world from an unbiased viewpoint; it aims to confirm and strengthen what they already believe. The more we can prove ourselves right, the more we feel empowered. The second factor here is one of the major “side effects” of social media: The endless need of feeling approved and accepted. While our digital tribes and friends have enormously helped us make meaningful connections beyond our physical reach and saved us from mental breakdowns from isolation during situations like lockdowns, those networks pumped up an unprecedented need for immediate gratification and approval from others. This is deeply ingrained in human psychology; like in prehistoric times, the social isolation or dismissal equals death; in this context, “death in the digital world”. These two reasons force us to stay within the limit of the information sources and digital tribes that satisfy our need for validation and acceptance by the others, instead of searching for the truth or different opinions.
But we should know our own faults before blaming others for theirs, shouldn’t we? How do we, PR and media professionals, communicate? Some of us, we do follow the same patterns: seeking approval from our “safe audiences”, communicating through our same regular platforms and refraining from thinking outside the box and listening to our “anti-audience”.
Know Your “Anti-Audience”
Yes, “anti-audience”. I think, like the marketers create their “anti-personas”, PR and media professionals should create their own “anti-personas” too. But with one major difference: Instead of using these profiles to identify people, you don’t want to target, use these profiles to create content for “the others” you haven’t targeted before to widen your audience. I believe the adage of “Write for everyone, write for no one” doesn’t apply to journalists and communicators working in public policy or advocacy areas. News or global/ public issues can’t have one specific target audience like a product or service; these messages are crucial to be understood and acted upon by the wider public. We should get to know, listen and understand our “anti-audience” and create content to break the ice.
Capture people’s attention spans shorter than a goldfish’s
How can we break into those tribes, convince those people to look for different information sources and make their content appear on their social media feeds? Well, this is not an easy task at all. I advocate for simple, catchy and unbiased storytelling to reach “the others”. Since our attention span getting shorter and shorter (In fact, a study claims that we now have shorter attention spans than a goldfish), in order to attract the attention of “the others”, who are not our regular and committed audience, our messages and content should be simpler and more attractive than ever. Here I have an open mind to use unorthodox formats and platforms for the policy professionals, if the targeted audience is there: Tik Tok videos, videos with big and colourful captions on-screen with conspicuous or trendy music, niche Facebook groups, influencers, etc.
Communicating beyond “our limiting digital fences”
As suggested by Adrian Bardon, a Professor of Philosophy, “Human cognition is inseparable from the unconscious emotional responses that go with it. Under the right conditions, universal human traits like in-group favouritism, existential anxiety and a desire for stability and control combine into a toxic, system-justifying identity politics. When group interests, creeds, or dogmas are threatened by unwelcome factual information, biased thinking becomes denial. And unfortunately, these facts about human nature can be manipulated for political ends.”
It’s a bit bleak and gloomy diagnosis, I know. These facts alone have limited power to resolve our issues regarding biased information consumption and social polarisation, because they are deeply ingrained in human psychology. But I believe in this communications era, the solution will come with effective communications. Understanding this phenomenon of denial, making daring efforts to understand “the others beyond our digital fences”, and trying to communicate with them will be key steps towards a solution.
