04. The Syllabus: E. Sport and Climate Communication
Fields Of Change: A Sustainability Handbook
A pathway to strategic communication:
01. 02. 03. Defining clear goals Identify key audiences Develop narrative and key messages
05. 04. Monitoring and learning
Of course, these different stakeholder groups overlap and need to support each other for maximum impact. There are a variety of ways in which sustainability is communicated through sport, which we can conceptualise as internal communications and external communications.
Select messages and channels
External: - Social Media: sporting personalities and organisations have a huge reach and can use their social media for impactful campaigns and engage their supporters. - Advocacy Campaigns: specific purposes or messages, such as Earth Day or Wild Wildlife Day. - Community Education: working with different groups in the local community. - Reports: creating research and synthesising information to provide insights.
Internal: - Staff Training: by providing training for staff, organisations can embed best practice across the organisation and empower employees to lead on sustainability. - Office Normalisation: if sustainability is talked about in the office or amongst an organisation's staff as an important and serious component of sport, it will become an important organisational priority.
Think about your audience, and how you should adapt:
• Your Intention - what are you trying to achieve?
• Your Tone - how are you conveying your message, and what feeling do you want to give your audience?
• Your Message - what is the key information you need your audience to take from you?
• Your Channels/Method - how are you going to reach your intended audience?
Strategic communication can be especially powerful when the goals behind it are rooted in values and hopes. Value-based communication is when your values are central to the message you are conveying, demonstrating what you think is important and why your audience should care.
This hope-based communication help us to:
Values are important because:
• We use them to judge everything that is going on around us. • We consume information related to our values and vision of the world.
• Move from fear to hope.
What Is Strategic Communication? It is important to realise that communicating about climate and sustainability is not always easy. It is not enough just to put out lots of information and hope the relevant people will take the relevant points on board. People will naturally switch off when being shown or told something which is not understandable or relevant to them specifically. This is why you should ensure that your communication is strategic. Strategic communication is the way in which we define the intention, tone, and messages of our communication based on our goal, and tailor our content and messaging appropriately. For example, when talking to councils or governing bodies, your messaging will be different compared to when you are speaking with local community NGOs. Likewise, the same news story or announcement has a different tone and emphasis depending on whether it is published through traditional print media or Instagram.
• Move from problem to a solution.
• Move from ‘against’ to in favour.
• Values tend to be sustained over time.
• Move from threat to opportunity. An example is that one message could be:
• Values communicate far more (and better) than data. In the climate context, traditional communication has often involved fear and pessimism due to the scale and importance of the problem. The idea was that if people realise how bad the situation is, they will act. However, in recent years, research and the experience of activists have shown that fear immobilises people, and to generate action we need to inspire hope 49 .
“the lack of biodiversity is going to lead to disastrous consequences such as…”, whereas a hope-based communication strategy would instead say: “we can start this community garden - think of the amazing things that will happen to improve biodiversity due to…”.
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