How target audiences view your issue depends in large measure in how you "frame" it.
People use mental shortcuts to make sense of the world. Since most people are looking to process incoming information quickly and efficiently, they rely upon cues within that new information to signal to them how to connect it with their stored images of the world. The "pictures in our heads," as Lippmann called them, might better be thought of as vividly labeled storage boxes - filled with pictures, images, and stories from our past encounters with the world and labeled youth, marriage, poverty, fairness, etc. The incoming information provides cues about which is the right container for that idea or experience. And the efficient thinker makes the connection, a process called "indexing," and moves on.
Put another way, how an issue is framed is a trigger to these shared and durable cultural models that help us make sense of our world. When a frame ignites a cultural model, or calls it into play in the interpretation, the whole model is operative. This allows people to reason about an issue, to make inferences, to fill in the blanks for missing information by referring to the robustness of the model, not the sketchy frame.
This quote comes from FrameWorks Institute, which is devoted to the science of how audiences take in and process new messages. Check out their issues page for important suggestions on your issue and other excellent tools located on their website.
(Image via Frameworks Institute)
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