[colllectorof]

Wow, I meant to write a semi-satirical guide to successful propaganda for a while now. Apparently, people professionally doing propaganda published one for real.

https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/...

"Celebrating 20 years of social science for social change."

You can't make this stuff up. And I bet 90% of people here don't even understand why this slogan is fucked up. The notion that the purpose of science is to produce social change is straight out of Neil Postman's Technopoly (chapter titled Scientism).

[beaconstudios]

Framing is a tool - it can be used for bad or good. You can use it to reframe an explanation in terms that your audience will understand more intuitively, or you can spin bad news to sound either unimportant or positive. For what it's worth, reframing your thoughts is an important practice in improving your mindset, and thus many aspects of mental health.

[colllectorof]

>Framing is a tool - it can be used for bad or good.

Propaganda is a tool - it can be used for bad or good. The problem is that "bad" and "good" are subjective value judgements. Simultaneously, the mindset of manipulation is going to have certain predictable effects on communication and society, no matter what the manipulation is used for.

If you haven't caught on, the website uses the techniques it promotes.

[engineer_22]

I'll make some statements here, and lets see if we agree:

1) We live in a social world.

2) Your effectiveness is measured by other people.

3) Your ability to communicate can affect your perceived effectiveness.

4) Highly effective people are rewarded.

5) To be rewarded is 'good'.

Let me know where we disagree, and then we'll have a better understanding of each other.

[sigmaprimus]

2,3 and 4 can be true or false and building each subsequent statement upon the former may be a good example of framing rhetoric but does not provide a good foundation for your argument and is actually more of a house of cards.

[jariel]

Yes, this is the Machiavellian view.

Alternatively, we might want to look at objectivity and truthiness as being, you know, important.

We can do both, but one of those things is more important.

[beaconstudios]

Framing is just perspective. Our conversation is a debate on how to frame framing.

Trying to change someone's perspective isn't always propaganda, and of course you can change your own prospective through reframing and introspection.

[cacois]

There's a fine line between presenting your ideas in a clear and effective manner, and "framing" the presentation in a way that makes it more likely others will agree with you (a manipulative technique). Think of a good salesman: if the product's values sold itself, the salesman wouldn't really matter - but they do.

Often people using these manipulative techniques don't even realize they are manipulating - they just think they are "charismatic" or "persuasive".

[shard]

I think it's a matter of definition. I always thought of framing as understanding your audience and expressing your ideas in a way which puts a "frame" around a viewpoint to highlight the way it matters to them. It's a general technique which is very important to effective communication, but there are ways to make it manipulative, such as preying on people's fear/greed/envy/ other negative emotions. But I think framing is a neutral term which does not exclusively mean negative emotional manipulation. Having said that, I haven't read the articles on the site to know which way the Framing Institute uses the word framing.

[ClumsyPilot]

You are always framing your statements and questions, whether you are aware of it or not. If you dont understand what you are doing, you probably are framing things incorrectly / from wrong perspective.

An example of poor framing: "do you feel you have the right to tell private company whay to do"

Reframing the same question can expose serious logical flaws and assumptions, and every critical thinker worth his salt should be aware of it and able to examine an issue from different viewpoints

[aidenn0]

This is why my dad dislikes sales people. His job is to pick the best tool for the job, and if 3 competing sales people come to sell him a tool, at least 2 of them have as their sole job making picking the best tool for the job harder.

[tschiller]

Rhetoric is traced back to Mesopotamia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric#History

The FrameWorks Institute is just a non-profit that's modernizing the study of rhetoric for modern political and social discourse

[flohofwoe]

Or in other words: how to manipulate people into believing irrational bullshit. I can't see how this has any benefits for society.

[beaconstudios]

Nice straw man.

Convincing someone that the earth is flat is changing their perspective, but so is convincing them that flat earth is bullshit. People aren't rational by default, they need convincing.

[aidenn0]

... Wow. The about section from that PDF:

> The FrameWorks Institute is a nonprofit think tank that advances the mission-driven sector’s capacity to frame the public discourse about social and scientific issues. The organization’s signature approach, Strategic Frame Analysis®, offers empirical guidance on what to say, how to say it, and what to leave unsaid. FrameWorks designs, conducts, and publishes multi-method, multi-disciplinary framing research to prepare experts and advocates to expand their constituencies, to build public will, and to further public understanding. To make sure this research drives social change, FrameWorks supports partners in reframing, through strategic consultation, campaign design, FrameChecks®, toolkits, online courses, and in-depth learning engagements known as FrameLabs. In 2015, FrameWorks was named one of nine organizations worldwide to receive the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.