Resources

Search below for resources covering the intersection of climate engagement, social science and data analytics.

RESULTS

Research & Articles
10-31-2023

Join the Rural Climate Partnership for a presentation on how we can use a benefits-forward narrative strategy to connect with rural people. Together, we'll explore 5 narrative keys that allow communicators to reach across cultural differences and avoid culture war frames to connect on shared values.

This workbook is meant to help you translate the analysis and recommendations we provide there into workable features of your organizing. Whether you’re currently involved in a multiracial, cross-class climate coalition, thinking about starting one, or evaluating a past coalition on reflection, we hope this workbook clarifies for you and your coalition partners the breadth of considerations and decisions you should be prepared for.

Research & Articles
10-04-2023

Multiracial, cross-class (MRXC) coalition-building is essential if the climate movement is serious about tackling the climate crisis at the scale it demands. However, a historical lack of collaboration, trust, or healthy mechanisms to deal with conflict often impair those efforts. This Blueprint report and accompanying workbook provide an analysis of the difficulties MRXC climate coalitions are likely to face and offer recommendations for a proposed path forward.

Various climate groups have recently used messages invoking “climate anxiety” to spur grassroots action. Science Moms and Action for the Climate Emergency have joined the Environmental Defense Fund and Climate Emergency Fund in running Facebook and Instagram ads about climate anxiety in recent weeks. A group called RepublicEn has been running Meta ads using conservative messengers like evangelicals, military figures, and elected officials to create a permission structure for Republican voters to support climate action. The dominant narrative about climate change or energy on social media last week concerned a report showing that some of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve was shipped to countries like China. Pages like Breitbart and Tucker Carlson seized on the news to accuse the Biden administration of “treason”, but their content went mostly unchecked by progressive pages.

How to Foster Collaborative Relationships

Adam Seth Levine, research4impact and Johns Hopkins University. Stanford Social Innovation Review
Research & Articles
05-31-2022

Collaboration is possible with specific kinds of active effort. Too often, potential collaborators focus on the why rather than the how. This resource offers a three-pronged approach for overcoming barriers to interaction. We must (1) raise awareness about what relationality is and why it matters, (2) encourage potential collaborators to explicitly communicate not only WHY they want to connect but also HOW they will relate to others, and (3) we should create and support leaders and institutions that can reduce uncertainty about relationality between potential collaborators. research4impact’s evidence-based matchmaking method, called Research Impact Through Matchmaking (RITM) employs several techniques, including using “role assignment” to communicate each person’s unique task-relevant knowledge, expertise, and lived experience; describing the exchange as a mutually beneficial learning opportunity (to prime a collaborative mindset among all participants); and succinctly restating the goal so that expectations were common knowledge.

Social Homes as Sources of Power for Health Equity

Sonia Sarkar, Jane Booth-Tobin, Ryann Schutt, Alexandra Dildine, Melanie Brazzell, Elizabeth McKenna. P3 Lab at Johns Hopkins University
Research & Articles
12-14-2021

Movement organizations invest in 4 common elements to support individual and collective member political transformation and enhance recruitment and retention. These methods include: addressing whole-person needs via culture, community-building, and care; internal accountability and decision-making; political education; and enabling smaller “sub-homes” within the home (i.e., within the organization). Organizations believe they can successfully convert the collective member transformation occurring within their social homes into potential and exercised power over the conditions and policies that create health inequities. Movement organizations are hungry for spaces where they can be in direct dialogue with one another regarding the operationalization and measurement of this work. This report includes case studies on various organizations around the US—on how they’ve aimed to cultivate “social homes” within their constituencies.

Tips & How-Tos
09-06-2021

Prompts to help you think through developing a research project, from big-picture strategy to the specifics of a hypothesis.

The One-on-One

Alex Riccio, International Workers of the World. The Forge.
Tips & How-Tos
07-26-2021

There are six key steps to executing the best “one-on-one” conversation—specific to a union organizing setting, but potentially applicable to other settings. Step One: Discover the issues—ask open-ended questions to understand the problems the worker cares most about. Step Two: Agitate—ask provocative questions about the frustrations expressed by the worker. Step Three: Elucidate—provide your worker with alternatives, such as enhancing worker power with a union. Step Four: Make an “ask”—before assuming you will be rejected, ask the worker to take a concrete action. Step Five: Innoculate—prepare the worker for the toxic arguments that the boss will give in fighting union power. Step Six: Follow up—check in after the conversation to try to ensure consistent communication and action.             

Tips & How-Tos
07-20-2021

Research is core to the Lab’s goal of finding and highlighting evidence of what works (and what doesn’t) in climate advocacy. At the Lab, we know that many of the climate wins we need will be built on the foundation of investments now in research to answer the critical public engagement questions facing our movement. Our research agenda is a roadmap of what we think are some of the most critical gaps in the community’s evidence base, grounded in our Research Vision and driving our research program. Our research agenda also lays out our broader research principles, including putting theory into practice, an emphasis on portable results, the importance of centering equity & inclusion, the value of triangulating on knowledge from multiple sources, and more. In putting forward a research agenda, we hope to inspire and facilitate critical conversations, and we welcome input as we develop our research plans. We are also looking for partners to help us execute this agenda: climate advocacy organizations interested in field research, and funders to make ongoing learning possible. Please be in touch.

Systems Language for Narrative Power

Rinku Sen, Narrative Initiative
Research & Articles
06-20-2021

Tell proactive stories about people changing systems. This blog post about the power of narrative notes that social movements tend to talk about systems in a way that’s disempowering. For example, climate solutions that rely on individual actions can distance people from the problem and the power they have to solve it. Instead, use language that reflects the power that people have to change and shape systems. Show why a problem exists, who the decision makers are, and how people can or have changed policies and practices.