The right dominates the narrative environment, and it isn’t accidental. IFPG conducts causal research into how narratives are manufactured and sustained, and builds the frames and distribution channels that counter them across the ecosystem. IFPG’s goal is to change the operating environment in which elections are held and public policies debated. Hearts and minds must change first.

• Othering as the mechanism by which political differences become existential threats
• Local information environments and the collapse of community journalism
• The gap between message formulation and how people process information
• Channels of communication that reach and influence key segments

Us vs Them. You win, I lose. Labeling some Americans as an existential threat is a classic tool used by those who seek to build an authoritarian state. Today, Othering is a central tool for those seeking to erode democracy in America. Our work is to develop strategies and narratives that mute its power holistically and at scale. 

We’ve conducted causal research in partnership with Hart Research on how Other Narratives work, and what effectively counters them at scale. Three of four phases complete; the next stage is field testing.

Research on the effect of local newspapers moving into news deserts on attitudinal change, civic knowledge and political outcomes. Initial work has suggestive data that a local newspaper approach that contains civic and electoral information that does not seem partisan is effective. The next step is a scaled effort over many cycles with ongoing tracking to measure impact and iterate quickly to change viewpoints.

Decades of neuroscience and behavioral research point in the same direction: people decide with emotion and rationalize with reason.  The strongest fact doesn’t win. Emotional resonance does. Shifting to emotions-first messaging requires sector wide effort that includes research into the emotional terrain of specific issues, socializing a neuroscience- and psychology-grounded framework for message development with partners, donors, electeds, and consultants, and incubated campaigns that prove the approach in the field and travel back into partner organizations. IFPG is building all three.