Rhetorical and policy attacks on civil society are an effort to shrink civic space by destroying public faith in organizations and public motivation for participation.
The best way to respond to those attacks is to maintain that faith and motivation.
The best way to respond to those attacks is to maintain that faith and motivation.
The goal of this strategy is to have a stand-alone proactive approach to building support for civil society, so that your work is not dictated by people who want to undermine it. However, there will always be moments when you need to respond to direct efforts to shrink civic space. Here is some guidance for applying the communications tools above in those moments.
Civic space messaging checklist
Here is a checklist for your responses when responding to questions about civil society:
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Remind people what wider values are at stake in the issue of the day.
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Provide a frame that explains why someone wants to attack civil society: For example, the government wants to divide people rather than tackling real issues or an authoritarian leader does not like it when people solve problems by themselves. When the authorities do “X” action, what they are showing is that they do not care about “Y” value.
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Say what the government or state authorities should be doing instead of attacking civil society and offer an alternative way forward.
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Empower your audience – state clearly what action we can take to enjoy and grow civic space. Avoid making the loss of freedom seem inevitable.
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Highlight alternative possibilities to the worst-case scenario – tell people that we are at a crossroads and closing civic space takes us down one path, but the other alternative path of more civic space leads us somewhere different and far more desirable.
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Highlight success of society in general to show long-term progress and how civil society contributes. Always have one anecdote that illustrates what can happen when we have civic space.
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Have a practical call to action and be able to explain how it will make people’s lives better.
Stay on message
We communicate in order to share our ideas. Whether we are holding a press conference, giving an interview or posting on social media, always try to focus on getting your message across.
This means that you put the conversation in a frame of your choosing, not that of someone who is attacking civil society. Avoid repeating words or phrases used by the attacker—use the words in your messaging house instead. The more you repeat them, the more familiar they will become.
Remember the bigger picture
Part of messaging is about the basic story we tell about civil society. But another important part is the wider story we tell about how the world works—our worldview. We want to encourage people to look at politics through the perspective that is most likely to make them favor civil society—one that favors cooperation, not individualism; empathy, not strength.
The advantage of sharing this big picture worldview is that not everyone in your movement needs to agree on an exact slogan or hashtag—it’s about everyone working to promote the same underlying ideas and ways of thinking.
Explore more tools
We use a messaging house to highlight some simple topline messages that we need to repeat over and over again so that they stick in people’s minds.
This is a simple exercise to start articulating your values message.
Here are some tips for how to work with partners to tell narrative-changing stories.
Use this worksheet to draw the picture you want people to see when they hear your message about “civil society.”
Communications strategy outline once you have a clear goal.
Map out the potential supporters who share your values. You want to mobilize and organize these people to spread your narrative for you.
We use a messaging house to highlight some simple topline messages that we need to repeat over and over again so that they stick in people’s minds.