With the "Vox Day" business winding down (one way or another), it's time to unwind with something less contentious and controversial: Framing! No-- seriously. Most of the really loud opponents have publically washed their hands of the whole topic, so I expect this will be relatively non-controversial. What could possibly go wrong?
Anyway, Janet is thinking about "framing" and the example of stem cells given in the Nisbet and Scheufele article in The Scientist (PDF here). She identifies three "core values" that framers on one side or the other might be trying to reach:
- cures for diseases are good
- economic competitiveness is good
- human embryos should be accorded a special moral status
And notes, correctly, that these are, to some extent, mutually exclusive. She ends by asking:
So, at this point my question boils down to this: Does the framing strategy amount to getting your audience to (at least temporarily) forget about their core values that resonate with the other side's frame?
Nisbet can obviously speak for himself, but I'll pop in quickly to note one possible probelm with this, because it's an error that physicists are particularly prone to. The way Janet has phrased this treats "the public" as a large population of identical people, rather than a large heterogeneous collection of people with radically different properties.
The problem is that there's an implicit assumption that everybody shares all three of those values, and I don't think that's the case. They certainly don't all place the same weight on those values, particularly the third.
The aim of "framing" this issue, then, is two-fold: first, to get the message to resonate with that portion of the population whose weighting is already closest to that of the framers themselves. People who place more weight on curing disease than protecting embryos are going to be receptive to a pro-stem-cell-research argument based around "Think of the diseases we can cure!" The first goal is to reach those people.
"But if they're already inclined that way, what's the point?" you may be asking. The point is that while they might be more inclined to favor disease cures than embryos, they're not necessarily interested in science. If you just put out straight, dry stories about the research itself, they're likely to say "Science is Hard! Kthxbai!" and go on about their business without ever reading enough about the research to care about the funding.
If you come at them through the right frame, though, saying, "Hey! We can cure diseases! (By the way: science!)" you're more likely to get their attention, and hold it through an explanation of the science. Which is more likely to produce the desired result, namely increasing the number of people who have an active interest in the scientific issue, and will support the policy goals of the framers.
That's the first goal. The second goal is to shift the weights that relatively uncommitted people put on the different values. That's the whole goal of the anti-stem-cell groups. They place a much higher weight on the protection of embryos than the curing of diseases, and their argument is based around appeals to the general public to put more weight on that factor. Babies are cute, killing is wrong, therefore killing babies is not an acceptable path to curing diseases.
In some sense, this is merely a more charitable re-framing of Janet's question-- "getting your audience to forget about their core values that resonate with the other side's frame?" is just an extreme case of re-weighting.
But it's also, as I see it, the response to another point:
This is not, as far as I can tell, a communication strategy that aims at changing the public's core values. Rather, the strategy seems to focus on bringing some of the pre-existing core values to the foreground until they've answered the survey the way you want them to, or they've voted the way you want them to, or they've gotten tired of thinking about the issue again so they retire from deliberation with the "settled" view you want them to have.
The way I see it, that is "changing the public's core values." If you make them care more about one value, and less about the others, that's a change. "Core values" are not an all-or-nothing thing, but rather a set of priciples given different weights by different people at different times.
You don't need to create new core values to change the public view of an issue. You just need to change how much weight people give those values when they make decisions.
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Chad said:
"You don't need to create new core values to change the public view of an issue. You just need to change how much weight people give those values when they make decisions."
I don't disagree with you there Chad but, sticking to the stem cell issue, the whole thing reminds me of one of those the trolley questions in philosophy where you get asked would you push a person onto the track in order to save five. Almost everyone asked will say they wouldn't push yet when asked would they pull the switch that diverts the trolley onto a siding, killing one and saving five, they agree.
If agreeing to stem cells research is seen as actively pushing a person onto the tracks then it will be seen as morally disagreeable (people wont be able to help themselves - it is inherent in almost all of us to feel this way). If, however, the research is seen as pulling the switch that sends a train down the siding then people will be able to accept it.
Most cell biologists look at stem cells as merely cell cultures. We don't have the trolley dilemma - theres never a person that is being killed by the research. If we can get the public to that sort of understanding then we will have alleviated the need to frame the issue in moral terms but I realize we are not there yet. Or rather you in the US are not there yet - I'm in Sweden, a religious-looney free zone.
I suppose I was reading the content of the core values as the directions of the vectors and the priorities among them as the magnitudes, but I'm happy enough to say that changing either one of these will change where you you end up.
I agree with your first two steps -- having a clear and honest answer about how the stem cell research has significant potential to cure diseases is all that is necessary to be persuasive to the first group.
The "story" for the second group needs to start with the pain and suffering of real people who have the diseases that could be cured by stem cell research -- then add the answer developed for the first group.
The third group (i.e. the ones who want to insist the embryo is a baby) need to be persuaded as well -- although it is much more difficult to do so. Here is where the philosophical question about what constitutes a person becomes relevant. When we discuss stem cells in bioethics, I begin by asking the class to make a list of human characteristics and then I ask them to make a list of characteristics of a fetus. This part of the public discussion will be the most difficult, as the general public has a very low tolerance for philosophical arguments... heck, they even changed the title of the first Harry Potter book from "the Philosopher's Stone"...
A Conservative Republican friend of mine, with a Ph.D. in Physics, has long since separated his position from Emperor Bush II. However, he makes this point.
Bush, for once, did some homework before producing a Stem Cell Policy. The President made a Moral argument. It was the wrong argument. Still, it was an argument, based on what purported to be facts, and framed as a moral imperative.
The Democrats, say my friend, did not seem to know how how to respond to that argument. Result? There is a policy, and debate within a fragmented party afterwards.
My friend just emailed me and made two corrections to what I said that he said:
(1) I never said it "was the wrong argument." I said, "It was a bad moral argument, based on morally dubious premises and using sophistry rather than logic."
(2) Because the Democrats made no moral argument what-so-ever. Nancy Reagan did with some degree of success, but the Democrats did not.