CoMMuNiCaTioN

HuMaNiZiNG SoCiaL IMPaCT CoMMuNiCaTioN

author of Nonviolent Communication: a Language of Life, Marshall B. Rosenburg, wrote that “We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves.” In the text, he connects violent or dehumanizing communication with societal hurt, and in a world where communication happens everyday and increasingly far beyond our geographic localities via virtual platforms, it is important that our communication becomes a means to humanize one another versus a tool for hurt or pain.

To better understand the role of communication and how to humanize people we interact with, assistant professor of Communication Studies at UVU, Dr. Leandra Hernandez, provided valuable information through an interview. She states that communicating humanely does not require us to have a similar identity to those we interact with, but it does help. Communication between cultures can be hard to bridge and according to Dr. Hernandez, situational awareness helps individuals anticipate highly charged stories. Empathy is also a key component in communication, especially between people of different cultures. The role of empathy in communication is to understand the feelings that are being portrayed and the perspectives that shape another’s views. Cross-cultural communications and those across ideological differences therefore require compassionate relationality, an empathetic engagement in the complexity of identity and perspective, as well as a willingness to maintain humanity for others and self.

pg. 34 Social Impact Communication

Visualizing Humanized Social Impact Communication

We utilize the term social impact communication broadly, because context matters as we seek to humanize through ethical communication. For example, a PR campaign from the philanthropic arm of a large corporation could be seen as a kind of social impact communication. Alternatively, nn activist protesting a specific policy near the State Capitol is also engaging in social impact communication–although perhaps on a different scale, or with a different end in mind. It is easy to guess how certain forms of communication within the field of social impact could be unethical and eschew just and compassionate relationality in favor of reinforcing inequitable power constructs and corruption. Imagine if the fictional philanthropic PR campaign used social impact or social justice jargon and principles as a shield for hiding unethical corporate practices. Truly ethical and humanizing social impact communication does exist, but it is not easy to achieve without asking the right questions and committing the necessary resources to answer them.

“The key is to consider every knowledge system as valid. Stories tie people to their landscape, their heritage and one another. Storytelling sparks dialogue between generations and provides a time and place for ideas to be shared. In this way, stories preserve cultureand could help preserve the envrioment as well.” — Dr. Fernández-Llamazares

People with lived experience, letting people center themselves in their own stories.

“In decades past, trauma-informed journalism & the ethical component of journalism was not as defined. When you think about how the discipline of communications has been around for over 100 years, partricularly in the social impact/ social activism space, we’re now starting to see researchers, scholars & practitioners having conversations about these topics: thinking about the role of humanity, ethics, & social justice.” — Dr. Leandra Hernandez

Reflective versus reactionary communication that takes systematic issues & history into account.

“Empathy is critical for understanding people, which in turn supports typical communication tasks such as developing effective communication tools, promoting attitudinal change, and boosting audience engagement. Research has demonstrated that empathy can be learned...[and] could include the development of... listening skills, ...the ability to ask probing questions & identify nonverbal cues, as well as behavior modification.” — Fuller et al.

Emotional perspective-taking, compassion, & communication that takes the feelings of your subjects into acccount.

Self-awareness of positionality on an issue, skills that promote healthy cross-cultural interactions, & intending to honor other people’s culture.

“I accept cultural humility to be the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented... while accepting cultural competence as the ability to interact effectively with people of different culturesmore of a learned/taught condition. I pride myself on being able to claim bothcompetence & humility-recognizing both as a lifelong journey, without an end point.” — Dr. Ella Greene-Moton Transparency & accountability on an institutional level helps maintain trust between stakeholders & people with lived experience.

“...there are some very clear benefits of transparency, particularly when it comes to government-centric goals. For example, greater transparency appears to consistently improve the quality of financial management & reduce levels of public sector corruption. On the other hand, ...mixed results for core transparency goals such as trust, legitimacy, & accountability suggests that other benefits of greater transparency are less clear-cut.” — Cucciniellio et al.

This can include qualitative & quantitative research, as well as following up with people you are communicating with or about.

“Enviromental impacts are readily regulated through established monitoring practicing and goverance frameworks, such as enviromental management systems & plans... yet equivalent tools for managing social impacts are not widely accepted. This is due in part to methodological difficulties that face Social Impact Assessment followup & the absence of suitable tools for monitoring management strategies.” — Mottee & Howitt

pg. 36 Social Impact Communication

That said, If an institution or individual wanted to improve their social impact communication to be more ethical and humane, what elements should they consider adding to their process? The following visual encompasses our attempt to loosely define social impact communication that can be applied with relationality and humanization in mind. It includes calls to involve the voices of those with lived experience (living experts), frame social issues in social and historical context, employ empathy, practice cultural competence and humility, and investigate impact. The diagram includes quotes from scholars and professionals in six different fields to help understand each domain.

The diagram reflects the reality that social impact communication happens, even if it’s not explicitly identified, in a diverse array of fields from conservation and communications to education and public policy. In the diagram, there are overlapping concepts, theories, and even practical/scholarly controversies that we have noted. For example, cultural humility and cultural competence are related but distinct ideas, with debates especially in the field of healthcare for what skills they represent beyond the theory. As Dr. Ella Greene-Moton indicates, sometimes unhelpful binaries are created between concepts when they are actually quite complementary. What’s clear, though, is that the ethics of communication are perhaps more relevant than ever as a means to humanizing social impact. There are more professional fields grappling with questions of equity and ethics across the board. There is a recognition that institutions do not operate in a vacuum, so the social impact aspects of how they operate and communicate are increasingly considered.

Ultimately, ethical communication can be seen as integral to the wider ecosystem of humanizing social impact. Humane and dignified stories deserve to be told, and social impact projects require an honest accounting of where they succeeded or failed. It should also be noted that improving the ethics of social impact communication is not a linear or guaranteed endeavor. It is possible for an organization to grow less transparent over time, or an individual might entrench themselves in their favored knowledge systems and lose some cultural humility. Ethics are hard to maintain, in part, because they require sustained commitment over a long period of time, but the results are worth it.