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Changemakers' Toolkit/Communicating for change/Identifying your audiences

< Changemakers' Toolkit | Communicating for change

1. Introduction

2. Identifying Audiences

3. Framing Messages

4. Effective Communications

Closing

Identifying your audiences

Explanation of tool

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By audience, we mean the group of people you need to reach to achieve the change you want.

Typically, a campaign will have more than one audience. There may be those you want to mobilise as campaign supporters, and campaign targets – those you think can help deliver the change you seek.

For each audience, stop and consider what would be the best communication channel to use to get your message across effectively. This should be at the centre of your approach.

We can categorise audiences in lots of different ways.

For example:

  • A campaign to protect people’s rights would target those people whose rights may be under threat.
  • Campaigns such as Art+Feminism often connect with women who want to address Wikipedia’s lack of women amongst its biographies and editors.
  • Education campaigns are likely to seek the support of parents, teachers and students.

But it's particularly important to identify audiences based on their attitudes to your issue.

To do this, we can use a tool called the Spectrum of Allies.

 
Right to left, the segments cover: Active Opposition, Passive Opposition, Neutral, Passive Allies, and Active Allies.

In campaigning, it is tempting to focus on the two groups at either end of the debate: the people who actively support our cause and the people who actively oppose it. But most of the population are going to be somewhere in the middle. And that means they can be infuenced.

The Spectrum of Allies tool can help clarify our understanding of where different audiences stand in relation to our issue. Then we can design a communication plan to shift them in the right direction.

It's unrealistic to try and make people active allies overnight. Instead, we should aim to move our audience one wedge to the left on the Spectrum of Allies. If we do this consistently, we can deliver sustainable change.

Case study

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A map of audiences for an organisation thinking about openly releasing images might look like:

Active opposition: These people are opposed to open knowledge practices. They may have concerns around loss of income, reduction of in-person visitors, damage to reputation or loss of control over works. They may be suspicious of Wikipedia.

Passive opposition: These people are not concerned with open knowledge. This may be due to a lack of understanding of such as open licensing, public domain, legal frameworks. They may feel that the organisation needs to prioritise other work.

Neutral: These people are aware of open licensing and some of its benefits, but it is not on the agenda for their organisation, whether due to funding or other causes such as limited digitisation infrastructure.

Passive allies: These people are interested in open licensing and recognise the benefit for global engagement. In the case of The Yellow Milkmaid at the Rijksmuseum, sharing collections more accurately is the goal. They might not have the knowledge necessary to strongly advocate for it or may be limited by time or resources, or their job-role.

Active allies: These people are open knowledge advocates and have been supporting the organisation on its journey to sharing images openly. They fully embrace free culture.

Sources

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Homework exercise

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Imagine you’re leading a campaign to have Wikipedia taught in schools in your area. You want to involve the local community in your work.

Develop some thoughts on:

  • What audiences you want to target;
  • Where your audiences sit on the Spectrum of Allies;
  • Which of these groups you’re going to prioritise engaging with; and
  • What channels and messengers you might use to reach them.


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