If you step back and look at patterns in content and coverage that you see in digital and traditional media, you’ll find that the pendulum has swung decidedly toward the emotional as opposed to the factual.
Consider the issue of student loan forgiveness. On the one side, those on the receiving end of the forgiveness see the issue of one of compassion where the government is alleviating the pressures of paying back unreasonable amounts of debt. On the other side, those who did not take out student loans, or who have paid their college loans off, see the issue as one where the government is taking from them (in the form of tax dollars) and giving it away to others who actually have gainful employment and very good jobs, and they have benefited from a college education, but they did not “keep their promise” to pay the debt off.
In both cases, emotions are equally, if not more powerful drivers in shaping their view of the issue.
Stories like that do two things. First, they enrage and polarize readers and viewers on both sides of the issue and that means traffic, the life-blood of any media organization. Second, they feed the echo chamber of social media, where “shares” and retweets further accelerate the constant movement of eyeballs from one page to the next. The highway for all of this traffic is emotion.
With this in mind, here are some tips for effectively managing when simply laying out the facts does not seem to be as effective as emotion in making your case:
Pay Attention to Optics
Optics are symbols and visuals that you can use to send the right message, or that critics use to taint your reputation. When you see someone with a master’s degree, or a Ph.D., who works for a college or a government agency demanding student loan forgiveness for themselves, it can quickly create the perception that they are out of touch, expecting some taxpaying plumber, restaurant server or carpenter to essentially pay off their debts (through taxation) for them.
As important as it is to consider optics, it is equally important to be prepared to respond to attacks from critics who seemingly can turn the most mundane visuals, such as a social media post, into a negative statement about you if that’s how they want to portray it. If your critics are dead set towards finding something about you to make an issue, they will do so. You just need to be prepared for it and know, at least in general, how you will respond. The one mistake to avoid is to automatically accept the premise of the criticism.
Exaggeration is King
From click-bait social media headlines to sensational TV news teasers, media thrive on exaggeration. Often, when you present most developments as accurately as possible in the proper context, it can be quite boring. This is because when you communicate clearly, people get an understanding of the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story. Once they get the context, they are not as likely to be alarmed. If they are not alarmed, shocked surprised or angered, they won’t respond at an emotional level, which means they may not respond at all. In media terms, this means they may not click, read or watch.
Generating an emotional response through exaggeration is highly effective. The tabloids have been doing this for decades. By exaggerating and selectively omitting certain aspects of a story tabloids sell newspapers.
Did you ever click on a headline about an explosion in a factory or a nasty car accident only to find out buried deep in the story the fact that no one was hurt? Those are common examples of how exaggeration is used to get you to click. If you knew no one was hurt from the headline, you may not have clicked on the story from the start. Buried or missing facts are often by design.
It’s much easier for originators to create caricatures of people and simplistic “good” versus “bad” scenarios rather than to delve into the complexities and nuances of a situation. These are major ingredients to creating an emotional response.