Using images for advocacy

[colist at comm-org.wisc.edu]

From: Human Rights Tools <editors at humanrightstools.org>


Dear readers,

Let’s face it. Advocacy reports are often tedious to read. Too much 
text, and too few graphics. Most readers only have time for the 
executive summary (we are all executives nowadays!), and a 20-second 
browse through the main body of the report. What a pity! How can we make 
them more appealing? How can we capture our readers' imaginations, and 
imprint a lasting message in their minds?

Three groups of professionals would have a lot to teach us: graphic 
designers, sociologists, and advertisers. All are forced to present 
their messages in appealing ways. A lot of focus is of course placed on 
improving the text of their information products. However they all make 
an effective use of graphical representations to communicate in 
powerful, evocative, thought-provoking ways, including: maps, photos, 
infographs, and even cartoons. Why can't we copy some of their ideas?

In this newsletter, we propose six examples of graphical illustrations 
you can use alongside or within your advocacy reports to get your 
messages across more efficiently: we hope they will provide you with 
useful inspiration!


1. INA's infographics
See: http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/infographics/
INA is a project of Princeton University's Sociology Department. They 
use network language and methods to represent global problems, such as 
the global arms trade or potential water wars, in original and 
informative ways. The artwork was done by graphical designer Jonathan 
Harris (http://www.number27.org/). He uses an assemblage of photos, 
statistical tables, text boxes, and colour-code maps to create an 
information-packed and beautiful poster-page which really grabs your 
attention, and gets you thinking and exploring. We preferred these two:
http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/infographics/weapons.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/infographics/water.html

We contact Jonathan, to ask him for his advice on producing evocative 
images. In his words:
" For these maps, the idea was to make these major world issues as 
compelling as possible -- to tell stories with images and typography 
instead of tables and lists. Several ideas that resonate for me in my 
work are:
- simplicity
- meaning
- playfulness"

Jonathan pointed us towards his latest work, in particular, We Feel Fine 
(http://wefeelfine.org), a study of human emotion, and the Time Capsule 
(http://timecapsule.yahoo.com), made for Yahoo! and launched last week. 
If you want to post your thoughts or photos to the time capsule, you 
still have a few days left!


2. Human Rights Watch: "Darfur Drawn".
See: http://hrw.org/photos/2005/darfur/drawings/
On mission along the border of Chad and Darfur, Human Rights Watch 
researchers gave children notebooks and crayons. The children drew 
scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the 
militias, the bombings by government forces, the shootings, the burning 
of entire villages... Authorities may often deny your conclusions, 
question your evidence, attack your credibility, accuse you of bias. But 
children’s drawings have an innocence which gives them a strong 
credibility and makes them harder to deny.


3. True Majority's Oreo animation
See: http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/ (may take some time to download 
but its worth the wait)
True Majority uses a simple Oreo cookie analogy to show the imbalance 
between military spending and social spending in the United States 
budget, and also shows that this huge military spending isn't even 
necessary. It uses a cartoon animation, which is narrated by the founder 
of Ben & Jerry ice cream company. But you do not necessarily need to 
produce a cartoon or call on a celebrity: the main issue here is finding 
an evocative analogy which will grip your reader and make your case real 
to him or her. A good analogy should be simple and faithful to your message.


4. Survival International's "there you go" slideshow
See: http://www.survival-international.org/thereyougo.php
Survival International uses an online humorous slideshow to show that 
indigenous people are actually quite OK without "sustainable 
development". We really enjoyed watching it, and hope you will too. You 
don't necessarily need flashy software to do this - Powerpoint will do 
the trick and can even be saved as an online presentation.


5. AAAS: using satellite imagery
See: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/0530zim.shtml
AAAS has used satellite images of farm destruction in Zimbabwe to 
support a report made by Amnesty International and Zimbabwe Lawyers for 
Human Rights (ZLHR), based in Harare. Human rights monitoring through an 
eye in the sky! Of course we do not all have access to satellites, but 
you get the message: a picture is sometimes worth a thousand words.


6. MapleCroft interactive maps
See: http://maps.maplecroft.com/
Maplecroft has produced an outstanding collection of interactive world 
maps, available online (you may need to download a Flash plug-in). These 
maps tackle topics like: displacement, child labour, conflict risk, 
corruption, hunger, human rights risk:
- Each map uses a simple colour-code which clearly shows the problem 
countries
- The maps also have case studies known as “hotspots”, “flashpoints” and 
“spotlights”, giving further information about each issue and profiling 
business engagement
- Each map has an “analysis” section, which is actually the narrative 
text-only report, but chopped into easily digestible sections
- On what data are these maps based? The sources are always publicly 
available and fully referenced and are often available online

How to make such a map? What steps are involved? Dr. Andrew Thow from 
Maplecroft shares some advice and pointers:

"We find that maps are excellent communication tools and much more 
engaging than text-based reports. Maps appeal to people in a special way 
and encourage interest at different levels and across a broad audience. 
Someone picks up a map, starts asking themselves questions about it and 
is immediately engaged and thinking about the issue.

We have found that almost any issue can be effectively mapped. Our maps 
focus on non-financial business risk and opportunity and are designed to 
help business manage, communicate and educate about the major challenges 
in society. The project involves the development of interactive 
electronic and hard-copy maps of risk and responsibility issues and 
their significance to business.

At the core of every map we produce is a unique risk management index 
that ranks each country on a scale of 0-10. The score is used to colour 
the maps, with different colours representing different ranges – usually 
extreme, high, medium and low risk. The indices and coloured maps act as 
a framework to hang other information on. For us, this includes 
geographically referenced case studies, background information and 
extensive analysis.

Our risk indices are derived from the most up to date and most respected 
data sources, usually UN agencies. To create the score for each country, 
we use a number of different indicators that relate to the issue of 
interest (the number depends on the complexity). These are then 
normalised to give a score for each country relative to the others and 
added together to give the final index value. We carefully adjust the 
weight of the different indicators in the final index depending on their 
importance and the robustness of the data.

Some issues make for fairly simple indices, while others are more 
complicated. For example, our Health and Safety map uses three 
indicators, while our Avian Influenza risk map has more than 30. For 
complex issues, such as human rights – where numeric data is not 
available – we painstakingly analyse qualitative information and use it 
to score countries individually. We find it is always best to include as 
many countries as possible and will omit datasets that do not offer good 
global coverage. The more countries there are, the higher the quality of 
the comparative analysis – we usually aim for 150 at least.

In addition to our publicly available and generic maps, we use the same 
principles to create bespoke applications to help organisations manage 
risk and responsibility. For example, we develop indices to measure and 
map risk and responsibility in companies’ supply chains by tailoring the 
index to meet the specific nature of their business principles and 
operations. We have also developed a human rights monitoring mechanism 
that can provide an overview of a company’s human rights risk in their 
operations and countries of operation around the world. The tool uses 
the information contained in our human rights index, combined with 
specific information supplied by the company about the nature and 
location of their operations, as well as their perception of human 
rights risk in those operations, to predict the risk of human rights 
violations in the future."

If you have more questions for Andrew and his colleagues at Maplecroft, 
you are welcome to contact them at info at maplecroft.net.


We are coming to the end of this issue. We encourage you to explore the 
examples above, and apply some of them to your own advocacy work. Some 
pointers which may be useful:

- Start by identifying and refining your key messages until they are 
cristal-clear. If you cannot express each message in a simple, short and 
unambiguous sentence, then continue working on it.
- Make sure you have the necessary facts to support your messages.
- Focus on your target audience: what kind of people are they? What is 
likely to get their attention?
- Once you have done all of this, brainstorm for different ideas for 
communicating your message: theater, maps, graphs, individual stories, 
whatever it takes.

You may also want to visit the "Advocacy and reporting" section of our 
toolbox, where you can find a selection of top manuals:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/dir/1__Monitoring_-_Documentation_-_Advocacy/Advocacy_and_reporting/

We hope you read and enjoyed this newsletter as much as we enjoyed 
writing it, and that it will provide you with ideas and inspiration. 
Now, its your turn to hit the keyboard:
- Let us know of imaginative ways you have found to communicate advocacy 
messages! We love to hear from you!
- Share this message with friends of colleagues who work on human rights 
advocacy, and do not hesitate to post it to your newsletter or blog.



Best regards,

Daniel D'Esposito, editor
Human Rights Tools
editors at humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org