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Key Background for First-Time Users
This guide pulls together facts and arguments and effective ways to put them across for advocates
of positive, pragmatic, internationalist, collaborative global engagement. In both form and
content, the guide is designed to be a practical tool that supports efforts to advance single issue
causes and a shared vision for the U.S. in the world.
The guide was created for issue advocates, foreign policy experts, community activists, professional
communicators, and any citizens who want to talk with other Americans directly or through the media
about U.S. foreign policy. It is meant to be used by individuals who already have a good
understanding of an issue; it is not a comprehensive guide to the issues or a primer for the public.
It is designed to help those who are called upon frequently to speak about foreign policy and global
issues, and who could benefit from having their core arguments summarized and framed in ways that
research suggests are more likely to engage a large segment of the public. The guide is designed for
speakers, but many of its suggestions also will help writers seeking to reach nonexpert citizen audiences.
The print edition of the guide focuses on communications challenges involved in choosing words; the
www.usintheworld.org Web site recommends supplementary resources that will help users with other
important communications challenges, from how to write a press release to publicizing a local debate.
The messaging recommendations draw on a large, varied body of research by communications and
public opinion experts who use a range of techniques—polling, focus groups, cognitive analysis,
media content analysis, and more—to understand what and how Americans think about foreign
policy issues. Recommendations are meant to help users make issues more understandable to a
diverse cross-section of Americans who pay attention to news, get involved in their communities,
and vote — but who do not track foreign policy issues closely and do not hold ideologically
rigid views. Recommendations are designed to help communicators reach individuals with moderate
and ideologically flexible views, not those at the far left or extreme right of the ideological
spectrum. The spirit of most recommendations should apply to most audiences of issueattentive,
moderate Americans—women, people of faith, people of color, students, business
leaders, and more. However, speakers with detailed knowledge of particular communities will
likely find more powerful words, anecdotes, metaphors, and the like to implement the guide’s
recommendations, and are urged to explore specialized research to supplement this resource.
This guide offers highly vetted advice based on a wide-ranging consultative process involving
hundreds of foreign policy and global issue experts, advocates, and several leading communications
and public opinion researchers (see the acknowledgments). The task force members who led this effort
and the authors of this guide believe, however, that messaging choices—especially those that have
the potential to be embraced by a diverse, knowledgeable community of users—are difficult to make
and rarely involve cut-and-dried answers. They recognize that researchers with various perspectives—
pollsters, cognitive linguists, psychologists, grassroots campaigners, public relations professionals,
advertising executives—all bring valuable experience. This makes it highly challenging to try to
agree on what “the messages” should be. However, they understand the value of mutually supportive
messages that evoke the same “big story” about how America should act in the world, a story
whose chapter headings unite them at a fundamental level.
This resource is offered in that spirit. It does not reflect any one body of communications research,
and is not intended to take the place of the research reports and recommendations that inform it; the
authors strongly recommend that advocates avail themselves of these reports and challenge their own
creativity to applying this learning. Indeed, none of our advisors—whether policy experts or
communications experts—is likely to be comfortable with every messaging recommendation or sample
argument in this guide. Nor will every user. But we hope that the guide will be a strong point of
departure that adds to the effectiveness of diverse public outreach efforts. And we hope that it can
facilitate dialogue and debate among a growing community of users working on foreign-policyrelated
messaging, whose deliberations will help to refine this guide’s recommendations over time.
The founding task force members of the U.S. in the World network invite you to be part of a growing
community of individuals and organizations who are in it for the long haul—who care passionately
about getting more U.S. citizens to want to learn about the global challenges that will affect our
children, arming them with questions that will enable them to evaluate America’s choices and
inspiring them to play a role in solutions. We hope that you will connect with others who share
similar interests and goals. We hope you’ll continue to track research, question your own
communications choices, and talk about them with others. We offer some resources that may help
you in the “Keeping Current” and “Community Resources” sections of www.usintheworld.org.
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