How does Pew Research Centre collect and share data on how citizens are feeling about issues of the

Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. This is the podcast for you if you've got value locked up in your organization and you just want to share that somehow with some simple and some cost-effective tips. And there's no one better really that can share that than Dan Morrison, who's on the line with me today from America. And Dan and I were at university together back in the '90s in Chapel Hill, but he's had a stellar career and is currently the Vice President of Communications at the Pew Research Center. He's also been at the nexus of journalism, technology, and international affairs for the last 25 years. Dan, welcome.

Jim, it's great to be with you.

You have had 25 years of experience of communication, both in agencies and in government and in technology companies in Europe and the States. What would be one of the main lessons that you've learned about communications?

You know, Jim, it's hard to pin it down to one, but I recently wrote an article on LinkedIn that was attempting to talk about harnessing sort of cognitive diversity in the workplace. And in a place like the Pew Research Center where I currently work, but other places where I've worked, I've had the privilege as a communicator of working with people very much unlike myself. So at a place like IBM, working with technologists, at a place like the OECD, working with economists. And now at a place like the Pew Research Center working with researchers. I guess the premise that I start with, and I note this in the article, is something that George Bernard Shaw said once upon a time, which is that the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. I try to keep that in mind in anything that I do on the communication front. That's about cadence. It's about Messaging. It's about in those moments where you think you have communicated, you may realize that, that you haven't in some way. And we all need kind of prompts to tell us that. Even now in the environment that we're in with the coronavirus, right, just the inability sometimes to see a face on the other end. And even when you do see a face over Zoom or Webex or whatever platform that people are using, when you don't get those facial prompts, it's hard sometimes to communicate. I'm sure you're finding the same.

Well, that's right. And I think it's something like over 80% of all communication is nonverbal, right? So it's what we see. So how do company owners and organizations then, do you think, solve that problem, especially across cultures? Many people are running now businesses that aren't limited to one location. So what's your experience of best practice there, Dan?

Well, my experience now, particularly in the moment that we're in, but I think it's illustrative of communicating generally, is to make sure that you are taking the other into account. And that's something that I've had the privilege of learning over the course of my career. When I say the other, I mean who's sitting across the table from you, or who's on the other end of the phone, or who's on the other end of that website that you've created, for example. And sort of deeply understanding that audience is hugely important because that's going to dictate how you communicate. So for example, when I was a speechwriter, once upon a time, you really have to know your audience deeply. Who is that person sitting in the front row nodding? Why are they nodding as you're talking? Why are they looking at their shoes instead of nodding, for example? And you haven't really done your homework unless you know who that is, the audience that you're trying to appeal to. And I would add to that, that also really important to imagine yourself in their shoes. What's going on in their lives? What are the hindrances that they have in the message that you're trying to deliver to them? Why is that not going through for some reason? And it's worth your while to investigate that as best you can.

When I was reading the other day that Nelson Mandela, when he was in Robben Island, had all of the other inmates learn Afrikaans. And the fellow inmates said, well, why are we learning Afrikaans? They're our oppressors. And he said, the only way to remove the oppression is by understanding why they oppress us and to understand their language, right? So what do you think about this need then for companies to, if you like, personalize the message but at scale for each audience?

Well, more than for us, Scale is about audience and about always growing an audience. And I think that's true across any discipline that we're talking about here, whether it's private sector, public sector, or nonprofit, right? I think what you're really talking about there, Jim, is deep— I mentioned a moment ago deeply understanding your audience. But another element of that is literally writing that down in your strategic plans who that audience is and who you— who that audience isn't. So, for example, with a place like the Pew Research Center, our audience tends to be decision makers, people who each and every day are sitting at their desks making tough decisions about the world around us. It's journalists, and it's also the informed public. It's also important, I think, when you talk about audience internally, when you're working with your colleagues, if you don't know who your audience is and isn't, that's going to be problematic internally because you can chew up a lot of time, as you, as you may realize, and you come to the table together and people may be talking strategically in a way that isn't relevant to those audiences. You need to pull them back sometimes, particularly as a communicator, to ask that question out loud. Is that really the audience that we're talking about? Is that truly our audience? I find that there are derivative and very efficient things that begin to kick in behind that. For example, if you've got a video team— this is true, I think, universally— and people desperately want their videos to be made by that video team in any organization. Their dance card could get pretty full pretty quickly, and you need an ability to somehow say no. You need— or you need an ability to somehow say, that's a really interesting idea for a video, but let's do that maybe 6 months from now, or let's do that a year from now, because what you're suggesting isn't in sync with either our audience or our current strategy as an organization. And that's a diplomatic and very productive way, I think, to have that conversation.

Now, you mentioned use of, for example, video. What tools and technologies then, Dan, do you think will work in terms of understanding what your audience is thinking or feeling? How do you get in touch with those people?

We're doing a lot more data essays, for example. That is a compelling way I think, to share our data across our set of audiences. We're also— when we assess different technologies, I'm sure we're not alone in this in any way, shape, or form. But we try to be very disciplined when new products or new technological developments are on the horizon, not to jump at the first shiny toy. if you will. It's really important to assess whether those technologies are good for you as an organization. What may work for you may not work for another organization. That's the first thing we do. And the second is we also don't diminish or cast aside existing technology, which could be used in a different way, for example. So one thing we've experimented with at the Pew Research Center is something called an email mini-course, where we essentially quiz people, provide them with a quiz on their knowledge about a particular subject. And so far, we've done topics such as immigration in the United States or the US Census. How much do people actually know about the census and what it's trying to achieve? Or facts and figures about Muslims and Islam, for example. Those have been some courses that we've done. And what's been fascinating is we have essentially taken an old technology, email, and added a different capability to it. And what people seem to appreciate about it is that they're getting the course sort of in dribs and drabs. They— an email is sent to them to say, here's the next iteration of this quiz or this knowledge. And people seem to like that. The feedback we're getting is that that's a nice way to do this. I can do it in my free time. I can do it while I'm jogging. I can do it while I'm in a park taking a break. And that's been rewarding to take an old technology and do something new with it. The information that's on those mini courses comes from our existing content, for example, that we produce at the center. So it's not as if we're taking the results necessarily. We're just offering people the ability to quiz themselves. What's helpful to us is that it obviously helps share our brand. It helps share knowledge. And that's really the goal with something like that is we're all in the business of providing data about what citizens are thinking and feeling around top issues of the day.

What would you say are some of the challenges of doing that kind of work on a global scale? Because Pew is, of course, you're doing research about how people feel, for example, about America now around the world.

I think one challenge that we've experienced recently is we collect our data in different ways, in multiple, as you might imagine. And one of those ways is face-to-face. And of course, that's become really difficult with the virus, with the coronavirus. So you have to find other ways to collect that data from citizens. So there's pivots along the way. And then there, on a global scale, in terms of communicating, I think there's no trick, say, a Pew Research Center compared to other organizations, of how you do that. Again, I think it comes down to Knowing your audience, knowing that your audience in different parts of the world may be different, not trying to communicate necessarily— let me put it this way— being conscious of the fact that what you say in one part of the world needs to be consistent with what you say in another part of the world. I think, going back several decades, people may have thought once upon a time, you say different things in different places when you're communicating. I don't think that works anymore in a globalized world at all. I think just cultural sensibility is really hugely important. And then even in our world, sort of the questions that you ask citizens, obviously asking them in a way that is understandable to them and understanding that there may be cultural differences in the way that you ask questions.

Isn't that one of the fundamental challenges? I know with PR that we need a sort of a global message because people read things globally, but actually they've got a local context. Any advice for people trying to really balance what is almost an impossible equation?

I think there's a real responsibility these days, not only when you're storytelling, and everybody forgets this, right, about storytelling. There's 2 sides of storytelling. There's the telling and there's the listening. And we often forget that. So if you're an organization trying to tell a story, certainly have to take into account global headlines and local headlines and how they may overlap. But increasingly, in the way that people are getting their information and their news, there's a heightened— I find a heightened expectation on the part of the reader, the listener, if you will, to understand where those messages are coming from, to understand how it is relevant to their own lives, wherever they may live around the world. And it actually means a little bit more homework, I think, for us as readers, as consumers of information, which is new. It didn't used to be that way when you had, say, for example, I'll take the United States, where not so long ago you had major networks that produce that news that people consume. And it was delivered in a way that was sort of nationalized for sure. But now with the emergence of the internet, people are getting their news in many, many different ways. And the onus, for better or worse, really is on the reader to understand, to filter through that and understand where this information is coming from, what it means for them, and sort of tie those strings together.

You and your son have written a book about how children see different cities, because you lived in Paris. What would be one point that you found that your son saw through his eyes that was different to how you saw cities through your eyes?

That's a great question. We— he's, he's 12, just turned 13. And the basis of the book, which is called Backpacks and Baguettes, is to kind of understand the world through a child's eyes. And there was sort of a formula for each chapter. It was about his impressions of a place. And then second was food, and third was children. in these different places. And I think that's the main difference in many ways is that he's got a hyper— because he's a child, he's got hypersensitivity to what's going on in the lives of children in these cities. And he was very attuned to that, possibly in a way that we aren't as adults. So inevitably, as we were writing this book together, that kept coming out. What is a child like in Sri Lanka versus France versus the United States versus the UK versus versus Vietnam? What is that like? And I think it'll sound clichéd, but I think what he realized is that kids are the same and yet different. Kids are essentially the same everywhere. And I think that's probably a good metaphor for the fact that people generally, humans, are the same everywhere. They want the same things in life. They want the same things for their families. They have similar aspirations. Of course, they speak different languages and approach their lives in different ways, but there's a lot of commonality there.

I agree, Dan. And if people want to have a bit of common time with Dan Morrison, and to learn more about your great book with Sam, how can they do that?

Probably the best way to find me is just on LinkedIn, Dan Morrison on LinkedIn. And then the book, Backpacks and Baguettes. by Sam Morrison, Amazon. That's probably going to be the best place for folks to get it.

Thank you to Dan for joining me. Dan, the Vice President of Communications of the Pew Research Center, based just outside of Washington, D.C., sharing really about international communications and his experience about the need to really listen first and to be sensitive to the people on the other side of the table. So with that, I say thank you very much indeed for listening to this episode of Speak PR. If you'd like to learn more about our Speak PR methodology, which is to storify, personalize, engage, amplify, and to know, just reach out to me at eastwestpr.com or on LinkedIn, Jim James, and even sign up for our newsletters, which come out weekly, and our masterminds, which you can find at speakpr.co. And until we meet again, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that if you're communicating internationally or even locally, that you found this useful and that you remember who's on the other side of the table, because for them to understand you, you need to understand them first.