Hi, my name is Leah Sprain, and today we're going to be talking about communication literacy. There's lots of ways into communication as a discipline. I started as an undergraduate and part because I was an undergraduate debater interested in argumentation about public issues and making extemporaneous speeches. That interest ended up allowing me to go to Japan for a month to participate in demonstration debates at universities all across Japan. Pan. >> Part of the reason why Japanese students are so interested in learning debate, which might seem a little esoteric it's because they see it as a way to gain access to International English and a ways of thinking about our communication that are so important for Global Commerce, which was an important reminder that the ways in which we engage in communication are both cultural but also fundamental How we kind of get things done and engage and persuasion and all sorts of activities. As an undergraduate I also had a double major in environmental studies, which is what found me in Costa Rica, setting sustainable development with some coffee farmers and I went to this meeting with an external consultant. To tell them about how they should be running their meetings. And this kind of mundane idea helped me realize how important it was for groups to come together and how they would make decisions. I parlayed that interest, not in Only into setting how groups get things done, but also how I could actively help them design the ability to have better conversations. And so do you work trying to help dialogue and deliberation and kind of facilitate discussions in order to help individuals and communities come together to kind of address shared issues? This kind of informs how I'm going to be focusing today on this intro and intersection between COVID-19 and systemic racism. Which is that they're both politicized issues. So we're going to talk a little bit about what that means. And then how it feeds polarization? And then how we then should engage in Responding to these polarized issues. So the first is perhaps not a surprising move to any of us, or both in this class, but also in this moment, which is that both COVID-19 and systemic racism and black lives matter in particular have become politicized, whether it's mass for the issue as a whole. Accusations that can this summer that the WNBA ,for example, should be removed a politics for sports or even the move itself up suggesting that all lives matter is an accusation that to focus on Black Lives Matter is to disproportionately and perhaps unfairly politicize and focus on just one part. Rhetorically, we need to understand this move to kind of politicized by something that opponents do that says that other people are trying to render something political in a way that you still did. And we often hear this immediately after events, whether it's hurricanes Or gun violence, this kind of suggestion that they're making something dirty by making it political. And part of the way this works for toric is that pole politics itself is what. We've recalled a double term, something that we have negative associations with. So to call it out and suggest that something is politicised means that it itself is a problem and this move of crying polarizations is an act of polarisation. It tries to create these kind of two groups. People making accusation are moral, pristine, factual, right?. While the other people are doing something that's corrupt and dirty and evil and that we shouldn't be suspicious of them. And in this moment, we should be particularly concerned because this act of polarization Feeds onto what gets called an effective polarization, which is animosity between political parties such that individual party members see the other side is a critical, selfish and closed minded to the point where they're even unwilling to socialize or work with other people. You may have experienced this in your own lives when you think about who in your extended family you're comfortable talking politics with over dinner. Our communion members help people engage It would be each other, and part of what research has shown is that this polarization isn't about issues. It's not about fundamental disagreements about how we should run the country. Instead, it's about social identity, it's about who people are. And in turn, this type of polarization feeds on thinking about the people themselves are evil, not just how they approach issues. There's lots of, kind of mutually reinforcing causes and effects to this I'm going to briefly give you a sense of some that we get our news from different sources. So this shows that about 20% both Republicans and Democrats are kind of stuck in news bubbles where they're only being subjected to news that already agrees with them. We get this even worse online when we're second filter bubbles, where algorithms control what we have access to based on kind of our previous actions. And so we're only showing things that kind of confirm and reinforce our own beliefs. And it's really hard to get outside of that. That the results is then that we have disagreements on what even counts as a big issue. That only 20% of Republicans compared to 76% of Democrat think that the way racial and ethnic minorities in this country are treated by the criminal justice system is a big problem today, undermines our ability to come together to think about what should be done to address that problem. Likewise, that during an outbreak where 150,000 Americans have died, that we have a gap, and even recognizing the Coronavirus as an outbreak 76% of Democrats think is a big problem only 37% of Republicans. This suggests an important kind of gap that undermines our ability to come together. Do the necessary work of disagreeing about what should be done? Okay, so as we think about what we should then do to engage with the politicisation of these two issues, I'm going to suggest that there's kind of two separate moves that we all should make not just politicians but we as community members. As citizens should do the first is we should ask, should it be a public issue now I'm using public instead of political here, intentionally in that I don't want us to think about politics as dirty. As corrupt, but instead that there are issues that are shared that they're public, and that we need to be able to come together and debate about what should be done to address those. We need real disagreement about what should be done in order to come up with the best solution. But there are issues that demand our shared attention because they affect us all. So as you think about this question, if the answer is yes, that it should be a public issue, then your responsibility is use communication and rhetorical strategies to both create those public issues and engage in those debates. Sometimes there are public issues that are under the radar, that are experienced disproportionally by some people but haven't don't have kind of wide consideration. And it's our responsibility to use communication to make them known to make themselves. And I can't get into the details here because I don't have time. But there's a variety of different strategies are available to people to create those public issues, but then also to engage in this public debates. As we think about this question, sometimes the answer is no. That the issue shouldn't be a public issue. And there are kind of two disproportionate reasons for that. The first is sometimes it's a technical issue. technical issues are best decided by relevant experts. For example if we think about how to build a bridge, that's a decision best left to engineers. You can think about structural load capacity. We shouldn't be voting, I shouldn't be consulted about how to Build a bridge. But the question about where to build that bridge, especially when it disproportionately impacts certain communities and people who are living in areas where the bridge is going to go. That's a public issue because of the shared dimensions. So as we think about COVID-19 in particular, there are certain aspects that are probably best decided and guided by relevant experts versus their certain aspects. Or public and shared and we should be distinguishing between the two. The second reason why it might not be a public issues it might be a private issue issues for kind of individual control and or individual businesses A classic example, here is the difference between kind of who cooks for dinner. A private concern. The government has no business in dictating that. But if the point where there's domestic violence because of that dinner, that becomes a public concern because there's a shared orientation that people shouldn't be subject to violence, even if it's happening within an individual household. As we think about COVID-19, the decision about when to get an individual test might be private up to individuals and their doctors. But we have a public responsibility to ensure that testing itself isn't accessible. COVID-19 has lots of dimensions. Distinguishing them, helps us both focus public debate while maintaining space for expertise in individual control. Both of which are really important. The second move that I think we should make is strategic listening. Now this comes to us from some empirical research looking at what people do during polarized controversies, and shows that there's kind of four different types of listening that we engage in. The first is when we listen, do what's called enclave listening, and that's listening within our kind of groups where we have like minded citizens Who share ideas and the function that listening place here is really to build solidarity that we listen to each other to build a sense of connection. The next type of listening is Alliance listening and this is across different groups. So not just people who kind of agree with us or who are like us, but to different groups and what we're listening for is possibilities aware there may be some kind of shared values, or shared goals, that we can form some new alliances and build new coalition's The next is adversary listening and adversarial listening is between opposing sides of the debate. And we were really listening to monitor opponents to see what they're saying about an issue, what arguments are they're making and what do they care about? And the last form is transformative listening, where folks listen to other community members, Both who agree with them but also who disagree, really with the intention of changing their own views about an idea. Now I'm going to argue that we need more strategic listening, which is both that we need all these different forms of listening. But I want you to be reflective about which form you're engaged with and why And as you do that some advice as you engage in On Click Listening, think about who within your group both needs that solidarity. And listen to them. Realize that listening to them is a form of building kind of connection and support and use that strategically within your own groups In general, we need more Alliance listening. And in particular Alliance listening allows gives us the freedom to not try to agree on everything, but rather just listen for points of connections and let the other stuff go. And a student told me that focusing on Alliance listening is what got her through an awkward Thanksgiving conversation. With her dad, where instead of trying to kind of debate every point, just thinking about kind of these points of connection was enough to get through an otherwise rough conversation. As we engage them in adversarial listening, be intentional about breaking our filter bubbles resist some of the ways in which we're coddled and thinking, With only engaging with people who agree with us, and then use that knowledge to make public debate sharper. To really engage with oppositional arguments, should you research about that, help dismantle bad arguments and help compel us to put together the best version possible of what our own advocacy Finally, transformative listening is perhaps one of the most powerful forms of listening. The possibility that it with engaging others we're really able to transform our own views and who we are. That said, it may not always be possible And in particular, we shouldn't require that other people do transformative listening when they're in positions where they have less power, or they aren't otherwise recognised when they're fighting for their own survival, that we should be careful about the conditions under which transform mobilising our power possible. And I would argue that the most powerful people should be the people who motto and do it first, rather than expecting it if the least powerful. Long and short communication literacy is critical engagement, that even this act of identifying all these arguments as rhetorical and as these active polarization is possible. Is an important move that we should recognise the dangers of the affective polarization. We don't want to get into being swept into thinking that the other side is apparently evil, we should resist where possible. And we do that by doing our own evaluation on whether or not topics require public debate and then we participate in those as we see Appropriate, both amplifying public issues and asserting boundaries and thinking about how we can push in and strategically to both build solidarity form points of connection, engaged in better argument and potentially transform ourselves and others. If you're interested in more here, here's information about how you can learn more about how students learn to hone their craft as communication specialists in the Department of Communication. You're also welcome to reach out to me If you're interested in both forms of kind of public argument, but also in thinking about how we design the conditions for people to come together, to engage in shared Community Action, shared decision making, and really work through these necessary issues of what it means to live with each other, and address politics thanks.
