publications

BMSG's issue series

Changing the story about park and green space equity: A messaging guide for advocates

Friday, October 25, 2024

What is the dominant narrative about parks and green space? And how different is that dominant narrative from the narrative we want to see? As communities across the country are working to ensure that parks and green space are accessible to everyone, this messaging guide can equip advocates and organizers with the communication tools they need to make an effective case to decision-makers and center those with the most at stake.

Messaging guide for communicating about overdose prevention

Friday, August 23, 2024

This guide provides recommendations and resources for local leaders and advocates developing strategies to communicate about overdose prevention with a range of audiences. It includes examples that focus on key issue areas that emerged from our conversations with experts: stigma against people who use substances, pushback against policies like harm-reduction efforts and substance use treatment, and unique considerations for rural communities.

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‘Don’t think of a soda’: Contradictory public health messaging from a content analysis of Twitter posts about sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in California from 2015 to 2018

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Public health advocates working to support taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages may have inadvertently promoted SSBs, reinforced opposition to SSB taxes, and normalized SSBs, found a social media analysis from BMSG, published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. In future SSB tax campaigns, advocates should ensure that the images they use on social media reflect the solutions they seek, not just the problem they are trying to combat.

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Finding that safe space: News about domestic violence and homelessness in California — and finding opportunities to build narrative power

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Domestic violence and homelessness are deeply intertwined, but does news coverage make that connection? If so, whose perspectives are included and whose are left out? How, if at all, are solutions presented? New BMSG research explores these and other questions in an analysis of California-based news and offers recommendations for advocates to help expand the narrative amid today’s already saturated media environment.

Worksheet: Message development

Friday, February 02, 2024

A resource to help advocates practice developing core components of a message and combining them into a cohesive statement.

Media advocacy worksheet: Overall strategy

Friday, February 02, 2024

Before trying to get media attention for the issue you are working on — or determining what your message is going to be — you and your coalition need to have clarity in your overall advocacy goals, as well as the steps you will take to achieve them. Answering the questions in this worksheet will help you identify what information you need to move forward and what immediate steps you need to take.

Layers of strategy

Friday, February 02, 2024

This document outlines BMSG’s four-stage approach to media advocacy planning, a process we call the layers of strategy. It follows the idea that message should never be first or foremost. Rather, the first and most important stage involves developing an overall strategy tied to an advocacy campaign’s specific policy goal. Media, message and media access strategies follow.

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Caregiver Narrative Project: Caregiving as an act of resistance and a common good

Monday, October 16, 2023

Caregiving — both paid and unpaid — is critical to the function of our society. But how does the public perceive this vital act? Berkeley Media Studies Group investigated narratives surrounding caregiving in collaboration with the California Work & Family Coalition, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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Pro- and anti-tax framing in news articles about California sugar-sweetened beverage tax campaigns from 2014-2018

Friday, September 08, 2023

To learn how four successful California campaigns appeared in the news, and to identify overarching patterns across multiple campaigns, BMSG and partners evaluated news coverage to compare how both supportive and oppositional messages characterized SSB taxes while communities were proposing, passing, and implementing their groundbreaking policies. Our results can inform advocates and community members as they make the case for taxes on sugary drinks.

Equity in action: Assessing the role of community in declarations of racism as a public health crisis

Friday, August 25, 2023

What role did community base-building organizations (CBOs) play in advancing declarations of racism as a public health crisis? And how were those declarations were covered in the media? In this brief, we answer those questions and present additional findings from a series of surveys, Learning Circles, and media analyses designed by The Praxis Project and Berkeley Media Studies Group.

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