Unit 3 – The Communications Package – Advanced Professional Writing

What is this Unit about?

Quality research, such as the development of a Policy Brief, becomes valuable when it is shared. Research should not be left on a shelf but used strategically to increase knowledge and, in many cases, to persuade others to act. This is how the advocacy potential of a policy brief is fully realized.

The material covered in this unit will support the development of a communication package designed to disseminate the advocacy messages of the policy brief. The communication package will include a simplified strategic communication plan, as well as three communication documents: a presentation, an infographic and a professional blog posting.

Principles and best practices of knowledge mobilization, as an element of strategic communication planning, are explored. In addition, to support the development of a communication package, we will cover skills and techniques related to the development of communication materials across multiple modalities.

By the end of this Unit, you will be able to:

Shape strategic messages pulled from a larger knowledge project
Develop a communication plan that links message, audience and channel in strategic and effective ways for a communication goal
Develop communication materials that effectively and professionally use and balance multimodal forms of communication
Develop communication materials that use the connective community potential of social media to make an impact

Unit 3 Sections

Audience and Message: Preparing a communication plan
Leveraging Principles of Visual Literacy: Translating ideas into images
Playing Speech off Text off Image: Multimodal communication
Community Impact: Social media for a Professional Context

Section 1: Audience and Message – Preparing a Communication Plan

In this section, we will explore some theory and best practices for the development of a strategic plan for the dissemination of your research. Then, later in the unit, you will find more practical lessons supporting the development of different communication documents called for in the plan. To help to put all this context, begin by becoming familiar with the Communication Package assignment.

First, read Ch. 6, “Definitions” from Knowledge Management and Communication. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/knowledgemanagement/chapter/introduction-to-knowledge-management-and-communications-definitions/ Now read over the Communication Package Assignment. You can access it under Assessments. As you read it over, reflect on how the Communication Package will be a project of “knowledge dissemination.” Take note of the 4 individual pieces required for this package. Skills and techniques for each piece are covered in turn in the sections of this unit.

Sharing your Research

Knowledge mobilization is for the most part another term for strategic communication. At times, we can distinguish between strategic communication that is more focused on the interests of a particular organization and general knowledge distribution. However, for the purposes of our course project, these concepts align. The main idea here is a strategic sharing of information (from those who create it to those who could use it) for a specific purpose, which might range from increased knowledge to generating action.

Where the policy brief was a project in knowledge synthesis, drawing together many voices within a conversation, the communication package is focused on knowledge dissemination, getting the information out to those who need it. Developing a plan for knowledge dissemination ensures that your efforts are strategic and also effective.

Read Chapter 12 “Introduction to Knowledge Management Communications: building a KMB Plan” in Knowledge Management and Communication OER. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/knowledgemanagement/chapter/introduction-to-knowledge-management-and-communications-building-a-kmb-plan/

The OER Knowledge Management and Communication cites John Lavis et al’s 5 fundamental questions needed to develop a plan for knowledge dissemination:

Audience: To whom should research knowledge be transferred?
Message: What knowledge should be transferred to decision-makers?
Messenger: By whom should the knowledge be transferred?
Mechanism: How should the knowledge be transferred?
Impact: With what effect should the knowledge be transferred?

Thinking strategically about each of these fundamental questions is key to effective dissemination of knowledge. However, taking them in isolation is not enough. The interdependence of these factors must be considered.

For simplicity’s sake, given the nature of our course project, let’s assume that the messenger stays constant – it’s you within the discourse community you connected with for the project.

We can then begin to think about the relationships of the other factors:

An initial choice of audience will constrain subsequent choices around message and mechanism, as well as impact. Like, an initial focus on a specific message from a larger knowledge project will drive decisions around audience, mechanism and impact. The same logic is true of impact and mechanism.

Let’s consider a simple example. You have research that demonstrates the importance of exercise in preventing disease later in life. You have not only evidence of this preventative feature of exercise, but also information on what kinds of exercise are most beneficial.

Now, imagine your options from different directions:

Impact. You most want audiences to change their behaviour and exercise more.
- How would different audiences react to this message? Select an audience: youth, parents, retirees.
- Given the audience and impact you selected, how might you best shape the message to generate a change in behaviour for that audience?
- And given the audience and message you’ve selected for this impact, which mechanism or channel would you pick?
- Now, flip it around. You have been directed to develop a social media campaign that gets audiences to exercise more. How will this change your selection of audience? Message?
Message. You most want to communicate this link between exercise and long-term health.
- What impact would you like to focus on? Sharing the information or generating action?
- Given this impact and message, who might be the most likely target audience?
- Given the impact, message and audience, what channels might you use?
- Now, flip it around. You have been directed to give this message to young people. How might the impact and channel differ?

Working through these different thought scenarios is a way to conceptualize the interconnectedness of these four categories; in developing communication plans, it’s important to be nimble in working through these intersections to create the most effective communication.

Intent, Audience, Message and Channel in Detail

Read Chapters 27, 28 and 29 from Knowledge Management Communications. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/knowledgemanagement/chapter/communication-tools-and-strategies-the-importance-of-communication-plans/ Read “Key Message Development: Building a Foundation for Effective Communications” https://prsay.prsa.org/2011/12/02/key-message-development-building-a-foundation-for-effective-communications/

Defining Intent or Goal

Overall, you may have several goals to achieve in your plan for knowledge dissemination, but each communication should have just one. In your unit assignment, you will, for example, you will have three individual communication pieces, and each should have a clearly defined intent; they do not have to be the same.

Consider the range of intents that might be invoked through communication:

Sometime our goal is to simply share information, but our goals can be progressively more persuasive, as we might be interested in our audience learning or adopting the information we share, even gaining an affinity or agreement with it, and finally, we may even be interested in prompting action by our audience. The ability to achieve any one of these goals depends very much on the audience relationship to the message we have on offer; how we craft a message will depend very much on what our intent is and how the audience feels about it.

For example, we might want to share with students the date that registration opens, an intent that has no expectation of response. However, we may instead want to share this date with the intent of getting all students registered before they miss an opportunity. This intent of action requires a compellingly? different message!

As you develop your communication plan, think strategically about the specific intents for each communication piece.

Audience

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/knowledgemanagement/chapter/communication-tools-and-strategies-key-components-of-a-communication-plan-define-your-audience-and-channels/

The selection of target audience is often driven by the goal or intent of the communication, as noted in your reading. The nature of the recommendations in the Policy Brief and the goals for knowledge dissemination will often dictate a specific audience. However, it’s also possible that in the course of sharing research and information, opportunities come to connect with audiences that had not been anticipated. In such cases, thinking carefully about the intent and message suitable for an audience is key.

Once selected, the interests and orientation of an audience are defining elements. We need to ask the following kinds of questions:

What is their interest in the knowledge begin shared? Why would they care?
What is their disposition? Are they amendable or wary of it?
What are you asking of them (intent)? Can they provide that? How can they be motivated?

Message

Use the questions and strategic process outlined in Chapter 28 of your reading as a template for defining the message of your communication pieces; this resource reminds you to think carefully about the relationship to intent, audience and channel when shaping your message!

When working with a larger project, like a Policy Brief or other research project, it can be difficult to pull out threads of individual messages from the whole. Filtering information for different goals and to different people mean we need to approach our body of research flexibly without linear intent; we might think of our research as a buffet meal rather than a 5-course presentation. When we write a research paper, we work carefully to tie all the pieces together in a logical and effective linear product, as you have just experienced writing the policy brief. But now, we can deconstruct this into a table of information nuggets to be selected and communicated at will. You might find, for example, a need to communicate simply the recommendations; or you might focus on a specific finding or point of research within the larger work that you want to share with a particular audience.

Mechanism or Channel

As outlined in your readings, selection of mechanism or channel is made carefully in the context of audience profile and message creation. For example, some information is better shared in some media over others. And we know this from our everyday life. Consider emergent social roles around when, what and how to text people. Some information is more suitable for texting than other, and certain audiences respond differently to and are more adept at text messaging than others. When we get this wrong, communication can sometimes break down! Message adaptability and audience preference and competency must be considered.

The selection of mechanism or channel is also often influenced by a project’s budget and timelines. While sometimes a national ad campaign might be desirable, it’s not always feasible!

Developing the Communication Planning Document

Communication plans vary in complexity and components, as they are custom built for a wide variety of communication contexts and challenges. For example, consider this resource for information and tips on communication planning suitable for project management: https://pressbooks.nscc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-15-communication-planning/

Similarly, you can find plenty of information and templates related to the design of communication plans for campaigns or media events, such as this one from The Community Toolbox: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/communication-plan/main

For the context of this course project, we use a simplified communication planning document, designed to have you think about just the fundamental strategy needed in communication planning; you will think strategically about the relationships between impact, audience, message and mechanism, as you plan ways to communicate content from the policy brief.

Before jumping in to produce the infographic, professional blog post and slide deck video, you must create an overall communication planning document for this knowledge mobilization, using the ideas covered in this section of the unit.

In the project, the mechanisms or channels are fixed. This gives you a starting point in beginning to plan the other factors of a successful strategic communication document; each mechanism lends itself better to some kinds of intent or goal than others. For example, the professional blog may be particularly suited to the intent to generate good will or affinity for a set of ideas, while the slide deck video, with more direct audience contact and depth, might be more suited to persuasion and a call to action. Finally, infographics, in their design, might be well suited in communicating specific messages or lessons.

With these mechanisms as a guide, you can begin to define an impact, audience and message for each of the 3 elements in the communication package. The Journal Task below will help you begin this process and then you can continue using the template provided in the assignment.

Section 2: Leveraging Principles of Visual Literacy

At this point, once the strategic planning for the communication package is done, and the intent, audience and message of each communication item have been determined, it’s time to focus on the actual development of the different communication pieces.

This section introduces the idea of multimodal communication as an element of engaging storytelling. It then continues to introduce a set of techniques for leveraging strong visual literacy skills in the development of an infographic or other visual-dominant forms of communication.

Introduction to Multimodal Communication

The goal for this section is to appreciate and explore how the forms of our storytelling have a transformational impact on the content. Different forms of media can be used, leveraging their unique potential, to shape, persuade, and engage an audience’s appreciation of your core messages.

Watch Joe Sabia’s 2011 Ted Talk “The Technology of Storytelling.” https://www.ted.com/talks/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling?subtitle=en This is 3 minutes of fun, but also to get you thinking about the importance of audience engagement in your story and how you can use the media you have to achieve it.

Read Ann Fillmore’s lesson on Multimodal Communication: https://pressbooks.pub/openenglishatslcc/chapter/multi-modal-communication-writing-in-five-modes/#2

In the context of strategic communication, the question of how we tell our story, or communicate our core messages, is intricately connected to audience and goal as we have been exploring. We can think carefully about how our choice and use of different modalities shapes how we tell these stories.

Audiences often prefer to receive different kinds of information through different modalities. Consider for a moment your own preferences. How do you prefer to get your news? How about learning new information? What about for entertainment?

Video/listen (watch)
Newspapers/Books/Articles (read)
Radio/Podcast/Lecture (listen)
News Feeds/SM/Websites (scan multimodal)

How does it feel when you have to receive information in a mode that just feels wrong for the content? Ask other people in your life, including people of other generations or other areas of professional interest, these same questions. Are there different preferences?

So, from the producer’s point of view, selecting modality is a rhetorical decision, made to achieve the intended goal of the communication for the intended audiences. News today is available across a wide range of modalities to ensure the broadest possible audience, but how that news is presented varies significantly by modality, responsive to its unique features. Take a moment to track a recent news story across a newspaper, television news broadcast and on social media; how is the story shaped differently across these modalities?

Multimodal communication strategies aim not only to read a broader audience by sending a message across multiple modalities, but also sometimes by combining modalities to make an experience richer. Consider, for example, the intersections between popular entertainment on a streaming service and the associated social media coverage inviting interactive fan participation.

When making rhetorical decisions about modality, we can consider these following tips:

Know the communication strengths of each mode and match to intent, audience and message. If you know you are doing an infographic, make decisions about intent, audience and message that align well with that mode.
Know the features and restrictions of any platform for communication (print, web, audio, etc.) and accommodate for them.
Explore options to combine modes to amplify communicative effect.
Ensure each mode used adds meaning and value; avoid gratuitous use of multimodal communication if it doesn’t add something.
Assess your own communicative competency. Do you have the resources and skills to use the mode effectively?

Leveraging Visual Literacy

Watch Christoph Niemann’s Ted Talk “You are Fluent in this Language (and don’t even know it).

Now read the short essay by Dahliani Reynolds on “Visual Rhetoric”:

As Niemann suggests in their talk, this cultural moment is characterized by strong visual literacy skills. Our media environment is saturated with visual information, and we are increasingly able to act as visual producers, using a range of digital tools, in ways that were not always possible in an earlier media era. Visual expression is now a normative part of our daily communication.

This literacy is a strong foundation on which to think carefully about how we use the visual mode to achieve professional and strategic communication challenges. We can begin to think about achieving our core messages across the range of modes, which requires us to consider, as noted in the readings, the unique contributions of each mode.

The use of visuals for communication, or visual rhetoric, requires the same care and attention to content, tone and style as we would with words. When using visuals to communicate and create meaning, we must be attentive to the cultural resonances of our visual rhetoric as well as the register or tone (formal or informal, for example). Visuals communicate quickly and often with a lot of direct impact, so nuance can be more challenging than when using words; in this sense, be mindful of the messages, both implicit and explicit, being communicated through image selection.

Using Visual Tools Effectively for an Infographic Style Document

Think of these readings as a best practice toolkit for the development of an Infographic, or similar kinds of visually dominant communications.

Put this toolkit to good use: Skim through the readings to get an overall picture of the skills and techniques covered

Refer back to specific sections in designing and developing the Infographic for your communication package. Use the principles in this toolkit as a guide for the overall quality and effective of your document.

Readings: VISME “How to Make an Infographic in 5 Easy Steps” https://visme.co/blog/how-to-make-an-infographic/#sketch-a-wireframe-of-your-infographic
VISME “Infographic Copy 101: How to Write an Infographic that’s easy to understand” https://visme.co/blog/how-to-write-an-infographic/
VENNGAGE “What makes a good infographic?” https://venngage.com/blog/good-infographic/

In completing the communication planning for the infographic, strategic decisions can be made in the context of the communicative potential of this mechanism. Infographics or other visual-heavy fact sheets lend themselves well to quick and efficient consumption of information, usually a simple or really focused idea or core message. They are less suitable for complex situation that requires persuasion for audience engagement.

Section 3: Playing Speech Off Text – Designing Effective Presentations

Presentations can be difficult to pull off effectively. They are a familiar, even common, form of communication, but are rarely as engaging and effective as they can be. The first step is to have a well-organized oral delivery and some attractive supporting slides. Certainly, your resources this week will provide some tips on this. But the next step is a more difficult nuanced and cohesive relationship between the oral delivery and the visuals, playing the oral delivery and the visuals against each other for strategic purposes.

You see this done well, of course in many TED talks – the visuals are designed not simply to reinforce or replicate the oral delivery, but often to enhance, layer meaning and even comment on the oral delivery. If you can get this dynamic play between the modalities, you have reached something a bit more engaging.

Presentation Design Standards and Multimodal Techniques

Watch David Phillips 2014 Ted Talk “How to avoid death by PowerPoint” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo A provocative challenge to rethink how we design presentations to align with our cognitive capabilities. Pay special attention to the 5 Design principles that he elicits through the talk and aim to apply them to your own work. Read Chapter 10 “Designing and Delivering Presentations” in Fundamentals of Engineering Technical Communications. https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/feptechcomm/chapter/10-presentations/#Visuals Read the article “10 Tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea” from the TEDBlog. https://blog.ted.com/10-tips-for-better-slide-decks/

A presentation combines multiple modalities: audio, visual images and written language. We’ve examined principles and techniques for written language already through this course. Let’s consider the semantic contributions of audio and visual images to any communication piece.

The creative combination of modes come together into a more meaningful whole, when done well. A presentation without visuals can sometimes be difficult to follow and salient ideas might not stand out. Effective and timely use of visuals can add meaning in several ways:

Visuals can align with the oral presentation as a form of reinforcement or emphasis to help consolidate meaning.
Visuals can enhance the content in the oral presentation, adding additional nuance or resonance to the meaning.
Visuals can comment on the content in the oral presentation, used to provide irony, humour or a reflective interpretation.

Consider ways to layer meaning in the sound/visual relationship of your design. These rhetorical choices in a presentation’s design should be developed with consistent use of the best practices outlined for slide deck design in the resources for this section. A successful presentation achieves the intent of the communication, through the unique needs of an audience’s ability to take in the core message.

Designing the Presentation for the Course Project

When you are planning the Slide Deck with Presentation, you can make strategic decisions in the context of the communicative potential of this mechanism. The multimodal nature combines oral delivery with the potential to communicate complex ideas with visual support. In this way, the mechanism lends itself well to both information transfer and more persuasive intents.

Consider also the various contexts and audiences that might be suitable for this type of communication. Presentations are often given in broad public settings, such as conferences or community forums. They are also used widely in more internal contexts, such as organizational planning or training.

Section 4: Community Impact: Leveraging Social Media for your Cause

In this section, we will examine two examples of professional blogs used as forms of training and advocacy. This genre, which is the final element of the Communication Package for this course, has become a ubiquitous means of connecting professional, social and issues-based communities around important conversations. As such, as a tool for knowledge dissemination it works well across a range of intent from information sharing, through engagement and affinity, to persuading action and change.

Read Section 19 from Chapter 33 “Using Social Media for Digital Advocacy” from The Community Tool Box. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/advocacy/direct-action/electronic-advocacy/main Now read the shorter blog post on “The Power of Social Media for Advocacy and Social Change.” https://westbowgivesback.ca/social-media-for-advocacy-and-social-change/ This resource provides information on the potential for social media mechanisms to work for knowledge dissemination (such as sharing the findings of a Policy Brief). But it also functions as an example of a professional blog post that is required as part of the Communication package assignment.

Of course, in the broader digital environment multiple platforms for social media engagement exist, each comprising of multimodal functions that can be leveraged for strategic communication. The challenge in developing strategic communication for this environment is the sheer range and complexity of options.

In addition to the ideas presented in the readings for this unit, we can isolate some key questions to shape rhetorical decisions when working with social media; these questions will, of course, look very familiar by now, as they are related to audience, message and intent. However, the unique features and diversity of choice within these mechanisms shape our decision making. The nuances of the media environment are important. Each platform, commercial or non-profit, public or private, carries a unique culture and set of functional capabilities. We intuitively know this from our own personal experiences. We know what we will find on LinkedIn compared to Tik Tok!

As with any other communication challenge, we need to find alignment between the selection of Intent (the Why), Audience (the Who), Message (the What) and Mechanism (the Where and When). Within the social media environment, we need an extra step of differentiating an appropriate platform and combination of modes; what kind of multimodal experience would be best? This includes considering relationships between audiences and multimodal potential of different platforms, along with metrics on demographic reach of any platform.

Designing the Professional Blog

For this final piece of the Communication project, many of the variables have been set for you. A professional blog post, such as those seen on LinkedIn or other industry sites are text heavy with some use of visuals to support and engage viewers; they are shaped for a professionally oriented context focused on networking, training and other forms of community connectivity. These features will help you to shape the message-audience relationship for this element of the communication package.