Making the case for safer social media
Helping a UK online safety campaign group show MPs that voters want social media companies held responsible.
The challenge
A UK campaign group wanted social media companies to do more to protect their users from harm and disinformation. They asked us to show that this mattered to voters, so they could use the findings to lobby MPs ahead of new online safety legislation.
Plenty of voters naturally thought online safety was important. The challenge was explaining that responsibility lay with the social media companies as much as with the people using them.
Our approach: Unmediated Listening, values allocation, focus groups
We recommended a three-stage project to develop compelling arguments for greater protections, targeting politically valuable swing voters in the north of England.
- Stage 1: Unmediated Listening, to find compelling starting points and segment the audience
- Stage 2: values allocation and a message development workshop, to create compelling arguments
- Stage 3: focus groups, to refine the messages with a persuadable audience
Unmediated Listening
Participants discussed carefully chosen KSBR Conundrums with a partner or friend and recorded the conversation. Conundrums are statements without an easy yes or no answer, designed to make people think carefully about an issue and explore their own views without judgement. Because they were at home, people felt comfortable voicing difficult opinions or contradicting themselves as they worked out what they thought, producing extremely rich insight.
Values allocation and message creation
We analysed the conversations, identified the key themes and mapped participants on two dimensions: how much moderation they felt was ideal online, and how harmful they thought social media is today. Like-minded people were grouped together so they would build on each other’s ideas.
In a half-day workshop, the campaign team watched carefully edited clips of these participants, chosen to highlight specific challenges and opportunities and help them see the world through voters’ eyes. Using this, they developed targeted messages and supporting arguments.
Message validation
The workshop ideas were turned into stimulus for focus groups, where people built on the most compelling arguments with their own views and experiences. Once we’d found the strongest argument in each group, we tested it against the counter-arguments the other side would use, to check how firm people’s conviction was and to help the client prepare its responses.
The strategy
- Most people were frustrated by online harassment and wanted stronger protections, especially on hate speech and protecting children.
- But they tended to blame individual users rather than a lack of oversight by the platforms, a challenge for a campaign seeking greater responsibility from the companies.
- We recommended highlighting moments when social media companies could have acted to protect people but chose not to, in order to boost engagement and protect their profits.
- To drive the point home, we produced a video report of voters in key swing constituencies making these arguments, which the client used to lobby MPs directly.
- The legislation has since passed into law.
