Richard North, of the EU Referendum, the only player in the map below to have three balls, points out that Profero has made an “update” on their website. But there’s no update to the hilariously flawed networking map they produced, at least that I can find.
A small group of dedicated people coming from a diverse range of positions and perspectives but working together as a loose federation held together by shared values and beliefs succeeded in accomplishing the most impressive PR coup of the 21st century.
“…by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.”
Update on the Oxfam online research project into climate change related conversation
Who we are & what we were commissioned by Oxfam to do
We are Unsimplify, a stand-alone company operating under the Profero umbrella, we’ve been working with Oxfam for a number of months on a project to assist them in helping to make sense of how the growth of online peer-to-peer news generation has and could in the future impact their campaigning activities.
We were commissioned by Oxfam to do this because they were looking for an approach that goes deeper than just monitoring and mapping online conversations – although this does form a part of what we do.
What we set out to do was to help Oxfam’s campaigns team make sense of key online conversations and news generators around climate change and international development issues and their dynamics in order that they might question, revise or support their existing mental models for campaigning and to support decision making and facilitate a culture of inquiry and curiosity amongst the campaign team.
If this sounds complex and challenging then that’s intentional because what Unsimplify does is complex, hence the name.
Putting The LeftFootForward piece into context
We’re really excited that people are taking an interest in what we do and hats off to LeftFootForward for getting the scoop on this piece of work but we’d like to clarify what’s being discussed (most of the conversations focus upon a visual representation of some of the key conversations in the form of a landscape map) as it should be understood in the context of an entire report (120 pages or so) which hasn’t been made public.
The report as a whole applies our own bespoke models and frameworks to both quantitative and qualitative data in order to bring to the surface complex dynamics and issues which would otherwise pass un-noticed if an automated technological monitoring solution had been used in isolation.
Why does this matter?
In a complex situation such as the one we were analysing, data alone won’t aid in making sense of what’s happening, but narratives, informed by data, mental models and assumptions, can.
For example, we didn’t examine the entire myriad of Facebook groups which have formed around climate change and international development issues because they were not significant in this context.
So, what’s the story then?
A small group of dedicated people coming from a diverse range of positions and perspectives but working together as a loose federation held together by shared values and beliefs succeeded in accomplishing the most impressive PR coup of the 21st century.
The climate change sceptics did this by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.
The map that’s being discussed outlines some of the key players and some of the dynamics at play in order to help create a meaningful narrative which captures the sense of what was happening and brings to the surface the key issues.
What happens next?
The ultimate goal of the project was to abstract from all the online noise a narrative and a working model for ‘next practice’ campaigning which would furnish Oxfam, and the progressive community in general, new insights and knowledge about how they might, in future, listen, respond and act into an increasingly complex and turbulent media ecology.
If you have any specific questions about the project please email Managing Director Stewart Conway on unsimplify@profero.com and we’ll do our best to answer them but please do bear in mind that we are really busy.
Alternatively you can visit the Wikipedia page on sense-making which outlines some of the key ideas which have inspired us and which inform our work and approach. The page has some great links to more extensive online resources about how organisations can make sense of, and act into, complex challenges and situations.
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It is all about oil money. Baby Oil or Big Oil.
The panic is about influence on public perception.
Changes is facts often do shape changes in perceptions. The Carbon crisis cartel was famous for changing facts and showed a motive to change perception.
The CRU needs to fall under the auto sales lemon law. I like how they use the word “narrative” instead of Balogna.
Just for fun, has anyone drawn up a real version of this to show them how wrong they are??
Greenpeace have published a report called “Dealing in Doubt” http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/dealing-in-doubt.pdf
It appears that WUWT is not mentioned.
This web site is not only awsome but is outstanding in how it rebuts the tired old robust false claims.
When Joe Romm posted in Jan 2009 that the southwest would have droughts and they would be permanent, The Met Office forcasted BBQ summers and was planning on the same for winters last December when the “inconvenient” blizzard season rolled in.
It only takes a few specific examples of totally false claims to shoot down the voodoo followers and false forecasters.
(a shout out to Down Under Enjoy the sweet and plentifull rains. They are a fragrant alternative to the dry as a bone forecasts for-evah coming from the carbon tax cabal)
Having lots of balls is normally a good thing, but one might say that Richard North has “three spheres” in the diagram.
The ‘sense-making community’ [sic] need a dog-food project to translate their own psycho-babble into plain english. So it, err, makes sense.
“Richard North, of the EU Referendum, the only player in the map below to have three balls,”
eewwwww…..
Obviously what LeftFootForward, Oxfam et al fail to grasp is we (I like to include myself) are individuals not organized groups, who share a common goal. It’s what makes it impossible to counter. Sort of like guerilla communications.
Where is Lord Monckton in this diagram?
Does having a 3rd orb make Mr. North popular with the ladies?
And there was I thinking that Oxfam was a famine and disaster relief charity run on a shoestring and desperate for cash for good works. Now I can see that it is a self serving oligopoly.
Unsimplify??? Can this all possibly get any more Orwellian?
Sounds like they’re about to recommend that Oxfam start astroturfing the web to counter the sceptics’ grassroots buzz.
Why is Oxfam so interested in this “narrative” of climate change? Why? WHY??
Why isn’t Monckton in the map?
Their usage of Wikipedia as a reference reveals how little they understand about the subjects they are addressing and the skeptical community’s relations with Wikipedia. At the rate they are going, they’ll end up metaphorically shooting their clients toes off with their media campaign.
To leave out the deomonstrated links between the IPCC and the AGW promotion community is to render their work meaningless.
They used the phrase “media ecology” twice in the article. Huh? WUWT!?!
I’ll go search on that phrase and if I find anything worth the keystrokes, I’ll report it back here to ya’ll.
I’m baaack. (That was quick.)
It’s a hard science just like climatology ;o)
Why is Oxfam wasting their money on BS like this, rather than actually spending money helping needy people around the world, which is what they’re supposed to do?
So let me get this right. When I give money to Oxfam in the expectation that it will go to some starving person in the third world so they can improve their life, Oxfam instead gives it to some bunch of Golga-Frinchan B Ark wannabees who spend it on researching what websites I look at? Who are looking at the wicked conspiracy to undermine climate change all orchestrated by a weatherman in CA and an ex-public health inspector in Bradford Yorkshire, and the squash-playing puzzle guy in Toronto? Wow. I suppose that third-world person would approve, it’s for her own good, after all.
They don’t have Waxman of Waxman–Markey Cap N Trade in the supporters. You can see Waxman show some true color in this video
2:25 to 2:42 is particularly interesting……
Gee this approach where you don’t have to interview anyone to find out what is going on, or you can interview who you like, has already been invented by the Guardian, BBC, New York Times, IPCC, etc.
Let me get this straight. They have a well organized well financed campaign to sell the Progressive AGW point of view, and they are loosing the argument to a loose net bunch of amateurs. And they need a study to come up with a new campaign to win the remaking of the world. They have been 40 years in creating this program in the quiet and now the whole world is wising up to their con game. They are being caught up and exposed by “the net that covers the world”. The old ways of controlling the people by controlling the information is at an end. We have them surrounded and they are on the run.
My don’t we live in interesting times? 🙂
I have to laugh at this what with the IPCC in the middle. The IPCC is far on the right side of the chart.
Is it just me, or does “unsimplify” as used by these folks, seem to mean the same as “clueless” to you too?