Communication Strategies for Working in the Urban-Rural Interface

1. Communication Strategies for Working in the Urban-Rural Interface Paul D. Ries Oregon Department of Forestry and Oregon State University

2. Why bother? • Public agencies need public support • Resource management is more successful with public support • Public support is based on understanding resource goals and techniques • Understanding is based on communication

3. Challenges in the interface • Audiences are more varied • Issues may be contentious • Audiences may not have experience or background knowledge • Issues involve many aspects All this makes communication challenging!

4. Discussion Question What wildland-urban interface issues are particularly challenging to communicate? Why?

5. What is communication? • Communication is the successful transmission of thoughts or ideas, without significant distortion, so that understanding is achieved. • This requires • effective transmission • reception • input into mental structures

6. Common barriers to effectiveness • Transmission • Sender not credible or trustworthy • Reception • Message lacks clarity (language or speed) • Receiver has experience, prior knowledge • Receiver beliefs and attitudes conflict • Input to mental structures • Message is irrelevant • Receiver is not listening

7. Easy strategies to improve communication • Choose an appropriate, well respected authority on topic as “sender” • Create a message that is easy to understand; use appropriate language • Make the receiver comfortable • Use the right tool

8. Tips to effective communication • Effective communication helps your audience build a mental model in their heads • Connects new information to what they already know • Adds detail, examples • Increases flexibility • Engages them

9. Good communicators • Trustworthy • Engaging • Care about what the audience cares about • Accessible Elementary students watch their computer screen to learn about this turtle

10. Earning trust • Agency materials should • make a point of acknowledging and addressing questions and complaints • demonstrate how prior activity supports a partnership • offer to continue the conversation • Consider using a partner that is trusted

11. Communicating Forestry Key Message Target Audience Proper Tools Your success depends on your ability to communicate Navigating this triangle is crucial to successful communication

12. Key Messages Forests produce benefits Trees and forests provide benefits we can’t live without Working forests are an investment in the future Fragmentation creates conflict

13. Language differences • Technical jargon may be a barrier to your audience • Ask them what they understand • Translate materials to their language or context ? SPECIES ? STAND UNDERSTORY ? ? PATHOGEN BOLE EVEN-AGE

14. A good key message is… • Something people can: • Understand – free of jargon • Relate to – help people see why they should care • Remember – which means it should be concise • One that causes people to understand? • One that cause people to respond?

15. The language of conservation Public opinion research suggests that some phrases resonate better than others and are better at communicating a conservation message Not “endangered species” But “wildlife protection” Not “open space” But “natural areas” Not “easement” But “agreement”

16. Effective messages instill responsibility, provide information, support values Protect your water supply Don’t move firewood Plant the right tree in the right place… Forests provide benefits we can’t live without

17. Important techniques, but harder to accomplish • Avoid saying what audience already knows • Relate to what audience cares about and is interested in • Deliver message through medium that audience uses And so we need to understand the audience!

18. Target Audiences Your employer or employees Your clients or voters Clients you’d like to have, or voters whose support you’d like Landowners Decision-makers Elected officials The media Youth The “general public”

19. By understanding the audience, we can make sure… • Sender is appropriate, well respected • Message is clear, not garbled • Message is meaningful and relevant • Information builds on what is known • Misunderstandings are corrected • The right audience is targeted

20. What can you do? • What are the most important things to find out about an audience before you plan a program? • How can you find out that information?

21. What do you know? • Who is your audience? • What do they care about? • What do they already know about interface issues? • What values are important? • Where do they go for information? • Who do they trust?

22. A blooper • SAF Chapter wanted to distribute new video on forestry careers to teachers • Invited 100 5th grade teachers to dinner and program • 4 came What was the problem? The 4th grade curriculum addresses local resources and careers, not 5th grade. What would have helped: Initial conversation with “audience” could have ensured invitations went to the right teachers.

23. What do they care about? 1. Ask them 2. Check the literature 3. Some things are universal: • Children, health, quality family time 4. Some things are cultural: • Privacy, community, convenience, future, frugality 5. Community leaders may have concerns: • Fiscal responsibility, election, media coverage

24. Why engagement? • Some people want straight, undiluted information • Others need to be entertained • Most do not want to be told what to do, even though you want to tell them! • Try to engage audiences in learning

25. The Proper Tools How you say what you have to say is an important as what you say Matching the tool to the audience is a crucial step in good communications

26. Examples of “old” communication tools • Personal letters • Memos • Posters • Newsletters • Articles in the press • Annual reports • Brochures • One-on-one meetings • Workshops • Small group meetings • Presentations • Ceremonies • Surveys * Just because they are “old”, doesn’t mean we can or should stop using them!

27. Examples of “new” communication tools • Videoclips • Podcasts • YouTube channel • Virtual communities • iTunes • Webinars • Webcasts • Blogs • Wikis • If you want to communicate trees to people, you cannot afford to ignore these new tools, nor can you afford to only use these new tools and not the old ones

28. Social Media Blogs Facebook MySpace Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Ning

29. Social Media – are you keeping up? If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populated in the world Flicker hosts 5 billion images LinkedIn has 100 million users, 56% from outside the US 175 million Twitter users send 95 million Tweets a day

30. Social Media – Should you keep up? If you’re not online, to an entire generation, you don’t exist. They don’t use the phone book or read brochures for information – they go online Social media can’t replace your current communication efforts – it must complement them…

32. Paul D. Ries Urban and Community Forestry Program Manager, Oregon Dept. of Forestry Urban Forestry Instructor and Extension Specialist, Oregon State University College of Forestry Email: pries@odf.state.or.us or paul.ries@oregonstate.edu Phone: 503/945-7391