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Commission staff outline eight guiding principles for anti‑hate public messaging; commissioners urge caution
Summary
Staff summarized an evidence review that produced eight guiding principles for anti‑hate public messaging — including empathy, narratives, and attention to messenger/audience alignment — while commissioners warned that prevalence statistics can inadvertently normalize hate and urged careful audience targeting.
Staff presented a literature review of public messaging strategies intended to prevent hate, citing work led by a Stanford researcher and other academic partners. The review distilled eight evidence‑based guiding principles for message design; staff highlighted empathy and perspective‑taking, narrative storytelling, aligning descriptive and injunctive norms, and carefully selecting messengers who can influence target audiences.
During discussion, commissioners largely praised the research approach but emphasized key trade‑offs. Several commissioners warned that messages emphasizing how common hate incidents are can backfire by making harmful behavior seem normative. Commissioner Senar said messages should pair prevalence information with strong injunctive norms and be targeted to specific audiences; Deputy Director Watts and others noted the evidence base still has gaps and that messages should be field‑tested before broad rollout.
Staff and commissioners agreed the report should present these principles as options rather than one‑size‑fits‑all prescriptions and recommended pilot testing, community buy‑in, and careful attention to measurement.
