Strategic communication

Strategic communication is of key importance and penetrates all HumanRights360’s actions and interventions. It aims to establish an inclusive narrative for all people we interact with, through our programs.

Refugees, migrants, homeless, ex-prisoners, people on the street, and other vulnerable groups are often the victims of a toxic rhetoric that not only targets them, but also misinforms the general public about their situation and their everyday challenges.

Through strategic communication, we try to put a stop to the narratives of fear, insecurity, invasion and threat, because they cultivate and maintain the risk of exclusion. As a first step in our endeavor, we promote the separation of people’s anxieties and fears from toxic narratives.

The “road map” of this effort was, initially, the research of the organization “More in Common” on the national identity and the attitude of Greeks on the issues of migration and refugees, undertaken by Ipsos Greece and funded by The Social Change Initiative. HumanRights360 has facilitated the Greek edition of the report.

Inter alia, this research showed that “overall, Greeks are more likely to express sympathy for refugees and reject the tendency to blame migrants for their situation.” This conclusion was one of the reasons that motivated us to focus on the positive narrative that helps build a cohesive society and not on highlighting discrimination and differences.

Specifically on migration issues, a crucial finding of this research is that, in most countries there is a large group of people at the center of society who are neither for nor against migration -they are just confused and concerned about various issues related to migration. We call this group “the movable middle”. In order to change the agenda and manage to stop the predominance of the most conservative reflexes and reach the goal of inclusive narratives, we must try to sensitize this audience.

Extending the above findings to other vulnerable groups, we try at the same time, to clarify, each time, the real conditions, to intensify the effort to dispel misinformation and fake news. Every campaign is built on this data, following the theory of change that we want to achieve.

As HumanRights360, based on the above, we have realized:

1. The campaign #OrdinaryWorkingPeople, as key to our strategic communication, is focusing on what unites us rather than what divides us.
2. The campaign “X them out! A Black Map of Athens” , started in 2019, is designed to pinpoint and highlight the unseen criminality related to racist attacks in the public space, and more specifically to the Golden Dawn’s actions. Following numerous exhibitions in Athens and other major cities, the campaign, eventually became a book, aiming at supporting civil action lawyers in the Golden Dawn trial. Finally, it culminated in the verdict in the Golden Dawn trial and the creation of the 3D online tour, in collaboration with the Technopolis City of Athens.
3. The “Racism is A Fail” campaign is designed to highlight the need for diversity in the societies we live in and how it empowers them. Following the strategic communication principles described above, we created a strong anti-racist campaign. Using football as its main narrative tool, the video depicts how in society, just like football matches, everyone has a place, regardless of the color of their skin, their religious affiliations, and their sexual orientation. Through this campaign, we present a picture of how we envision a better world, with greater acceptance of diversity.
4. Many individual actions and smaller campaigns to support our programs.

The work of our Strategic Communication is diffused through many channels and all available online tools we have. In addition to the social media, we use innovative platforms and design programs, in order to always produce up-to-date content that meets the needs of both the campaign and the era. At the same time, we are constantly measuring the impact of our interventions and adapting our future actions.

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