"Introduction to Message Mapping"
featuring Dr. Vincent Covello
Hello, my name is Dr. Vincent Covello. I’m the Director of the Center for Risk Communication in New York City. For the past 30 years, I and my colleagues around the world have devoted our careers to finding better ways to communicate effectively in high-concern, high-stress situations.
One of the most powerful tools for communicating about such issues—be they crisis or noncrisis, be they epidemics or obesity or smoking—is the message map. As you see in this graphic, a message map starts off with a concern of a stakeholder, proceeds to the key messages that we would offer in response to those concerns, and then proceeds to the supporting facts.
The goals of message mapping are threefold. Number one is to enhance knowledge and understanding. The second is to build trust and credibility, and the third is to encourage appropriate behaviors as well as levels of concern. The message map basically—if you look at the structure—is a detailed, hierarchically organized set of information that is a visual aid. It provides—at a glance to a communicator—the organization’s messages related to a particular high-concern issue.
Three messages I would like to leave with you about message mapping:
1) it’s a science-based discipline,
2) it’s consistent with the way information is processed in high-concern situations, and
3) it allows us to better respond to anticipated questions and concerns.
Let me take that first point—that it’s a science-based discipline. Over the past 30 years, approximately 8,000 articles have been written that bear directly or indirectly on message mapping. These are articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals—nearly 2,000 books published from a number of different fields, everything from psychology to mass media to the behavioral sciences.
The message-mapping format is used by a large number of organizations. It’s used, for example, within the CDC. It’s used within the World Health Organization. It’s used within the Environmental Protection Agency.
Message mapping is consistent with the way information is processed in high-concern, high-stress situations. For nearly 2,000 years now, individuals have attempted to better understand how people process information in a high-concern, high-stress situation, and there are three basic findings that relate directly to message mapping. I will discuss these in more detail later.
The first finding is that people under stress in high-concern situations—regardless of the nature of the concern—have difficulty hearing, understanding, and remembering information. Second, they typically want to know that we care before they care what we know. And third, they focus most on what they hear first and last.
Message mapping helps us to better respond to anticipated questions. Particularly, it helps us to avoid a phenomenon called communicator’s regret. Ask yourself, how many of us have said—somewhere, some time in our life—“I wish I had said this,” or “I wish I had not said this.” Message mapping helps us to avoid that communication regret.
Basically, there are two formats for message mapping. There is the box format, as you see in this graphic. There’s the line format that we see in this graphic. But regardless of which format we use, the fundamental purposes remain the same: to help us to communicate better information in high-stress situations.
I’d like to give you a very brief demonstration of what a message map looks like when you actually present it in a real-life situation. Here is the message map for West Nile virus. You might begin the message map with a message of caring, empathy, and listening. This would be a preamble to the map, consistent with the principle that people under stress want to know that you care before they care what you know. For example, you might say, “I know many of you are concerned about West Nile virus. You’re concerned about your health and that of your family.” Then you would proceed to the map itself, which has three key messages and three supporting facts—again, consistent with the general principle that people under stress have difficulty hearing, understanding, and remembering information.
Let me just demonstrate by offering up this map:
“In response to your question about what I can do to protect myself and my family, there are three basic things we’d recommend:
1) that you remove standing water from your property,
2) that you wear protective clothing, and
3) that you use insect repellent.Let me go back to each of those three messages in turn.
Let’s take the first message: standing water. This means removing unattended water from unattended swimming pools. It means removing water from unattended flowerpots or bird basins. But it also means that a single cup of water left out for a week can produce thousands of mosquitoes that might carry disease.
The second message: wear protective clothing. This means wear long sleeves, long pants, but particularly at dusk and dawn when many mosquitoes are most active.
Third: use insect repellent. Since there are many types of repellents, look at the label and see if it contains DEET at 23%. Why? Because the medical research literature indicates that DEET at 23% provides the longest, safest protection when used according to label."
Again, the purpose of message mapping is:
1) to inform and educate,
2) to build trust and credibility, and
3) to encourage appropriate behaviors.
There are seven steps involved in message mapping:
The first step for a given high-concern, high-stress issue: we have to identify the stakeholders.
Number two: we have to identify the stakeholder questions or concerns.
Number three: we identify common sets of questions or concerns.
The fourth step is to develop the key messages and responses to those questions or concerns.
The fifth step is to develop the supporting information for each of the key messages.
The sixth step is to conduct testing of the messages.
And the seventh and final step is to plan for delivery.
As a pre-step, though, before any of this could be done is, we have to identify which high-concern issues we want to address. We have to then prioritize those issues and assemble a message-mapping team as a way by which to develop the messages.
The message-mapping team typically would consist of three individuals. It would, number one, consist of a subject matter expert—someone who is knowledgeable about the topic being mapped itself. Second, you would have a communicator who is not only familiar with the general principles of communication and risk communication but also with the principles of message mapping. And third, you would have a representative from management who can speak to the many policy issues that message maps typically will arise in the development of a message map.