Roll Up Your Sleeves, This is How We Fight Back
Note from the Data to Disrupt team: We were mourning then and we continue to mourn now. Our most heartfelt condolences to the families of the 19 children and 2 educators who lost their lives to a mass shooter in Uvalde.
1. How the Winning Jobs Narrative Project informs messaging on immigration
A major new study is out: The Rural Democracy Initiative helped launch and support The Winning Jobs Narrative Project — a “blueprint for successful messaging on issues relating to jobs and the economy” brought to you by some of the best in the business when it comes to research and progressive advocacy. (You can download their resources here.)
Why it matters to the immigration narrative:
One of the study’s key takeaways is that most voters value hard work — the kind where we do well for ourselves and our families and do our part to contribute to the community. That value informs some of the best messaging to persuade voters, including:
Centering workers so they know they are the priority and heroes
Valuing and supporting their work to connect with deeply held shared values
Positioning the government as a supporter - not the star of the show - offering the tools and respect to allow workers to build a good life
Showing workers how a policy is good for the economy and everyone
When applied to immigration, it shows why polling and messaging is always stronger and more persuasive when we show how immigrant workers not only value hard work and contribute to the economy shoulder-to-shoulder with other working Americans, but also how their full integration to American citizenry would be a net-positive for all communities. Narratives around and testimonials by Dreamers and farm workers, in fact, garner some of the highest support.
The best messages also relate immigration to the economy. As continued labor shortages and inflation continue to drive much of the headlines, it is critical to underscore how immigrant workers are tied to our economic success. More than 70% of battleground voters would support a Democratic candidate who says that a functioning immigration system, one that works for both businesses and the people, would help improve our economy.
2. The Four S’s to persuade voters on immigration
Source: Story of US ad featuring Larry Dwight Hall, North Carolina veteran and NCIC Deputy Commissioner, who talks about the service and contributions of Dreamers and farm workers to the state. The ad gained high viewership and support.
No matter what’s going on in America, and with or without Title 42 in place, Republicans will continue to repeat these four words: the surge is coming. While it hasn’t materialized, the GOP have been consistent since President Biden took office in pushing the idea of chaos at the border with all kinds of imagery and inflammatory language.
Roll up your sleeves, this is how we fight back:
Forget the campaigns of the past, when three or four memorable and major TV ad buys were enough. Not even 100 digital ads will cut it. Apply the Four S’s instead in repetition:
Sequence: Voters need to be taken on a story-telling journey, not exposed to an abrupt vignette with a demand on what they should believe or support. Start with content that shows you care about them and their community, then feature stories of immigrants who are part of their world, later deploy simplified, popular immigration solutions, and lastly always define Republicans’ anti-immigrant position.
Saturate: Keep the sequence on repeat and saturate them with the content. Use everything from news articles and testimonials to memes and videos.
Soothe: Voters are filled with anxiety - mostly about the economy - that is often triggered by the GOP’s messaging where they tie immimgration and other issues to exacerbate people’s concerns about their financial security and/or public safety. Your content must always soothe away these fears. Voters need to consistently hear and feel that they are safe and connected with team America.
Sway: The end goal is persuasion which is why the underlying winning message or keywords should remain the same. Keep it simple, keep it familiar and keep it on repeat.
Sample this: Content that works
3. 2022 total so far: The GOP has run 885 anti-immigrant ads
Screenshot from Sen. John Thune’s (R-SD) TV ad, which began airing May 26, 2022
Between January 1 to May 30, 2022, Republican candidates and their aligned groups ran more than 885 political TV and digital ads that continue to employ the same tropes we’ve mentioned before — migrant “invasion,” open borders, mass amnesty, and other xenophobic dog whistles, according to America’s Voice ad tracking project. The group has also identified hundreds of Republican campaign emails that employ anti-immigrant messaging.
Of note…
GOP and right-wing small-dollar digital ad buys may not seem like much (see “Brad Parscale” in section #4 to understand why that’s the wrong assumption), but the harm is potent. When scaled, micro-targeted at key voting blocs and echoed by right-wing media’s massive platforms, these ads chip away at the public’s confidence in Democratic governance and spawn lasting, significant collateral damage to American culture.
The harm: With a majority of Trump voters and Republicans believing the fiction that “native-born Americans are losing economic, political, and cultural influence in this country to immigrants,” the division among the two parties is substantially widening.
The effect: Bipartisan immigration policies are unattainable for Congress … for now and until moderate elected officials stop wrongly treating immigration as a political weakness.
The solution: Focus on the near 70% of Americans who believe immigration is a strength. Democrats, independents, Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, young people, moderates and commonsense voters want and need to hear from Democrats on how they’re strengthening our immigration and asylum systems (not walling it off) by centering order and justice above all.
4. Timeline: The GOP anti-immigrant revolution will be televised … memefied, streamed and clicked
Source: America’s Voice GOP Ad Tracker
2015: Alt-right and pro-Trump online dwellers launch the meme “war,” developing and spreading “a culture of hard-core racist language” and digital content to support Trump.
2016: Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, found a winning formula through Facebook and Google to disseminate inexpensive “race-baiting, immigrant-bashing, truth-bending” ads, where “shock value was rewarded” while amplifying content from the alt-right.
2018: The number of immigration-related TV ads — and the amount of money spent on them — increased fivefold from 2016 to 2018. Wesleyan Media Project found that on Facebook, between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30, 23.3 percent of the Republican ads on the digital platform discussed immigration while a whopping 80 percent of Republican TV ads in the cycle largely portrayed immigrants as criminals or threats to public safety and national security. Led by Donald Trump, Republicans’ closing message was the looming threat of a “migrant caravan” headed towards the border. Republican defeats in 2018 were historic.
2020: While the pandemic and a GOP-led effort to create a backlash to calls for police reform dominated most Republicans ads, immigration was still a key component of Republican and right-wing ads. From Sept. 1 to Oct. 15, the Trump campaign spent $9 million deploying anti-immigrant ads on television — his second most popular issue, after ads about China. Other expenditures included a $10 million-plus YouTube campaign featuring Trump’s “Radical, Extreme, Left” ad that connects tax increases with undocumented immigrants. Read the full 2020 snapshot.
2021: As POLITICO reported, “The GOP planned to use immigration against the president before he was even sworn in.” We tracked them then, unearthing their 2022 formula in both paid and unpaid media: (1) “Biden-Harris border crisis”, (2) mass amnesty and (3) COVID-infected migrants and drugs crossing the border. We also found that more than three million anti-immigrant mentions and thousands of online articles had been deployed to misinform the public and support attacks led by the Republican Party. Read our 2021 report.
In this cycle: Republicans are doubling down on “replacement” and “invasion” rhetoric as we approach 2018 levels of attacks from the GOP on the issue.
5. Right-wing media overview in May and its impact on the general public
Source: Critical Mentions
In the month of May, there were:
4,878 negative mentions of immigration in right-wing media,
More than 180,000 negative references to immigration on all of Twitter
2,728 mentions from GOP Twitter accounts.
The volume of media mentions was driven by:
News that a federal judge denied the Biden administration's request to dismiss a lawsuit to halt its "catch and release" policy, and another judge blocked the Biden administration from lifting Title 42.
The 5-4 SCOTUS ruling against immigrants seeking to challenge administrative decisions in federal court.
Right-wing media reports praising a border patrol agent for allegedly killing the shooter in Uvalde, Texas.
Arizona’s busing of migrants to Washington, D.C, following Texas’s lead
Source: Critical Mentions
GOP talking points continue to seep into mainstream media and the general online discourse. They influence average Americans’ discussions on social media and encourage hateful and violent ideology towards immigrants. Some examples, which gained copious validation from other users, include:
“These aren’t migrants. These are cartel mules smuggling fentanyl.” — Twitter User
“I'm not willing to sacrifice one American life for the thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the porous Southern Border. Are you? Now, President Biden, on the other hand, is willing to risk the lives of innocent Americans on a daily basis, for murderers, drug runners and others criminals who are crossing the Mexican Border every day into the United States.” — Facebook User Comment
