Lies, damn lies and research

Research may be boring and it may be flawed, but it's still crucial

The humble PR survey (or, as we call it to make it sound more robust, "research") cops a lot of flak, but the underlying principle that fresh statistics make your story more interesting still holds true. But of course, anyone playing the comms game for a while knows that not all research is created equal. There are a million miles between "1,000 people said" and a national census that takes years to collect and process data. Here in the UK, our last census was in March 2021, and the ONS is still making regular data drops from it.

But despite those stark differences between quick turnaround surveys and exhaustive research, there are underlying similarities. As John Lanchester points out in his fascinating piece in the LRB, "Get A Rabbit", what you choose to measure and how you frame your questions plays a huge role in affecting the outputs of the exercise, no matter the size of the endeavour. To quote a million and one data scientists, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out.

In other words, there's no such thing as purely objective data. "Even the purest form of exhaustive data contains biases, distortions and lacunae: it is, in a sense, a work of fiction", as Lanchester puts it. Those biases come at both ends of the research process - the questions and data points we select at the beginning, and then how we process the data we receive to generate our findings.

The process of data processing highlights another striking similarity between the humble PR survey and more robust research - a headline finding is a must. Research that goes nowhere and informs nothing is like a great strategy with no execution - impressive but largely pointless. Even multi-year, billion-pound endeavours like the census generate headline findings to share with the media.

But as anyone who ever claimed that 51% of respondents represents "a majority" in a press release knows, the headlines can sometimes paint a misleading picture. So you may well ask questions about a headline such as "Britain is much more liberal-minded than it was 40 years ago", which is how The Guardian reported the most recent release of the British social attitudes survey.

My question when seeing that headline was, "Really? Us?"

I thought about the increasingly polarised media environment we live in, with the Mail and the Telegraph defining themselves in how they oppose the liberal, left media, primarily represented by The Guardian.

I thought about our political environment, where the Tories appear to believe doubling down on being "anti-woke" represents their best hope of winning the next election.

Most notably, in my world, I think of Twitter and Facebook and the bitter ideological battles that continue to rage on those platforms, even as their cultural clout and influence wither away.

And if you work in comms, you may also think about the dangers of broad brush sweeping statements; the dangers of applying the same thinking to big groups of people. We talk to clients all the time about intersectionality and that choosing "Gen Z" or "mums" as a target audience is an exercise in futility, given how different those groups can be in terms of age, location and socio-economic status. If there's one thing the age of social media gave us, it's the knowledge that there's no such thing as "one Britain", and there are very few topics on which there's a national consensus.

And yet...comparing the BSA findings to other recent studies of how people's views change over time shows a consistent pattern backing up those headline findings. The PrejudiceFree study from 2021 found the widely held belief that people get more conservative as they age to be untrue. Researchers found that the cultural milieu people grow up in is much more influential in shaping people's views than their age. And our cultural milieu has changed here in the UK - slowly, almost unnoticeably, yes, but 2023 is markedly different to 1983 (and not just because of smartphones).

People growing up in the 80s, 90s, and 00s have lived through some epochal historical moments - the AIDS crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11. We've lived in relatively peaceful, relatively prosperous times (especially compared to the 40 years before 1980). These factors have unknowingly shaped our views and attitudes, making what was once an "extreme" opinion much more mainstream.

As The Guardian points out in its piece, there are still hot-button topics where there is less consensus than on same-sex relationships and abortion rights. Attitudes towards transgender people continue to shift and change - only 64% of people described themselves as "not prejudiced" towards them in 2022. This shift partly reflects the highly-charged media coverage on the topic of transgender people and the turbo-charged debate this fuels on Twitter. But inevitably, the voices you hear and see on Twitter and Facebook represent only the most extreme points of view. Remember that 20% of Twitter accounts are responsible for 80% of tweets (and that is a pre-Elon stat).

If you read the replies to a brand tweet supporting Pride, you may come away thinking that attitudes towards same-sex relationships were as fluid as those toward transgender people. Those replies represent the minority, the 9% of people who feel same-sex relationships are "always wrong" in 2023. Those are the loudest voices, the people who think the "mainstream liberal agenda" doesn't represent them. So they head over to Twitter and shout into the void. But the silent, lurking majority (most of us are lurkers on social) don't feel the same way.

We are all more similar than we think. We're all more reflective of our time, our cultural upbringing, and the economic conditions we were born into. For once, the PR headline for a piece of research (a very big survey) rings true - we are more liberal-minded than ever. But we're not all the same. What we consider a "liberal POV" has changed as the word became increasingly weaponised and politicised. There's still debate and friction and clashes around those topics where there's less consensus, such as our views on transgender people, on climate and net zero, on freedom of speech. You might extrapolate from the research that previously "liberal views" are now just regular views - not exceptionally liberal, not controversial, just the mainstream, widely-held views of our time.

The challenge for comms people is two-fold - firstly, to remember that widely-held views may represent the majority, but the minority voices are often the loudest. Brands and businesses need to be reminded that you can’t please all the people all the time, and a minority backlash on Twitter is really no backlash at all. Secondly, in-depth audience understanding will help identify which topics provoke the strongest reactions from the people that you want to reach. Which are the hot-button, “don’t bring that up or it’ll ruin Sunday lunch” discussions that we need to tread carefully around? Navigating opinions on those issues requires more care, attention and preparation.

And no matter how much the concept of “doing some research” may bore you to tears, it's here to stay - at least until generative AI gets good enough to automate the process for us. It’s still the best way to generate robust, informed strategic thinking, drive media headlines; and help govern countries. And there aren’t many tactics that cover that many bases.