Know your audience
Since the stop work order went into place for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), I’ve seen a lot of numbers posted on long lists and graphics.
On the pro-USAID side of my social media feeds, friends and colleagues share data that highlights the impact of USAID programming around the world in lives saved, vaccines administered, food aid volumes disbursed, and more. Others focus on budget numbers, namely just how small USAID’s budget is relative to overall government spending.
But there are others amplifying numbers to sow doubt about the effectiveness of the aid agency, pick lists of line items from programs that people see as wasteful, debates over the alignment of programming with America-first principles, and whether the money is even making it to local beneficiaries. That last assertion is one of the most easily debunked - a misread of what a statistic represents.
Both sides are using data to make their case. But are the numbers actually persuading people to change their minds? And are corrections to misinterpretations (or more blatant misinformation) reaching those who need to see them?
For numbers and charts to have the impact we want, we need to take a step back, consider our audience, and be more targeted in our information sharing.
Define your audience
Being a responsible data communicator doesn’t just mean sharing the information that is persuasive to you.
Every chart is a series of compromises - which is a big reason most questions about the ‘best’ way to visualize a piece of information are answered with “it depends.” As designers and communicators, we make deliberate choices around what to include and what to omit when we plot data on a chart and add titles, captions, and other insights. Those choices are informed by who we’re communicating with and the message we want to share.
In advocacy, consider who you’re communicating with:
Knowledge: What do they already know about your issue?
Motivation: What information would motivate them to support your position?
Concerns: What concerns do they have?
Actions: What do you want them to do with this new information?
Rallying likeminded friends to a cause often feels more comfortable, with reshares giving delightful dopamine hits. But in order to push for change, we need to reach others outside of our information bubbles particularly in today’s very polarized environment.
Tailor your message and your data points
Let’s think about who we’re talking to when we’re advocating for restoring aid funding, since that’s top of mind for me right now. You could do a similar mapping of audiences for any other policy issue. From my conversations the last three weeks, there are four different types of people I’ve encountered; the stats and stories I share change when I know which ‘type’ I’m talking to.
1. The Humanitarian
The Humanitarian already believes in the mission of USAID, and thinks it’s important that we continue to fund this work. Many feel devastated by the stop work order, and may be personally impacted. You don’t have to convince them about the value of USAID’s work, but they may need some talking points on the big picture. Many of us have worked in our own silos within international development: I know global health impact stats and have my own personal stories, but had to look up details on agriculture and democracy programs.
For me, this is a big part of my network of friends and colleagues thanks to the nature of my own work. The community building and mutual support in these conversations are energizing and invigorating - which is helpful, even if you’re not changing hearts and minds.
Where to start? They’re already on board with the goal. Share facts, images, and resources to help them amplify the call to remove the stop work order and allow USAID work to continue. Share clear calls to action and scripts for calling members of Congress. Check out Friends of USAID and USAID Stop-Work for graphics and resources.
2. The Spending Skeptic
The Spending Skeptic thinks we spend too much on foreign aid, often thanks to a misunderstanding of the scale of our foreign assistance budget. Or they aren’t focused on the big number and instead have concerns around fraud, waste, and abuse in how the money is disbursed. They may believe some parts of USAID programming are worthwhile, but question spending on other programs.
Where to start? Ask what share of the budget they think is spent on aid. A common perception is that around 25% of our budget goes to aid spending, when it’s really less than 1%. Then, emphasize some of the humanitarian impacts of that tiny slice of spending, as well as the ways aid spending contributes to the US economy (like the $2 billion in commodities purchased from US farmers for food aid), and supports our soft power efforts abroad by building goodwill for the US.
They may have also heard the viral 10% statistic about the share of funding actually making its way to beneficiaries, which is a misrepresentation well-debunked by the Center for Global Development. That 10% instead represents the share of funding disbursed directly to local organizations, which is a figure that has grown over the years thanks to efforts to support local capacity building.
More broadly, demystifying the process for USAID receiving funding may also help build trust in the process. I’d recommend this excellent, meme-ified Bluesky thread from former USAID official Jeremy Konyndyk if you need more of those process details (for you own knowledge or to share with others).
3. The America-First Absolutist
The America-First Absolutist doesn’t support any aid funding and believes that we should only be spending money to the benefit of those in the US (even if this same group often votes down spending on domestic social support programs too). You’re not going to convince them to rally for USAID with millions of lives saved stats, and even arguments for the economic impact of aid dollars going through US companies and supporting US jobs may not make a difference.
Where to start? You probably won’t convince them to advocate for more foreign aid spending. But could you appeal to their beliefs about stopping waste by highlighting the commodities and medicines already purchased and paid for that can’t be distributed, or the questionable legal grounds for the stop work order (and the shaky ground it creates for taking a similar approach at other agencies).
Maybe you won’t agree that the Agency should have a future, but perhaps you can come to a shared understanding that the overnight shuttering has its problems worth addressing.
A reminder for self-care: I’ve found myself spinning in conversations with people who fundamentally don’t believe USAID should exist on principle, and no amount of my sharing personal stories or data points is changing their mind. Sometimes it’s okay to walk away from those conversations and agree to disagree.
4. The Indifferent One
The Indifferent One doesn’t have a particular objection to foreign aid, but also doesn’t see any big impact to their lives or communities with the stop work order. They’re not focused on ‘America first’; they just don’t care one way or another. As a result, doesn’t understand why closing up one small agency is particularly problematic.
Where to start? Figuring out the right line of information sharing is trickier here, since they don’t have a particular objection to counter. If you can, ask and learn more about what they would be open to learning about. Better understanding the impact of USAID around the world? Why USAID is important for national security and American interests abroad? Or perhaps they want to better understand how shuttering USAID impacts their state or community.
Highlight the ways aid programs do impact Americans, both in our economy and as part of a globally connected world. Emphasize key data points on job losses (over 10,000 among USAID staff and contractors to date) or impacts to farmers (with $2 billion in annual food commodity contracts for food aid); be specific with numbers for their state where you can find them.
If all of the details around the current impacts intrigue but don’t convince, share how investments now can help us eradicate disease and reduce long term costs. UNAIDS has mapped out how we’re on a path to an AIDS free generation, for example. How might crippling funding now result in greater need in the future?
Each of the Facebook comments shared here was an actual response to a post I shared about the impact of USAID funding to beneficiaries and the American economy, with the exception of ‘The Indifferent One’ who probably isn’t engaging in the commentary at all.
Challenging beliefs is hard, even with data
From the number of articles going back to basics with “What is USAID?” and the questions I’ve heard from my own family and friends about my work, I know that there’s an information gap around what the Agency does. But that doesn’t stop us from holding our own beliefs about whether we should be spending money on humanitarian causes abroad.
Those beliefs haven’t fallen wholly along party lines in the US, though the conversations about the merits of aid funding today may splinter more along those lines. Remember that PEPFAR started during the George W. Bush administration, and has saved millions of lives by addressing the urgent need for improved access to HIV treatment and prevention. In the Senate, Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham spoke about the soft power aid funding affords the US.
But thanks to the current media environment, we’re likely to encounter information that reinforces our existing beliefs. When an idea challenges those beliefs, our response isn’t always to listen patiently to the case from the other side.
In 2010, a study by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler found that when people encounter facts challenging their own deeply held beliefs, they don’t just reject them. Instead, they often double down on their position. They described this phenomenon as the backfire effect, which media and communicators embraced to the point of distorting just how much it accounted for persist political positions even in the face of new information. That left a question: could facts really change hearts and minds?
More than a decade later, Nyhan challenged just how widely the original study had been interpreted. A decade of additional research on political opinions pointed to a more nuanced conclusion: while corrective information can help reshape individual beliefs, those changes aren’t likely to stick after a single engagement. Instead, the big challenge for science communicators (and data communicators more widely) is finding ways to target how we share information that debunks common but inaccurate beliefs more effectively.
Doing so requires thinking not just about the numbers and charts, but about the audience, the messenger, how the information spreads through our networks, and the necessity of multiple touchpoints on an issue (Nyhan 2021).
Your voice matters
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Crystal Lee and her lab at MIT spent six months monitoring information sharing within anti-mask circles. Among their findings was that knowing who created a chart was a key part of trusting the information presented (Viral Visualizations). The messenger matters.
In the midst of our current information firehose, that means your voice matters more than ever before. Whether you’re advocating for USAID, expanded paid leave policies, affordable childcare, or any other issue, you have a network of people who you know who will listen to and trust you. And today, people often look to their networks and friends as a primary source of information.
With that trust comes great responsibility: amplify accurate and useful information. It’s not just a challenge for us data viz creators to viz responsibly; we need to share charts responsibly too. And part of sharing responsibly is curating our messages to meet people where they are, instead of opening up with our own firehose of statistics.
