The session opened with remarks from OECD DAC Chair, Carsten Staur, and then opened to discussion with representatives from Germany, France, and Ireland. You can find Worldview project manager Claudia’s talking points and responses to questions below. Please note, the statistics quoted here are from Wave 5 of Worldview and are not the most up-to-date. Explore the most recent on the ‘Waves’ page.
Q. Earlier this year, your Worldview survey told us what Irish citizens think of development co-operation. How would you describe the state of public support in Ireland? Have your members faced media scrutiny this year and, if so, how are they reacting?
From our Worldview research, we see continued high levels of support for development. 73% of the Irish public support sending ODA to developing countries, and we can see that the number that wants to reduce ODA spending is at the same level as 5 years ago; only 21% think it should be decreased.
The Irish public has an enduring support for overseas development aid, which, from Worldview, we can see is driven by a sense of moral obligations we feel towards others. Human rights, shared humanity, and humanitarianism are the consistent top 3 reasons our public wants to support developing countries. We have seen a shift away from antiquated understandings of aid, based in pity or charity, towards a rights-based model.
That being said, of course, we do have disengaged cohorts. Our least supportive audience segment has actually grown by 7% since 2020 – but it’s a vocal minority in our case. We are lucky that we have not seen a concerted effort by organisations to propose cutting aid, and the far right didn’t win any seats in our most recent general elections. However, we know our public, though very supportive, still don’t understand development and global poverty deeply, putting them at risk of falling for mis and disinformation. This is something we need to combat with global citizenship education, and something we are keeping an eye on.
As for scrutiny, we haven’t seen substantial public or political scrutiny, but that is likely because we have high public support for aid and high public concern – 67% of our public is concerned about poverty in developing countries.
As for media scrutiny, there hasn’t been much; however, a lot of Irish news outlets were interested in and covered the impact the USAID cuts had on many of our members. Though we in Ireland haven’t seen these cuts in our budget, it is something that has affected Dóchas members, so we are considering investigating public responses to the aid cuts this year in our Part B topic of the research. We can see from DEL’s latest US research that there has been a 5% increase in the number of people who are either “concerned” or “very concerned” about levels of poverty in poor countries. This might sound small, but it’s the largest spike they have seen since 2019. They’ve also seen small, but significant and unprecedented increases in the actions people take to engage with political leadership and organisations working to reduce poverty. Though the cuts we are seeing across countries are creating severe turbulence to the entire development system, it’s possible that we could harness this moment of crisis, showing the public the severe ramifications, and maybe boomerang support back up.
Q. Many organisations today want to update their narratives. Do you think a new narrative can change people’s minds? Based on your research, are there messages that development organisations should be pushing more strongly?
When it comes to narratives and messaging, it’s first important to note that there is a change in how news is being produced and perceived. The media landscape is, of course, more multifaceted than ever, and becoming more curated via cookies, algorithms etc.
However, there is a longer-term change in how information about international challenges is being selected and processed. News sources or ‘truth’ are no longer categorised in just one way. From our recent research on narratives and imagery, we can see three types of ‘truth’ emerging. Truth is verified, truth is immediate, or truth is connecting. Verified would be national news programmes, which are balanced verified reporting but are perceived to have bias. Immediate would be YouTube, which has filtered information from a specific event, while connecting would be TikTok- visceral and relatable content from someone like me – many people believe it more because it is raw, compared to the traditional news sources. In Ireland now, for the first time, the main source of News for the Irish public is online rather than television.
This, along with multiple different sources, is creating a lot of noise to cut through. Going back to what we know in the Irish case, we know the public wants development based on shared humanity and human rights – and from our latest research, we see three things that can help narratives cut through. Progress, agency and transparency. Progress: people don’t want to feel hopeless – that turns them off immediately, there has to be a sense that change IS possible. Which leads to agency, there has to be a clear role in our messaging for the individual, how can I contribute to that change, and of course, transparency, which is a way we can continue to beat misinformation, just by being clear and honest.
Finally, to build on Jasmin’s points on countering misinformation, a recent study suggests that we can bypass misinformation by not engaging with the negative or lie, but by bypassing it with a positive truth. Positive truths, rather than rebuttals, can still correct misperceptions. This doesn’t work on the people with entrenched views, however, it has had positive effects with people who haven’t had mistruths completely ingrained into them yet – this could be a tactic to stop the slippage of populations into the disengaged or far-right-leaning cohorts. At a basic level, this means we should continue with positive narratives and truths about impact, as they may change the minds of those recently exposed to misinformation.
Closing statement
We’ve seen constant changes over the last six months, and we need to base our actions in our truths. From the Irish perspective, that is, we have a supportive and concerned public. News is changing, how it’s produced, perceived, and impacts. We should focus on agency, progress and transparency, and upholding positive narratives and truths about impact in our messaging.
Finally, we need to find common ground to work together. For us at Dóchas, our focus is mon aking sure Ireland keeps to its commitments outlined in the most recent programme for government by increasing aid year on year, because we know this resonates with the Irish public and can support all of our members.