Take Action: From Protest to Policy

Overview

In Take Action, you will learn four strategies for transforming your activist work into policy change. First, we'll explore how to use the courts to mobilize constituents, raise awareness, gain information, and change the law. Second, we'll analyze the benefits of communicating your message across platforms and review a case study in cross-platform communication of a criminal justice reform message in the U.S. Third, we'll examine how to connect to power through stakeholder analysis and issue framing. Fourth, we'll appraise the benefits of working locally to generate wins, gain knowledge, and create meaningful change. By the end of this course, you will be able to formulate a comprehensive plan for real world change. This course will engage you if you care about specific issues such as climate change, racial justice, or mass incarceration, or if you want a broader understanding of how the U.S. courts and justice system operate, how communications professionals think about social media strategy, how change-makers network with policymakers, or how local actors and positive deviants possess answers to complex social problems. LEARNING OUTCOMES -Recognize and explain policymaking terms -Describe important policymaking places, people, and procedures -Analyze law and policy documents and texts -Evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of policymaking actors and institutions -Appraise the effectiveness of policy-oriented communications -Identify policy stakeholders -Communicate your policy-related ideas clearly -Develop a plan of action to influence policy INSTRUCTORS Mary Alice Haddad, John E. Andrus Professor of Government; Professor, East Asian Studies; Professor, College of the Environment Sarah Ryan, Attorney, Director of the Law Librarianship Program at the University of North Texas, and Associate Professor of Information Science

Syllabus

Introduction

This section will offer an overview the course and some of the key concepts that we use to talk about policymaking. It will also introduce the Connected Stakeholder Model as a way to understand how advocates can influence policymakers.

Use the Courts

In this module we'll learn why the courts matter and how to use them, and then we'll look at the specific case of how courts get used to change policy related to the environment.

Communicate across Platforms

This module talks about the importance of reaching diverse audiences with your message and using different communication platforms to reach different audiences.

Connect to Power

This module helps teach how to identify important stakeholders, how to frame our issue in ways that they will understand and support, and how to spread our policy issues to diverse audiences.

Work Locally

Our final module will take what we've learned so far and apply it in our local context. We'll think about "working locally" in two different ways: (1) addressing the local issue that we care about and then scaling our policy solution to the regional, national, and even global levels, and 2) finding a local way to influence the "big" issue that we care about.