America is polarized. The divide in America is the largest since the civil war. And unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
So how can we hope to fight climate change with such a divided nation?
Use it to your advantage! Our project focuses on how the solar industry can capture the American conservative base by messaging to them the same way alternative news sources do.
In general here's how they do it.
For thosands of years, we've known that emotions clouds judgement. And when you form an opinion through emotion, it's pretty much impossible to dislodge it through reason and logic.
Today, emotional messaging is the mainstream Republican tactic for pushing their agenda to their base.
And it works. So we experimented with feeling the news at Republicans. The top two emotions that are used in messaging to them are Fear and Anger. Alternative news feeds the view that you should be scared and angry.
Our major theme: "Beat the enemy"
- Beat the liberals
- Beat the terrorists
- Beat the oppressors/regulators
- Beat the people taking our jobs
- Beat the environmentalists/scientists
After researching a lot of alternative news sources, we found that one of the main tactics that they use is to convey the message that, "You are right to feel threatened, but we are beating the enemy."
So, here's what we created for this hackathon: https://IndependentAmericanMedia.com
It's a news site that focuses on spinning solar as beating the categories that we identified current alternative sites are focused on.
We have articles focused on beating the liberals. We have articles focused on beating the terrorists. We have articles focused on beating the regulators. We have articles focused on beating the elites.
There is so much winning going on in solar. We just can't stop winning.
And since so much of alternative news is spread through social media, we added social sharing to all of the content, as well as various social media profiles for Independent American Media.
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