Lynn PR is excited to announce the addition of David Gallagher to its team for 2022. The former Omnicom international president will join Lynn PR as a Non-Executive Director and support the business in its continued growth and entry into new markets.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has commissioned Lynn PR to deliver behavioural science research into novice riders in the UK.
Almost 40 years ago, in 1984, the now world-renowned researcher Robert Cialdini published his book ‘Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion’. This is the book in which he first presented his six principles of persuasion.
Our Healthier South East London (OHSEL) and Lynn PR worked together on a targeted, digital campaign to reach specific key audiences across south east London, including Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark.
Monday 22 November, the Misinformation Cell held its first, sell out webinar – ‘In conversation with the Misinformation Cell’ – where our CEO Shayoni Lynn and our Head of Misinformation Cell Stefan Rollnick sat down to try to demystify mis and disinformation. If you want to make sure you’re first in the queue for our next one, you can sign up for Misinformation Cell updates here.
Lynn PR’s behavioural science approach to communications has been recognised, once again, as sector-leading, earning Lynn PR client, Thom Burn and Hertfordshire Health Protection Forum, the Public Service Communications Excellence Award 2021 for the #SaveOurSummer Campaign at the Public Service Communications Academy 2021. The awards allow public sector communicators from across the country to come together, develop key skills and share ideas.
People only notice something when it stands out to them; otherwise, it is almost invisible. A simple example of this is when you decide to look for a particular make of car, and then you start to see these everywhere. The number of these cars has not suddenly increased. They were always there. It is just your attention to them that has altered. This make of car is now the most noticeable and relevant thing to you. It is salient, so your brain ‘looks’ for it. This is an example of where salience has been brought about by shifting attention to a specific feature.
Is misinformation getting worse? The short answer is yes. The misinformation challenge has grown over the last ten years for a variety of reasons. Probably the most significant change over the last two decades has been our ‘information environment’. While the vast majority of us once got our news from a small number of common, trusted sources, billions of people around the world are now getting their news through their news feeds on social media. This ‘news’ can be produced by anyone, anywhere in the world. Importantly, with the new tools in web design and the platform provided by social media, it’s easy to produce content that has the look and feel of reliable, mainstream news.
The reasons why people fall for misinformation fall on a spectrum: from non-political reasons to intensely political. Misinformation is often believed by people who lack knowledge/expertise in a particular field, people suffering with anxiety about a particular topic (e.g. health anxiety), as well as people who passively scroll through social media to find news instead of deliberately seeking it out from trusted outlets.
The rise of misinformation in our society has been supercharged by what academics call ‘information overload’, which means our brains are processing more information than they can handle, often leaving us in a state of overwhelm, making us more vulnerable to misinformation. So, if you sometimes find yourself thinking back to the political earthquakes of 2016 and feeling like the years since then have been a blur, it’s no accident.