Does Spin Suck?

Does spin suck?

The word “spin” does have a neg­at­ive connotation.

One of my favour­ite PR blog­gers, Gini Dietrich, even named her blog Spin Sucks.

And to be fair, in the way Dietrich and many with her would define spin, I’m sure I would agree. Deliberate dis­tor­tion of facts, manip­u­la­tion, and out­right lying to the pub­lic — yeah, that sucks. 

But I see no reas­on for char­ging a per­fect and usable word with only a neg­at­ive aspect. After all, we’re in pub­lic rela­tions; we should know that there is more than one side to every story.

But maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe spin does suck?

What is Spin?

According to Wikipedia:

“In pub­lic rela­tions, spin is a form of pro­pa­ganda, achieved through provid­ing a biased inter­pret­a­tion of an event or cam­paign­ing to per­suade pub­lic opin­ion in favor or against some organ­iz­a­tion or pub­lic fig­ure. While tra­di­tion­al pub­lic rela­tions may also rely on cre­at­ive present­a­tion of the facts, “spin” often implies the use of disin­genu­ous, decept­ive, and highly manip­u­lat­ive tactics.”

Not very pos­it­ive, no.

According to Merriam-Webster, a spin doc­tor is “[…] a per­son (such as a polit­ic­al aide) whose job involves try­ing to con­trol the way some­thing (such as an import­ant event) is described to the pub­lic to influ­ence what people think about it.”

Well. I guess Merriam-Webster’s descrip­tion does­n’t shout “evil” as much as Wikipedia’s. 

Well, here’s what I think:

We should­n’t be strangers to reclaim­ing neg­at­ive words to make them positive.

After all, Edward Bernays, the fath­er of PR, wrote in Propaganda from 1928:

“I am aware that the word pro­pa­ganda car­ries too many minds an unpleas­ant con­nota­tion. Yet wheth­er, in any instance, pro­pa­ganda is good or bad depend upon the mer­it of the cause urged, and the cor­rect­ness of the inform­a­tion pub­lished. In itself, the word pro­pa­ganda has cer­tain tech­nic­al mean­ings which, like most things in this world, are neither good nor bad but cus­tom makes them so.”

Bernays did­n’t exactly suc­ceed in turn­ing the tables for the word propaganda.

But the major­ity is some­times wrong. I think both “pro­pa­ganda” and “spin” deserves bet­ter PR. Case in point: Back when I stud­ied pub­lic rela­tions at Mid Sweden University, I argued that I would­n’t mind get­ting the pro­fes­sion­al title “pro­pa­gand­ist.” Why not? However, this idea was a tough sell — even in a classroom full of aspir­ing PR pro­fes­sion­als.

Walter Lippmann argued that none of our thoughts or actions is based on dir­ect know­ledge of the ‘real’ world because “the real envir­on­ment is too big, too com­plex, and too fleet­ing for dir­ect acquaintance.” 

To cope, we cre­ate men­tal ste­reo­types based on our thoughts and actions. These ste­reo­types, then, are by design incom­plete. And without these ste­reo­types, it becomes impossible for us to make sense of the world.

The way I see it, there seems to be an almost infin­ite num­ber of ste­reo­typ­ic­al ways to describe facts — without viol­at­ing the truth. 

A Glass of Different Truths

My favour­ite example involves a fam­ous glass of water: 

Let’s say that there’s a glass of water stand­ing on a table in front of you — and there’s water in it. The glass holds 100 ml of water, but it could store 200 ml (if filled up).

I could say that the glass is half full. That’s true.

I could also say that the glass is half empty. Still true.

The second state­ment emphas­ises empti­ness (the glass needs a refill), and the first state­ment is full­ness (the glass needs no refill).

Both state­ments are equally val­id, of course, but the choice of words will influ­ence our ste­reo­typ­ic­al think­ing about the state of the glass and its con­tent. And the world by extrapolation.

Now, let’s get even more creative:

The glass is full. True, yes?

Technically, this state­ment is true as well. 

50% of the glass con­tains water; the oth­er 50% is split between roughly 78% nitro­gen, 21% oxy­gen, argon, car­bon diox­ide, and small amounts of oth­er gasses. 

Right.

How about this:

The glass is not half full, nor is it half empty. Also true.

An equal split between water and gasses implies an exact divi­sion of pro­tons, neut­rons, and electrons. 

However, keep­ing these inter­chan­ging states in equi­lib­ri­um would be impossible. And that’s not tak­ing quantum mech­an­ics into account, either.

And even if we could arrange such an equal split, we’d still have a prob­lem. Since the liquid is dens­er than gas, for an equal split of ele­ment­ary particles, there should only be a small volume of water in the glass and a rel­at­ively large volume of gas for them to weigh the same.

The glass would­n’t pre­cisely look either half-full or half-empty.

Such detail and accur­acy might not mat­ter to you or me, but for a phys­i­cist, these pre­cise ver­sions of the truth might make all the difference.

And it’s not just about what you say (fram­ing and prim­ing).
It’s also about who you are (author­ity).
It’s about when you say it (tim­ing).
Where you say it (con­text and medi­um).
To whom you say it (asser­tion).
And why you say it (intent).

Which Truth Will Benefit Who?

Now, for the sake of argu­ment, let’s assume that someone would bene­fit if one of the glass state­ments some­how became pre­val­ent in a soci­ety obsessed with glasses of whatever.

“The glass is half empty” would surely bene­fit those who are pro­viders of whatever that con­tent might be. Should we con­sider these mer­chants evil for pro­mot­ing a ver­sion of the truth that high­lights their par­tic­u­lar solution?

And if this beha­viour is indeed’ evil’ by default, could you then per­haps show me a single per­son in the world who would nev­er dream of doing this?

I don’t think you can.

As humans, we spin. We frame our state­ments to make them serve our pur­poses. Fundamentally, it’s our right to make a case that is ours and not someone else’s.

And if someone comes along say­ing that they have the abso­lute author­ity on what ver­sion of the truth you and every­one else must abide by? 

Well, run. And while you’re sprint­ing for safety under pan­ick­ing breaths, you can be assured that those scary author­it­ari­ans were also spin­ning their ste­reo­typ­ic­al ver­sion of the truth.

Spin for the Win

In a demo­cracy, we’re sup­posed to have our say to influ­ence our world with our words.

If you don’t get to spin your real­ity the way you see it, then someone else will surely do it for you — but not neces­sar­ily with your best interest in mind. 

I’m proud to say that I spin my ver­sion of how I see the world — all the time. And I help my cli­ents to spin their ver­sions of the truth, too. I’m a propagandist!

“This is just semantics,” some might argue.
Well, semantics mat­ter, I say.

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Bonus Resource: Fundamental Approaches To PR