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Thanks for writing this and providing some guidelines, as well as sharing how some NGOs approach it. A tangentially related post by GiveWell that may be of interest to some: http://​​blog.givewell.org/​​2012/​​04/​​12/​​how-not-to-be-a-white-in-shining-armor/​​

A random few things:

• I believe that effective altruism should be held to a higher standard than most, because I will go so far as to claim that we exhibit greater empathy than on-average by caring so much about effectiveness and knowing that we are truly making a difference.

• I’d like to point out how your guidelines demonstrate that The Giving What We Can event listed above and the Live Below the Line fundraiser (mostly done by others, but also by Charity Science) fail in a number of ways. Oversimplication, gamification, and trivialization are just a few of these that apply to both. I wrote this critique, which itself falls prey to some of these, but also makes these errors more clear: http://​​thinkingonward.com/​​stop-it/​​

• I don’t think all images need to be like the three you conclude with. I find nothing wrong with the appropriate presentation of images that reflect reality, such as disease, lack of sanitation, or overall conditions of poverty. In fact, if we focus just on images like the final three, we’ll be committing the error of trivialization. I’ve had many experiences where those in difficult situations want pictures taken that show the nature of that environment, if it has a chance of increasing or improving aid.

I haven’t spent time thinking through guidelines, but the most important one that comes to mind is balance. This is of course impossible to truly achieve, but I think portraying a wide variety of images, in a way that those with experience in the community generally feel good about, is appropriate. (Of course many other guidelines are necessary, such as having the permission of the subjects.) In most cases, this will involve a greater portrayal of images like the final three, but in some truly desperate ones, those may be the minority.

• And finally, easily the best ‘hack’ for this is to spend time in the places we often discuss and with the people we’re describing. Guidelines are helpful, but there’s no replacement for becoming great friends with a wide variety of people who have experienced all the things EAs try to alleviate, and learning who they truly are and what their lives are truly like.

PS:

I don’t think this is a critical part of the post, but the part below should be qualified. People are poor judges of their own actions and yet the study cited is based off self-reporting. That said, it may be accurate in the long-term, but those results are unknown. Advertising results do in fact most often find that the images critiqued here do drive donations (short-term).

“These standardised representations of poverty can give the impression that the situation is hopeless. In 2012, Oxfam released the results of a 2,000-person survey showing that negative images of poverty had become so pervasive as to lose purpose. A full 75% of those surveyed described themselves as ‘completely desensitized’ to images showing hunger, drought and disease. While 75% did believe it was possible to end hunger in places like Africa, only 20% believed they could play an active role in achieving this outcome. This kind of paralysis is exactly what we want to avoid.”

I’ve struggled with this issue for a while. When I was younger I used to just dismiss worries like those addressed in this post under the belief that they were unscientific postmodern claims that distorted empirical reality to avoid the uncomfortable acknowledgment that poor people suffer greatly. After living in developing countries, though, I’ve realized there really is something to it—for the most part, they don’t look at all like the always-grim pictures we get from charities.

It’s tough though, because we also want to acknowledge the suffering and persuade people to address it. My boss Dean Karlan had a slideshow in his economic development class that got a student very upset because it depicted Africa’s poverty but none of its beauty. At the same time, people like him do a lot of good for people in Africa and it seems tough to always have to portray such a complex message depending on the context. I blogged about some of the ways I’ve dealt with it here: http://​​www.zachgroff.com/​​2016/​​04/​​a-question-i-wrestle-with-at-night.html

I think portraying resilience and more nuanced pictures is a good way to go, but it’s probably a tension that’s inevitable when you want to portray suffering without portraying lower status.

Seems like the guideline—be honest, applies here. Using extreme representations to mislead others would have blowback. Not to mention that the “savior,” mentality it enforces is harmful to donors.

It seems like the advice is basically “represent Africa as being high status, not low status”. We also want to get across the message that people in the third world have serious problems that we can very effectively solve. If person A can easily solve person B’s problems, but person B can do nothing to help or harm person A, then person A is (much) higher status than person B. Why try to hide this reality? We generally don’t give charity money to our superiors or equals.

Perhaps there is an instrumental reason to pretend that this relationship is more egalitarian that it actually is. But while you reference data suggesting that traditional marketing is ignored by most people, you don’t present any data suggesting that other approaches work better.

Any more would you like to share with us on depicting poverty?