To look forward, we must look back. For this reason, we have examined our past predictions to help us ground ourselves before we enter the portal of 2025 and strategize for the challenging years ahead. We aim to highlight narrative predictions and offer concrete recommendations to shape compelling narrative and organizing strategies. While our predictions have been remarkably accurate, we anticipate the same narratives will inform new story trends as the narrative landscape responds to larger cultural, social and political currents. Nonetheless, we hope you find inspiration to strategize, organize and communicate more powerfully, with renewal and sustainability for the long haul. And as you read, we invite you to remember and reflect on grief beyond the individual experience into a collective endeavor.
ReFrame’s Narrative Predictions reports Through the Looking Glass (2022), Catalyzing Ripples (2023) and Vertigo Variations (2024) have helped us study dominant narratives and values that have endured since 2020. We have a strong track record of accurately forecasting narrative trends. In Through the Looking Glass, we anticipated the erosion of public trust in institutions, which became increasingly evident in pandemic-related misinformation and health inequities. Catalyzing Ripples clocked identity as a key battleground, a prediction realized in 2024 through the cultural and legislative fights over transgender rights and racial justice. Vertigo Variations highlighted the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) narratives, accurately predicting the heated debates over authorship and authenticity sparked by AI-generated art and storytelling. Here is our top-line summary of the narrative and story trends from our last three Narrative Prediction reports, which helped inform our 2025 predictions.
Democracy + Governance
From majority to minority rule to debates about what America is and whom the country was built for, democracy and governance have been in the balance for years, undergoing pushes and pulls in different directions. The political fatigue felt during the 2022 midterm election season — along with failures of neoliberal governance, scandals and felony investigations and the testing (and breaking) of democratic norms — brought us closer to the precipice of authoritarianism and the normalization of fascism. Debates about power, leadership and legitimacy related to identity, perceived social position, religious affiliation and demographic change have influenced our current conditions, coming to a head during the 2024 election cycle.
In many ways, U.S. President-Elect Donald J. Trump spoke directly to the existential crises of many. He cast himself as a messianic hero who would restore America to wholeness. He filled up a spiritual vacuum for his followers and persuadable voters, appealing to their values, beliefs and worldviews. Trump promised to assuage their grief and grievances socially and economically. By going on the attack against the villains in his story — Biden, the Democrats, the “deep state,” and China as well as immigrants from Global Majority nations — Trump vindicated his base and, in the process, himself. Pro-Trump stories and messages were tested and refined throughout the entirety of the Biden administration, winning him a ticket back to the White House where he — and, by extension, his supporters — can govern in alignment with their values and worldview.
Throughout our 2022–2024 predictions research, dominant narratives in conversations about democracy and governance included:
- America is a democracy
- America has never been a democracy
- America’s future is as a transformative multiracial democracy
- America’s future is as a conservative Christian country
- The government is corrupt
- The country is polarized
- The government should reflect the people
- There is no such thing as objectivity
- Voting is ineffective
- Democracy is worth saving
- You can’t trust the government or the press
- Law and order
While not as loud, these were narratives contesting for dominance:
- It is up to us to secure our future
- America’s diversity is its strength
- Everyone should be free to be who they are
- Focusing on identity divides us
- Our identities and shared experiences unite us
- Your identity is a threat to my safety
- America is a lost cause
Economy + Labor
Growing economic disparities have shaped the narrative landscape on the economy and labor, presenting plenty of opportunities to advocate for alternate economic systems beyond extractive capitalism. As elevated in our predictions from 2022, 2023 and 2024, economic trends highlighted a gradual recovery from the pandemic, supply chain woes, inflation, stock market growth and a massive wealth transfer benefiting economic elites. The story of American progress was about low unemployment rates and a healthy economy. Still, it stood in stark contradiction to the experiences that poor and working-class families were having. Legacy media propagated stories gaslighting Americans over their economic challenges, and elected officials echoed these messages, individualizing the problem instead of pointing the finger at disinvestment and corporate greed. Stories about the economy also elevated the ultra-wealthy and corporations as heroes for their record profits and performance in the stock market. In contrast, pro-worker narratives moved stories highlighting labor exploitation from legacy media’s “hero” figures. These stories contributed to the growing positive outlook on unions as an institution that promotes economic equality and helps build worker power. Since 2020, unionizing efforts have boomed, providing working-class people the tools and infrastructure to demand corporations give their fair share.
Throughout our 2022–2024 predictions research, dominant narratives in conversations about the economy and labor included:
- Corporations are entitled to the wealth they produce
- Corporations are the engine of the economy
- Free market capitalism and deregulation can restore the global order
- Private industry and the free market are the engines of the economy
- Capitalism and democracy go hand in hand
- Capitalism is the best system we’ve got
- Labor organizing can cost you your job
- Unions are bad for the economy
- Everyone is responsible for meeting their own needs
- White-collar employees don’t need unions
- The good life is for those who work for it
While not as loud, these were narratives contesting for dominance:
- Funding schools and teachers ensures all students have the resources they need to thrive
- Everyone deserves a good life
- Tax the rich
- We can meet our needs through collective action
- The government is responsible for providing basic needs
- All workers have a right to organize
- Capitalism is dying
- The government is responsible for meeting our needs
- Everyone should be able to have their basic needs met
- Work to live, not live to work
- People of color, “the rainbow coalition,” are an existential threat to America
Gender + Body
The reactionary legislative agenda we have faced is the result of a repressive political strategy targeting queer and trans people and bodily autonomy. The loss of national abortion protection and attacks on the transgender, gender nonconforming and nonbinary communities have caused significant grief over bodily autonomy. However, voters transformed it into victories across downballot races and referendums during the 2022 midterms and 2024 elections. For the past nine years, there have been countless images of gender expansive people who have taken to the streets, For You Pages, podcasts and traditional media outlets to air their grievances and build cultural power. Popular content features their pain points, highlighting the denial of essential services like gender-affirming care and critical gynecological procedures for themselves and their loved ones. Content and conversations also highlighted the intersections of race, class, disability, gender and sexual orientation.
Throughout our 2022–2024 predictions research, dominant narratives in conversations about gender and the body included:
- Your identity is a threat to my safety
- The government should maintain the moral/social order for the body
- Men and women are biologically distinct
- Focusing on identity divides us
- People, not the government, should be able to make decisions about their bodies
- All people should have the freedom to choose
- Childhood innocence needs to be protected
- A woman is defined by her ability to bear children
- The government does not have a role in the decisions people make about their bodies
- The government should regulate the decisions people make about their bodies
While not as loud, these narratives were vying for dominance in the narrative landscape:
- No one’s identity is a threat to your safety
- Gender is expansive
- Our identities and shared experiences unite us
- Patriarchy hurts us all
- No one’s identity is a threat to your safety
Climate
We have yet to fully understand the level of collective grief we hold in the wake of devastating wildfires, hurricanes and subsequent mudslides that have resulted in loss of life and property. Still, key moments give us a good idea of where we can make narrative interventions. Conversations that linked environmentalism to equity drove popular content about the climate, especially when paired with demands for meaningful change over sustainability. With the upward trend of catastrophic superstorms came an unavoidable growing awareness of climate issues and their impacts on infrastructure, promoting narratives of safety and preparedness. Despite the state’s constant threats, activists, climate justice organizations and land defenders utilized viral moments (ex., hurricane Helene TikToks from an influencer’s POV) to combine their demands for accountability and reparations from corporations, fossil fuel beneficiaries and government institutions.
Throughout our 2022–2024 predictions research, dominant narratives in conversations about the climate included:
- Climate change is real and impacting us
- Climate change is a hoax
- Corporations are responsible for climate change
- We have the technology and knowledge to stop climate change
- Addressing the climate crisis is bad for the economy
- Addressing the climate crisis is good for the economy
- Addressing the climate crisis is good for the planet and for us
While not as loud, these were narratives contesting for dominance:
- We are on the edge of climate catastrophe
- Survival of the fittest
- The world as we know it is ending
- Climate change is a hoax
- Addressing the climate crisis is good for the economy
- We do not have sustainable sources of energy beyond fossil fuels
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We understand the narrative landscape as an uneven playing field. As we prepare to release our 2025 Narrative Predictions and prepare for a second Trump administration, it remains clear we will need fortified organizers, communicators, influencers and practitioners for the long haul, and that requires our sustained vision, collective power and unyielding determination. We must continue to fortify our numbers and grow movement communications and narrative infrastructure for the long haul. The stories, messages and narratives we have elevated over the years will endure into 2025 and beyond. Team ReFrame will be there every step of the way, rigorously assessing the data, applying visionary thinking in our interventions and continuing to build the narrative North Stars that we need to win.
✨🪞 CLICK HERE TO READ THE GREAT TRANSITION: REFRAME'S 2025 NARRATIVE PREDICTIONS 🪞✨
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