ReFrame aims to develop the next generation of narrative strategists by connecting and supporting our network of organizers and communicators. We regularly receive requests for collaborative spaces to reflect and strategize, and we continually create diverse opportunities for engagement within our network.
This spring, ReFrame held four public Narrative Salons to test the impact of informal yet rigorous strategy conversations on key narratives. Designed to be accessible and recurring, these salons aimed to engage a wide range of practitioners across various issues and geographies..
Due to the highly fragmented legacy media and social media environment, it is difficult for practitioners to easily understand what is actually moving different audiences across the narrative landscape. Our individual and organizational algorithms tell us an incomplete story, and paint an inconsistent, selective and distorted view of conversations and perspectives. Given this, we spent three of the Salons focused on collectively developing a better understanding of the narrative landscape related to climate, democracy and immigration. We also monitored and discussed conversations about demands for a ceasefire and the Palestine solidarity encampments across college campuses this spring.
ReFrame’s narrative research, also known as the Weather Station, utilizes tools that scrape and aggregate data across all media types and social platforms over time so that organizers and communicators can anticipate openings, risks and opportunities to contend for narrative power more successfully. Up until recently, Weather Station technology and ‘social listening’ have primarily been leveraged by PR and marketing firms, corporate interests and different factions of the right wing. ReFrame is able to utilize this technology for the benefit of our movements by tracking stories, perspectives and narratives across ideology.
Our three focus areas drew interest from all corners of our network and the world - attorneys fighting against transphobia, housing justice organizers, youth activists fighting criminalization, culture workers and land-based spiritualists across the Americas, Europe and Africa, to name a few. The diversity of attendees across issue areas, geography, audience and more spoke to the potential of a shared strategy that contends for narrative dominance across issues, constituencies and fronts.
We also (re)learned important lessons about the limitations of drop-in, virtual, narrative spaces. Proactive long-term narrative strategy cannot be developed in a 60-minute virtual drop-in space. So, while we received positive feedback, we also grappled with the limits of a public, open and unvetted space. Discerning and prioritizing the various critical needs of our movement with our limited resources as an organization continues to be difficult and of the utmost importance.
Our approach for the 2024 election season was informed by our pilot 2020 Florida Command Center as well as our lessons and best practices from the Narrative Salons. ReFrame’s 2024 Signals In the Noise Election Edition blog was paired with a live Strategy Clinic. Together, they delivered real-time narrative insights, supported strategic planning and created collaborative spaces to traverse the dynamic landscape across issues and audiences and support narrative change strategies of movement leaders and institutions. While content banks and messaging guides are branded as a method to support the field during this election season, one-size-fits-all tactical tools are insufficient. Rather than pushing top-down recommendations, our innovative offering gives strategists and organizers a bird’s eye view of things unfolding in the narrative landscape, focusing on dominant and contending narratives. Our weekly insights incorporate narrative research and accompaniment to surface strategic insights in a space where leaders from across regions and issues can workshop with top narrative analysts and strategists to respond quickly to emerging opportunities and threats.
Leading up to and for six weeks following the election, ReFrame curated an in-network space for practitioners to gather and reflect on the most salient narrative fronts of the season. Demos of our Weather Station, accompanied by weekly narrative synthesis in blog form, delivered a line-up of what to look out for each week. Data and accompanying analysis were paired with a robust conversation featuring narrative and movement thought leaders during our live clinic. By preparing topline insights, paired with open time for practitioners to ask questions and check hunches, we were able to leverage the Weather Station to provide insights that mattered most to attendees. Themes discussed included: the cost of living, blame game discourse, the fallacy of democracy as a winning frame, mis-and disinformation, transphobia, immigration, split ticket and up-ballot voting, and so much more.
Our clinics saw 300 attendees across all fifty states. Like the Salons, attendees work across issue areas, geography and audience. Additionally, our clinics remained responsive to the swiftly changing landscape. We polled attendees to learn more about their shifting environment and needs and subsequently delivered research on Black men and Latine voters as a wedge demographic, dominant messages and narratives about the role of government post-election, third-party voters and more.
A Real-Time Solution for our Shifting Conditions
As we prepare for Trump 2.0, spaces like these with a more concentrated strategic narrative focus (i.e., folks running specific campaigns or interventions) and open forums for cross-movement communicators and organizers to strategize together are key. We must defend our precious existing narrative infrastructure and expand and proliferate it to move our messages into every nook, cranny and corner of this country and beyond. We know that the election results in 2024 were not a bellwether that the country has moved right, but rather that the left, progressives and the democratic party have ceded far too much territory to right wing forces. Building a legible and credible vision, elevating solutions (from the ground up) to some of our most pressing crises, and creating more avenues to disseminate our narratives and contend for narrative dominance will be paramount. We know our people are worth fighting for.