Through the Looking Glass

Our Shape in 2025: Ten Years of Narrative Power Building

What 2025 asked of us—and what a decade of narrative power building is teaching us about the road ahead.

The Narrative Campaign Design Pilot: Short-Term Experiments Towards Long-Term Victories

Returning to our mission, vision and values to build the narrative infrastructure we need to prevent further authoritarian consolidation.

Remembering Brandi Collins-Dexter

Where the Right Invests in Fear, We Invest in Power

Malkia Devich-Cyril doesn’t mince words. From the opening moments of NPS 25, Malkia helped us name what time it is — and what narrative power demands of us in this moment. “Authoritarians win through the politics of isolation. Our job is to build belonging.”

Building Narrative Bridges, Defying Wedges

Building Narrative Bridges, Defying Wedges Opening Remarks from Jen Soriano at Narrative Power Summit 2025 On May 8, 2025, in the opening plenary of the Narrative Power Summit, writer, organizer, and ReFrame co-founder and board member Jen Soriano issued a powerful call: build bridges wherever the right tries to drive wedges.

The Empire Will Try to Write the Ending, But We Won't Let Them

On the final day of the Summit, as the ballroom buzzed with the new tools and connections for the road ahead, RadComms Founder Shanelle Matthews delivered a closing speech that serves as both a battle cry and a strategic blueprint for progressive organizers, strategists and communicators.

The Right Is Rising, But So Are We

On day one of Narrative Power Summit 2025, ReFrame Executive Director hermelinda cortés opened with a charge to the field — a grounding in grief, strategy, and the responsibility of narrative work in a time of rising authoritarianism.

What We Built Together in New Orleans: Reflections from Narrative Power Summit 2025

Nearly 700 movement leaders gathered for Narrative Power Summit 2025 — in New Orleans and online — to build narrative infrastructure, sharpen strategy, and hold space for joy, rage, and resistance. This is what we built together, and where we’re going next.

Let’s Build Narrative Power Together at NPS 2025!

Applications close February 2nd—don’t miss your shot!

Reflecting on The Great Transition – 2025 Predictions Townhall

The power of multigenerational and regional narratives, intersectionality, and digital strategy will help us shape just futures.

Sense Making Spaces: From Salons to Strategy Clinics

This year Team ReFrame hosted Narrative Salons and strategy spaces. Read on to learn why we did it and how it went.

Echos Academy: Building Grassroots Narrative Power in California

ReFrame’s 2024 Year in Review: Breaking Barriers, Building Power

2024 was the year we leveled up, broke barriers and built power together. Let's talk about it!

Narrative Power is About Shaping the Terrain

“Narrative power isn’t just about storytelling—it’s about shaping the terrain of ideology, worldview, and meaning.” hermelinda cortés, ReFrame's Executive Director, talks to Cayden Mak (Convergence Magazine) about Building Meaning, Belonging, and Safety

Navigating the Liminal: Reflections On Reframe’s Narrative Predictions 2022-2024

ReFrame's 2025 Predictions are here! Before we enter the new year let's look at the dominant and emergent narratives from 2022 to now.

The Stories That Shaped Us: 2024 in Reflection, 2025 on the Horizon

If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that the stories we tell in moments of grief, nostalgia, and resistance don’t just reflect our reality—they transform it.

ReFrame’s Spanish-First Trainings: Building Narrative Power Where It’s Needed Most

With Trump as President-Elect and anti-Latine rhetoric on the rise, ReFrame’s Spanish-First trainings couldn’t have come at a more critical moment for narrative power-building.

Signals in the Noise : Election Edition | 11.19.24

Blame game hot takes, economic fears, and narratives about “shadow governments”—the election may be over, but the discourse is just getting started.

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition | 11.14.24

The narratives swirling around us right now are potent, messy, and constantly shifting—and that’s exactly why we need to make sense of them, together.

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition | 11.7.24

These are undeniably heavy times. Let’s recap what happened on Election Day and look at the possible paths ahead.

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition | 11.5.24

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition | 10.29.24

Did you have Trump working the McDonald's drive-thru on your bingo card?

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition | 10.22.24

We’re cutting through the noise to bring you the stories that shaped the discourse between Monday, October 15th and Friday, October 18th. Scroll on for an analysis of immigration, Black voters, abortion and attacks against the trans community.

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition | 10.16.24

Inflation, ceasefires, and fan cams, oh my! Introducing Signals in the Noise: Election Edition, our weekly newsletter for topline narrative insights from ReFrame’s weather station directly to you.

Vertigo Variations: ReFrame's 2024 Narrative Predictions

Vertigo Variations explores the intricate tapestry of the economy, the complexities of war, the dynamics of the upcoming elections, the evolving landscape of labor and work, the transformative influence of technology and AI, and the ever-shifting realms of pop culture and sports.

ReFrame Year In Review 2023

Here at ReFrame we take a small pause every quarter, check our compass, and adjust our heading to stay the course. At the end of the year, we take a longer pause to evaluate where we’ve been and set direction for the next year. Below is a summary of the activities and impacts of ReFrame’s work in 2023. Of course, we do not do this work alone, we are moving with others to build narrative power and bend the arc of justice towards justice and liberation.‍

Narrative Infrastructure: The Heartbeat of ReFrame's 2023 Academy

In a time of such incredible tumult and uncertainty, it is sometimes alluring to say ”if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” and we know as justice workers running campaigns, programs and projects of all types we need to not just make sure our work isn’t broken but ask ourselves what is actually needed in this time. What is actually being asked of us to meet this moment?

That’s A Wrap! Congratulations to the 2023 Narrative Power Now Cohort!

As we gear up for 2024, we must continue to invest in the infrastructure that makes it possible for our movements to build narrative power and make meaning at scale next year and beyond through programs like Narrative Power Now.

Register for the ReFrame Fall Academy 2023: Where Narrative Power Meets Opportunity!

Register for ReFrame's 2023 Fall Academy – two experiences, one powerful narrative change journey!

Down the Rabbit Hole: Demystifying QAnon Narratives and Networks

Introducing Down the Rabbit Hole: Demystifying QAnon Narratives and Networks

Stephanie Gasca Por Siempre: Stories of Love and Resilience

An Ode to a Real One: Stephanie Gasca - Rest in Power

Introducing the Narrative Power Now Cohort

A Collaboration between ReFrame & We Make the Future

Trans Athletes: A Narrative Analysis

This Trans Day of Visibility, we’re releasing new narrative research on transgender athletes as one layer in this complex narrative contest. Find out more about who is driving the conversation and how critical narratives about fairness and safety shape the landscape.

We’re Hiring, Again!

We're Hiring! Will you be a part of ReFrame’s next 10 years?

"We Did It!" Not a Solo Founder Story

A founding story grounded in movement values and a collective vision.

Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes... A Note from ReFrame's Outgoing ED

Co-founding Executive Director, Joseph Phelan, on why he is leaving ReFrame and what's next.

CATALYZING RIPPLES: REFRAME’S 2023 NARRATIVE PREDICTIONS!

Catalyzing Ripples lays out the narrative themes, evolving story trends and emerging opportunities and risks that can serve as a guide in the year ahead.

ReFrame Year in Review 2022

ReFrame's 2022 Year In Review!

Breaking Q! From Disinfo Distraction to Narrative Strategy

An interview with Ivie Osaghae and Bia Jackson of #TeamReFrame as they are immersed in our QAnon narrative research and deprogramming work in collaboration with Women’s March. The team explores QAnon as a big tent conspiracy theory and introduces research around how people are drawn into conspiratorial practices like QAnon or Q adjacent networks.

Time for the All-Stars! Meet ReFrame's Senior Cohort

Since 2015 when we launched the ReFrame Mentorship, we have been investing in leaders and organizations to build a durable, long-term narrative power infrastructure that along with organizing, can bend the arc of history towards justice. In line with this vision, we saw an opening that led us to the Senior Narrative Power Cohort.

Skilling Up to Build Narrative Power: Reflections on Narrative Power 101

Over 800 hundred organizers, creatives, and strategists joined ReFrame for Narrative Power 101 (in real-time and asynchronously!), to skill up and build narrative power to win.

Answering the Call - NPS '22 Reflections

Opening statements from ReFrame Executive Director, Joseph Phelan, and ReFrame Deputy Director, Hermelinda Cortés, along with photos from the 2022 Narrative Power Summit. 

Register Now for Narrative Power 101 Training

Join ReFrame on October 25th for Narrative Power 101! This free virtual training reviews the fundamentals of narrative and disinformation while offering new approaches and practical steps for your everyday work.

Introducing the Narrative Power Summit!

This October 6-8, ReFrame and RadComms are bringing narrative power builders together for a hybrid summit in Long Beach, CA!

What is Safety Really? Organizing for a New Way

Jenny Lee and Damon Motz-Storey were in a six-month fellowship run by ReFrame in partnership with the Northwest Health Foundation. We took a few minutes to check-in on how they are doing. ‍‍

Ukraine, Democracy and the Far Right

The TL;DR - How the meme of a Ukrainian granny with a gun hides a far right secret OR the fog of war is murky, beware of the far right OR, the fight for multi-racial democracy at home and abroad.

Collective Bargaining for Stronger Communities

As we grow the narrative power ecosystem we need to win we are taking moments to highlight the awesome strategists we get to work with. Luo was a participant in the ReFrame Summer Academy and we took a few minutes to check-in on how she is doing. 

What the South Taught Me About Predicting Narratives

The God's honest work and lineage of organizing in the South taught me that understanding not just the political terrain but the narrative landscape is essential to building power. Our movements can contend for power at the level of ideas, beliefs, and values and set the narrative arena in which we organize.

The Promise of ReFrame

ReFrame’s Executive Director, Joseph Phelan, recounts his time as a communicator and organizer at Miami Workers Center as part of the inspiration for the vision and promise of ReFrame to build narrative power at scale. “I could see a future where we were touching these contacts with targeted messages and stories that overtime lead to a shift in worldview.”

Through The Looking Glass: 2022 Narrative Predictions

SAVE THE DATE: Through The Looking Glass - 2022 Narrative Predictions

Shifting the Culture of Crime and Punishment

As we grow the narrative power ecosystem we need to win we are taking moments to highlight the awesome strategists we get to work with. Talia Gad is a participant in the Northwest Health Foundation Fellowship and we took a few minutes to check-in on how she is doing.

ReFrame x NWHF Narrative Fellowship

ReFrame and Northwest Health teamed up to train leaders in community organizations in the Pacific Northwest to engage in narrative work to win.

THE RONA REPORT: THE ECONOMY, WORKERS & UNEMPLOYMENT

Exploring the narrative weather of Covid-19. The Rona Report is a project of ReFrame and Solea Signals. COVID time is confusing. It can feel like light speed and sloth slow all at once.

GOTV: Tools for Fighting Disinformation NOW & Beyond

Many who believe in justice are fighting hard for victories at the ballot box. However, our opponents are spreading disinformation that threaten the just future we are all working towards.

Threat Modeling & Swot Planning

At ReFrame, drawing from our experiences inside of other crisis moments, two of the tools we’ve been using to coordinate our team in the time of COVID-19 is individual and organizational threat modeling & SWOT planning.

A Movement Moment: Narrative in the Time of Corona

We are here with you. Our hearts and thoughts are with everyone who is struggling right now.

Creating an Ecosystem for Narrative Power

The political landscape is shifting by the week. What we need to stay above the current is what will allow us to build narrative power for the long-haul.

A Spectacular Start to the 2019 Reframe Program

The fifth class of the ReFrame Mentorship kicked off in May with a spectacular Opening Convening in Denver and Breckenridge, Colo.

5 Minutes With Power California’s Jung Hee Choi

Jung Hee Choi is a Senior Advisor and mentor for ReFrame and the Associate Director for Communications and Policy Strategies for Power California.

Introducing the 2019 Reframe Mentorship Cohort

At ReFrame, we envision national and international movements buoyed by hundreds of thousands of strategists who are collaborating to develop and advance deep narratives that bend the long arc of history toward justice.

Black Panther: The Movie About Blackness That Reflected Back Gold

First things first, if you have NOT yet seen Black Panther, stop reading right now and go watch it. Yes, RIGHT NOW. Then come back later and read this.

Meet The Next Generation of Communications Leaders (Video)

ReFrame Gives Me Hope (Video)

Some of the ReFrame mentors reflect on their mentees and the hope they have for the future.

It’s Humanizing (Video)

Shanelle Matthews, ReFrame mentor and Communications Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network, reflects on why learning and collaborative spaces like ReFrame are humanizing and powerful for oppressed communities.

Build The Story (Video)

Brandon Hill, who works with Cook Inlet Keeper, talks about why he applied for and participated in ReFrame.

We Have a Responsibility to Our Ancestors (Video)

Fresco Steez, who works with BYP100, talks about the importance of story and the responsibility of building power towards action to end oppression for all people.

Conduits (Video)

Jasmine Leeward, of New Virginia Majority shares her experience of ReFrame.

Hope & Liberation (Video)

JaNaé Bates, who works with ISAIAH, talks about shifting narratives away from fear and towards hope and liberation.

ReFrame For Our Future (Video)

The ReFrame Mentorship is a six-month program that builds the next generation of strategic communicators in social justice, and supports organization to integrate communications as a core strategy.

Lessons From the Field: Building Power Through Electoral Organizing

Lessons From the Field: Fighting Trump’s Deportation Machine

Immigrant rights organizations like Juntos, a Latinx grassroots group in Philadelphia, have been mobilizing powerfully in the months since Donald Trump took office. For Miguel Andrade, the communications manager at Juntos and a 2017 ReFrame mentee, strategic communications has played a critical role in their organizing work.

Lessons From the Field: Climate Change Organizing in the Trump Era

For 27 years, Cook Inletkeeper has worked to protect Alaska’s waterways and the life and people that they sustain. According to Brandon Hill, the organization’s Communications Director and a 2017 ReFrame mentee, that work is always an uphill battle.

Lessons From the Field: Winning the Fight to Save the Internet

Fake news, corporate control of the internet, digital surveillance, law enforcement agencies using big data to target communities of color — all of these issues have taken on increasing importance in recent years. The Center for Media Justice (CMJ), founded in 2008, is at the forefront in ensuring that communities of color are at the center of the debate and policy solutions to these critical problems.

Lessons From The Field Strategic Communications For Statewide Organizations

For statewide organizations that work on a variety of issues, it can often be difficult for their communications staff to manage and plan strategies to effectively get the word out about all of their organization’s work.

Lessons For The Movement

When we launched ReFrame in 2015, we had one mission in mind: to develop the next generation of strategic communicators — leaders rooted in grassroots movements who understand how to shape and control the narrative and stories about the issues they work on and, equally importantly, have the strategic thinking and skills to do so.

Dream of Where to Go

Reflection and evaluation allows us to understand if we are on the path to realizing our dreams. Heading into our third year of building the next generation of social justice communicators, we took time to reflect on what we have done so far.

Why Add Communications to Organizing Strategy? (Video)

Aquilina Soriano Versoza, Pilipino Workers Center

Why Invest in Communications Leadership? (Video)

Charlene Carruthers, BYP100

Fighting Disinformation, Building Narrative Power

We are organizing and telling stories on an uneven playing field, where the underlying narratives have long been shaped by highly conservative forces. This is the playing field on which mis-and-disinformation is spreading. So how do we combat it?

Announcing the new Disinfo Defense Toolkit!

Curated by ReFrame and PEN America for the Disinfo Defense League. Powerful tools to push back while continuing to advance our work for justice

We Came To Win: Reflections on Narrative Power in the 2020 Election

How key strategists built narrative power in 2020 during a global pandemic, the rise of the largest demonstrations for racial justice in US history, the highest rate of voter turnout and a significant defeat of Trumpism at the polls.

Defanging Disinformation: 6 Action Steps Nonprofits Can Take

Disinformation has become more effective at generating chaos and seeding doubt in reality. As part of our work with the Disinformation Defense League, ReFrame and This is Signals have committed to sharing lessons learned with the field and action steps on how to slow the spread of disinformation.

THe Rona Report 2.0: “It’s Still the Economy, Stupid!”

Rona Report 2.0 explores narrative trends, content, messages and stories around the economy, jobs and workers under Covid-19