As we leave the chaos of the previous year behind, it’s safe to say that the vibes remain… uncertain. Across the narrative landscape, we hear the clattering of broken hearts as another mainstay couple calls it quits or someone else hops on the Ozempic bandwagon. We’re juggling elder care, child care, family dinner, drag shows, rent increases and student loans. The hum around elections grows louder while the fog of endless war grows thicker.

In 2023, people sought authenticity and rarefied experiences to make up for years mired in a pandemic (some of us are still paying off those Renaissance tickets, but it was worth it!). This year, the multiverse of realities unfolding before us won’t make it easy to interpret the world through a set of simple binaries: ‘me’ or ‘we', war or peace, abundance, scarcity, or just having enough. A million different conversations have been pulling our attention this way and that, in ways that feel equal parts familiar and new.

If the Barbenheimer phenomenon taught us anything, it’s that there’s a sense of hope, joy, and the truly unexpected operating alongside the dread and disorientation of what the future may bring. Despite (or in spite) of overlapping crises there remains a collective yearning, an insistence even, for the good life. In the face of the climate crisis, wage stagnation and political destabilization, the hope to live freely and abundantly persists. We see this not only in the rise of global solidarity movements against war and genocide, but also within our shared dreams of prosperity.

As we navigate varying realities, one thing remains constant. Our communities and our movements play a pivotal role in shaping the narrative arena. Together, we confront real risks while seizing the opportunities that lay before us. Our predictions and insights aim to serve as a guiding light, empowering you to build narrative power in pursuit of freedom, liberation and justice as we collectively prepare for the year ahead.

Sign up here if you want to follow along this year for more narrative research and updates on our predictions, upcoming trainings and other offerings to social movement leaders, organizations and networks.

ReFrame’s predictions are rooted in both research and analysis and our experiences as organizers, policy wonks, narrative strategists and practitioners. The data visualizations and charts we use in this year's report represent the volume of conversations over time and are a critical tool in our overall narrative analysis. You can read more about how to interact with these visuals and their data sources on our methodology page. Please let us know if you have questions, feedback, or thoughts on this report.

This Is Signals · Vertigo Variations: 2024 Narrative Predictions presented by ReFrame

Narrative Openings

Narrative Risks

Appendix

Discussion Guide

Our team crafts annual predictions to support long-term strategic planning, organizing and communications work. ReFrame’s 2024 Narrative Predictions does not offer specific message guidance. Instead, it provides broad narrative guideposts that can inform your content, audience, and platform development as you implement your narrative strategy. This year, we’ve crafted a set of questions to help you and your team assess how the predictions may inform your narrative strategy for 2024.

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Methodology

At ReFrame, we conduct narrative research on established, emerging, dominant and trending narratives that are circulating widely as well as inside specific networks. We also track narrative voids, places where there is an absence of coherent stories that add up to a clear narrative. Our research tracks volume and velocity trends, conversational patterns, stories, content and messages, and network influencers across time, platforms and channels. We meticulously dissect content (news articles, social media content, websites, broadcast news and entertainment, podcasts, online forums, and more) to identify embedded messages, story and character archetypes, and their underlying ideas, values and beliefs. ReFrame conducts narrative research in partnership with other leaders and organizations, refining our research and content analysis through bidirectional learning loops.

For this report, we used a combination of Zignal Labs data, analysis of surveys distributed to 2023 ReFrame Academy participants, and detailed on and offline analysis of keywords and conversations. We examined conversation trends, volume and velocity, with a focus on English and Spanish-language and United States-based content distributed over a two-year period. Our general research window was from January to December 2023, though at times, we looked back further to understand how stories and narratives shifted over a longer period of time.

How to Read Our Charts

There are several kinds of charts in this report that represent the volume of conversations over time. The data visualized is static and does not update in real time. These charts are time-bound snapshots of data compiled from single keywords, curated keyword sets and/or issue filters. This data supports interpreting, comparing and forecasting how conversations, and the narratives that undergird them, move over time.

Charts with white and navy blue backgrounds are not interactive and represent data pulled from X, news media, broadcast, blogs, Reddit, Q&A, reviews, and forums. They help us see and understand emergent conversations. Some terms to know:

‍Volume refers to the number of mentions of a given issue over time. Volume analysis provides insight into which conversations have the greatest volume, when volume is consistent, or when and how it varies. We compare volume across conversations to better understand their salience and how they interact with each other.

Spikes refer to the peaks on a given chart where volume increases rapidly. Spikes are typically influenced by a dominant story or flashpoint moment that we can identify.

Keyword refers to a single word, phrase, or hashtag that can be used to search and find content related to a given story or conversation.

Keyword sets are a group of keywords compiled to search, find and aggregate content related to a given conversation. Keyword sets can be simple (ex: Defund the police, #DefundThePolice) or complex (ex: including hundreds of people, places, words, and hashtags related to policing, abolition, and reform). We typically use simple keyword sets to understand emerging issues or specific conversations; we use complex keyword sets to listen to conversations broadly and at scale

Issue Filter refers to a set of keywords designed to capture a particular conversation or story trend (ex: Inflation) that can be applied to a broader conversation.

Quiet refers to conversations and/or stories operating at a lower volume relative to other conversations in the narrative ecosystem

Loud refers to conversations and/or stories operating at a higher volume relative to other conversations in the narrative ecosystem.

‍

ReFrame uses Zignal Labs, alongside other big listening tools and methods to support our narrative research.
The charts in this report represent data parameters built by ReFrame’s narrative research team within this tool.

Glossary

Disinformation

Information that is deliberately false or misleading, often spread for political gain, profit, or to discredit an individual, group, movement, political party or foreign government.

Misinformation

Information that is false or inaccurate, spread unknowingly and without intent to harm.

Influencer

An individual in the narrative ecosystem that shapes conversations on and offline. While some influencers may have public name recognition, follower counts can vary. They are individuals who are seen as trustworthy representatives of their community, with a robust offline network to match their online presence.

Network

A way of describing and visualizing social relationships. Networks describe how different people are connected, how strong their ties are and how different networks are connected to each other. Networks are NOT just how people are connected online. They include relationships and connections that bridge people together in real life.

Tone

The attitude an author or creator conveys in a story, its subject matter or its audience. An author's tone may reflect their personal attitude or opinion about a story. Different audiences read and respond to tone differently.

Mood

The emotional response an author or creator’s content evokes in their audience. Emotional responses allow audiences to connect with a story, making it meaningful and memorable. Emotional responses vary depending on the audience.

Conversations

Categories of keywords related to a particular topic that are monitored in real time and when using big listening technology. We track conversations to analyze the exchange of content, including messages, stories, information, ideas and opinions.

Counter-Narrative

A collection or system of related stories that are articulated and refined over time to represent a central idea or belief that acts opposition to another narrative.

Values

Commonly held beliefs. They are not always partisan. Values can inform ideology and narrative, and vice versa.

Story

A particular series of events that occur in a particular place and time and often contain structural archetypes such as a protagonist, a problem, a path and a payoff. Stories bring deeper narratives to life by making them relatable, accessible and even personal.

Narrative

A collection or system of related stories that are articulated and refined over time to represent a central idea or belief. (Narrative Initiative)

Contributors

Márquez

Rhyne

Miguel

Andrade

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