Summary
TBD — distil a 2-4 sentence summary from Body.
Body
Framing is the choice of language, metaphor, and emphasis that makes an issue legible and motivating to a specific audience. Narrative is the longer story the campaign tells about how change happens.
George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant and subsequent movement practice agree: the frame you choose determines which policies and emotions become available. A campaign’s frame should be consistent across all its surfaces — petition text, press release, leader’s speech. The Commons Library hosts framing modules that walk through named exercises (values framing, metaphor mapping, narrative arc) [source: commons-library]. Beautiful Trouble’s principles section names narrative as one of the five organising principles — the chosen frame pre-figures the victory [source: beautiful-trouble]. ONGAWA’s manual treats framing as the bridge between strategy and communication: the frame must encode the theory of change, otherwise the campaign’s messaging contradicts its strategy [source: manual-campanas-ongawa]. A common error is to confuse messaging (a slogan) with framing (the underlying structure of meaning). Slogans live and die; frames persist across many slogans. FrameWorks Institute’s empirical research confirms that effective framing leads with shared values rather than data — facts rarely shift opinion in isolation; narratives must activate value systems the audience already holds [source: frameworks-institute]. Common Cause Foundation’s research programme distinguishes intrinsic values (community, equality, care) from extrinsic values (wealth, power, status), documenting how an overemphasis on extrinsic values in public culture undermines social and environmental concern — a pattern campaign communicators should actively avoid reinforcing [source: common-cause-foundation].
Use it for
Naming a campaign; rewriting a petition; preparing spokespeople; deciding which imagery to use.
Worked examples
- case-studies/barbie-liberation
- case-studies/campact-model
- case-studies/fridays-for-future
- case-studies/gezi-park
- otpor-milosevic
Related
- public-narrative
- escalation
- the-campaign-cycle
- audience-segmentation
- beautiful-trouble
- commons-library
- manual-campanas-ongawa
- thinkers/george-lakoff
- thinkers/marshall-ganz
- thinkers/drew-westen
- thinkers/robert-cialdini
- frameworks-institute
- common-cause-foundation
Summary
TBD — distil a 2-4 sentence summary from Body.
Open Questions
None yet.
Sources & verification
- sources/commons-library — grounding: secondary — RAW (5257 chars)
- sources/beautiful-trouble — grounding: secondary — RAW (not scraped)
- sources/manual-campanas-ongawa — grounding: secondary — RAW (not scraped)
- frameworks-institute — grounding: secondary — RAW (1518 chars)
- common-cause-foundation — grounding: secondary — RAW (4797 chars)
Sources & verification
- sources/commons-library — grounding: secondary — RAW (5257 chars)
- sources/beautiful-trouble — grounding: secondary — RAW (2589 chars)
- sources/manual-campanas-ongawa — grounding: secondary — RAW (PDF)
Verified 2026-06-23 by llm-qc.