What We Do
We apply social science methods to study how people understand social issues—and how best to frame them. We help shape effective communications.
Creating progressive social change is not like marketing a product.
It’s not about getting people to click a “buy” button or vote for a candidate.
It’s about understanding problems. It’s about seeing solutions. It’s about building the will to support those solutions.
That’s what we do.
How We Help
Decades of social science research shows us that people rely on mental shortcuts to make sense of social problems. We know that some of these shortcuts are more helpful than others in how we see and support solutions. If we communicate in ways that cue unproductive ways of thinking, people dismiss our ideas or jump to unhelpful responses.
Luckily there are ways of studying how communication activates different shortcuts and affects our thinking. This is the science of framing.
We have developed a particular way of deploying this science. Using a proprietary set of approaches called Strategic Frame Analysis®, we uncover people’s deeply held worldviews and widely held assumptions. We test ways of activating more productive ways of thinking about social issues.
This is the heart of framing.
Our Services
We combine the best of theory and practice.
Our research team includes some of the world’s leading experts in the science of framing. We employ tested social science methods to uncover the most effective ways of talking about social issues and policy solutions.
Our application team helps translate those evidence-based findings into practical techniques for communicating with your audiences.
That means we can help you with:
- Research that helps you understand the differences between how advocates think about an issue and how policymakers, the media, and the public think about it.
- Research that tests different metaphors, values, narratives, messengers, and other framing strategies to uncover how best to open up new ways of thinking about issues and solutions.
- Trainings to help advocates understand the results of this research and use those findings in their day-to-day communications.
- FrameChecks® that provide suggested changes to existing communications, in real time, to increase their impact and effectiveness.