Framing 101 (opens in new tab)

Even though it’s not real, I find this kind of framing to be useful in real life situations. When something bad happens, it can easily feel like that was the worst possible thing that could have happened. And your reaction might match that feeling. But the reality is if you’re still alive, it probably wasn’t such a big deal and you think about it in the context of what would actually be the worst thing that could have happened.

These people claim to use a proprietary method called Strategic Frame Analysis. I was curious to see if I recognized any names under the "People" section. I don't. As far as I can tell, they seem to be disconnected from the research project that I studied in college. I'm curious to know more about the political dynamic behind this. Is this a parallel research project? Do they have their own theoretical framework that was developed in parallel to Lakoff and others?

Looking at their history section, it looked like this was started by someone named Susan Nall Bales, who developed a method of "applying framing research", but it doesn't appear like she has any training in a discipline involved in "framing research". What research is being applied exactly?

https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/...

"Celebrating 20 years of social science for social change."

You can't make this stuff up. And I bet 90% of people here don't even understand why this slogan is fucked up. The notion that the purpose of science is to produce social change is straight out of Neil Postman's Technopoly (chapter titled Scientism).

But that aside, the techniques that they discuss look like they could be useful for persuasive communication, including technical and product focused communication, so it is interesting from that perspective.

> Perhaps the most fundamental goal of applying the verbal patterns of Sleight of Mouth is to help people to shift their perspective 1) from a problem frame to an outcome frame, 2) from a failure frame to a feedback frame, and 3) from an impossibility frame to an ‘as if’ frame.

(An "as if" frame is where you imagine if the impossible outcome was possible and what that would be like.)

One of the main takeaways from this book was learning about Disney's creative process (although this wasn't discussed explicitly). There's three roles, all being important: the dreamer, the realist, and the critic.

The critic tends to operate from the "problem frame." Basically, they can be more effective by shifting to the "outcome frame." Instead of focusing on what you don't want, figure out what you do want instead. "Avoiding stress" changes to "becoming more relaxed and comfortable."

After identifying the positive intention behind the criticism, the book recommends changing it from a statement into a "how" question. "How can we...?"

Because 20 years ago I was all aboard with most popular social movements, now, I'm supportive of most motivations, but very skeptical of groups, research, narratives and hardly believe anything I read even in trusted outlets. My 'there is more to this story Spidey Sense' generally does not fail me too often.

I wonder if we need the 'un-framing' institute, focused on trying to sus out the materiality of the truth in a digestible, reasonable way so that competing narratives can dissolve and people can have actual conversations instead of yelling about talking points.