Messaging, Framing and Strategy

The Center for Media Justice believes that to change the hearts and minds, social movements need a powerful narrative strategy.  These resources will offer guidance on how to create resonate messages that expose structural oppression, offer solutions, and above all, tell our own stories.

Displaying 1 to 14 of 14 items.

• On Message: Using Strategic Communications to Advance Social Change in Black and Latino Communities
  This publication highlights examples of efforts involving Black- and Latino-serving nonprofit organizations that utilize strategic communications to enhance their advocacy work and improve opportunities in communities of color.
• Letter to the Editor Worksheet
  Planning a letter to the editor but not sure where to start? Here's a worksheet that will help you develop a high impact letter that frames your focus issue in a meaningful way, in order to forward your or your organization's goals.
• Storytelling Worksheet
  What's your story? And how can you tell it in a meaningful way? This worksheet will help you build your baseline message.
• News Hooks
  One good way to make sure your message resonates is by using news hooks to tie in your issue with something people are already familiar with or thinking about. Use this to help you think about the types of hooks that can help you effectively tell your story.
• Values Vocabulary
  These are buzz words that, according to focus studies, most resonate with audiences in the United States. Using these words will help bolster the effectiveness of your message.
• Sample Frames and Messages
  An example of how you can forward your organization's social justice goals through effective framing and messaging.
• Framing Guiding Questions
  Framing tips and considerations for developing effective stories, messaging, and soundbites.
• Elements of a Successful Message
  Quick tips to keep in mind for creating messages that resonate across audiences.
• Communicate Justice 101: The Organizers’ Essential Guide to Strategic Communications
  This comprehensive how-to toolkit provides a full course in grassroots strategic communications, including templates to help you create a media plan, write press releases, frame your message, and more.
• Communicating for Health Justice: A Communications Strategy Curriculum for Advancing Health Issues
  This powerful curriculum by the Praxis Project is designed to help health advocates fight for a more equitable health system and reframe the debate.
• Looking Deeper: Visibility and Invisibility of Youth, Policy and Race in San Jose Mercury News
  How does one of the Bay Area’s leading newspapers cover issues important to youth and their communities? In 2005, CMJ (then the Youth Media Council) worked with San Francisco’s Youth Justice Project to take a deeper look at San Jose Mercury News coverage of education, juvenile justice, racism, and poverty.
• Speaking for Ourselves: A Youth Assessment of Local News Coverage
  Conducted by Bay Area high school students, this 2002 report examines coverage of youth on the local Fox affiliate, KTVU Channel 2. This report by CMJ (then the Youth Media Council) presents findings from a three-month study of trends in news coverage, and recommends steps journalists can take to improve reporting on youth and youth policy.
• Young People and Decent Wages
  Best communications practices for organizers conducting campaigns for a living wage.
• Reclaiming Meaning, Echoing Justice: a response to the 2004 presidential elections
  Illustrates the role of strategic communications in defining our issues through using "the technology of media, the resonance of shared values, and the power of metaphor to impeach injustice and reclaim our world."