A Framework for Understanding the Effects of Strategic Communication Campaigns

ABSTRACT

Decades of research on strategic communication campaigns has generated myriad insights. However, this valuable knowledge is often fragmented across many fields and topic areas, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to distill this knowledge and map the key strategic considerations. In this article, we present an overarching framework for understanding the effects of strategic communication campaigns. We define the driving force as all the efforts, contexts, and systems that advance the campaign’s goals, and the restraining force as those that restrict the campaign’s goals. The total impact of any driving or restraining force can be understood as the product of its reach, effect, and durability. Reach refers to the proportion of people in the target population that are exposed to the corresponding driving or restraining force. Effect refers to the size of the impact of that force, among those who are exposed. Durability refers to the extent to which the effect of that force lasts over time and/or resists opposing forces. We highlight how this framework can be used to distill, connect, and interpret large amounts of extant research and theory, and how it can be used by researchers to design research programs and identify persisting knowledge gaps.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to John Cook, Alexander Coppock, Anthony Leiserowitz, Andrew Luttrell, Kevonte Mitchell, Robin L. Nabi, Angela Potochnik, Ronald E. Rice, Gregg Sparkman, and Sander van der Linden for helpful feedback throughout the development of this work. Thank you to the members of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, and the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab at Princeton University for helpful feedback on presentations of this framework.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ These concepts, as applied to opposing forces acting on individuals, were first developed by Lewin (1951) and were expanded by researchers that followed (e.g., Kruglanski et al., 2012; Latane, 1981). We decided on the terms “driving force” and “restraining force” based on a framework developed by Kruglanski et al. (2012), but apply them to different content and at a different level of abstraction.