Toolkit: Civic Engagement

Trying to connect with ideologically-moderate white women, or your own unique audience, on civic engagement? Use Galvanize Action’s research and narratives to craft messages about democracy, connection, and speaking up that will resonate with ideologically-moderate white women.

AUDIENCE

Taking civic action and making their voices heard is consistently a challenge for ideologically-moderate white women. Many lack political self-efficacy and because they don’t identify as civic actors, their desire to opt out and self-silence is powerful. In a time of rising authoritarianism and weakening democratic norms, attitudes shifts are not enough. Galvanize Action seeks to turn passive agreement into meaningful civic participation among those in the audience that are ready for it. Doing this requires redefining what engagement looks like so it fits into their daily lives, and taking them down a narrative path that makes change feel possible and makes it feel like their voice matters. 

Many of the narratives in this toolkit can be extrapolated to other audiences or used for broad programming, though this should be done with caution. We have noted areas where narratives should be restricted to certain audiences to avoid negative impacts.

Validate

Targeted disinformation campaigns that fuel fear, deepen polarization, and even incite violence contribute to distrust and desire to disengage. We are seeing heightened fear around civic participation and concern for both physical and social safety, which are validated by increasing examples of retaliation for speaking out against authoritarian action. And as the erosion of civil and civic rights continues, our audience risks becoming desensitized towards anti-democratic behavior and unwilling to use their power to stand up for our democracy. We need to acknowledge and then move beyond this, emphasizing common-sense solutions.

Educate

Education and understanding of democratic norms and institutions is a critical component of engagement for ideologically-moderate white women. Our research has shown that our audience needs big concepts of civics and democracy to be tangible and connected to their daily lives in order to understand them and recognize their salience.

Shift Mindsets

As polarization grows and shifts toward authoritarianism continue, civic engagement is paramount. In order for our audience to consistently take action, we need to address underlying barriers around political self-efficacy, lack of trust in government, and fear for both physical and social safety. 

NARRATIVE PRINCIPLES

Your at-a-glance checklist for creating effective messages about civic engagement:

1. Meet your audience where they are – It’s important to understand where people are starting from in order to know where and how to move them. Acknowledging (not legitimizing) our audience’s worldview makes them more likely to trust a message (for example, it’s hard to talk about systemic injustice with people grounded in individualism). Meeting them where they are also means addressing underlying biases—such as internalized sexism or colorblind racial resentment— to ensure a message addresses barriers to change.
2. Use trusted messengers – Trust reduces resistance and increases the credibility of the message being delivered. Storytellers who are seen as values-aligned reinforce a sense of identity and belonging that help the message resonate and stick with people. Who is considered a trusted messenger depends on the audience and the issue, but they are generally seen as authentic authority figures.
3. Lead with shared values – Shared values—including compassion, security, fairness, etc. — provide an opening for engagement and help lower defensiveness, especially around unfamiliar ideas. Leveraging ideologically-moderate white women’s strengths around compassion and desire for a future where all families can thrive helps create openness and willingness to engage. Anchoring a message to core values and identity also helps it stick over time.
4. Validate their experience – People are more open and willing to shift their beliefs if they feel safe and not defensive. By showing that we care about their real and perceived struggles, we create trust, which allows new ideas to be considered. Validating their experience doesn’t mean agreeing with or legitimizing attitudes.
5. Make education accessible – It’s important to raise awareness and counter disinformation, but do it in a relatable way that doesn’t come across as pedantic or biased. Incorporate new information and data within a values framework that models open-mindedness. Avoid throwing too many different ideas at an audience at once. 
6. Be solution-oriented – While it’s important to define the problem and name bad actors, narratives should close with a positive vision for the future or call-to-action that encourages personal and collective agency to combat fatalism and create sustainable change. Focus on outcomes, and where you want to move people in both the short and long term.
7. Center people’s experiences – Use personal, accessible stories where appropriate to make intangible democratic concepts feel more relevant and relatable. People pay more attention to information that aligns with their identity and goals. So instead of talking about “democracy” or abstract policies, focus on the lived experience of taking care of your family and having a voice in making life better for them.

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE PRINCIPLES

1. Design for the brain’s spotlight – Use visual contrast, color, movement, faces/emotion, and surprise to grab the audience’s attention. Read more: The Psychology of GIFs.
2. Leverage emotional states – Emotions—including curiosity, joy, empathy, and mild doubt—lower psychological defenses and allow people to reconsider deeply-held beliefs.
3. Avoid solely fear-based narratives – Fear-based narratives trigger a threat response that does increase their stickiness and ability to be retrieved. However, they also activate defensive reactions, weaken empathy, and undermine perceived efficacy. On the other hand, positive emotions tied to identity and purpose—such as compassion, hope, and joy—are just as easy to recall and help people feel aligned with their values. If you do use fear, be sure to pair it with a solution.
4. Repeat, repeat, repeat – The brain learns by rehearsal, so it’s important to reinforce our narrative across different contexts to help commit it to memory and make it feel more familiar.
5. Shift social norms – Show the desired behavior or attitude in action, make it identity safe (i.e., something that “people like us” do), and make it visible.
6. Build on familiar concepts – Frame new information as a natural extension of what people already believe to make it easier for them to consider new beliefs.
7. Anchor beliefs – Deliberately set an anchor for how people should think about an issue early and repeat it to increase familiarity.
8. Prompt reflection – Asking people to repeat or apply a message helps strengthen memory.
9. Keep it simple – Human attention is limited and highly selective, so stick to one clear takeaway and catchy phrase.

Narrative Path

The first step to action is raising awareness that your voice matters and change is possible. Because our audience is focused on their own economic security and other in-group needs, standing up to protect the democratic freedom of everyone takes time and requires us addressing a range of internalized barriers to engagement. Our narrative strategy starts with moving women to agree with the statement, “It is important that I use my voice to protect the wellbeing of my community.” By speaking to core beliefs and centering individual responsibility in a concrete space rather than the abstraction of “democracy,” we can help them take that first step. Leading with a strong narrative is necessary but not sufficient for ideologically-moderate white women to start, and maintain, taking action. In order to have the most success, we recommend following each element of the Narrative Path below:

1. Start with a real, relatable, and community-level concern: Open with an everyday moment where something feels off, uncertain, or overwhelming in the community or world around them. This should be something they can easily recognize, resonate with, and something that is important to them.
2. Introduce a moment of recognition: Show someone realizing they are not the only one who cares, notices or is impacted by the problem.
3. Reveal a practical way to engage that fits in daily life: Demonstrate how participation can begin with a simple action like showing up, sharing a concern, helping organize, or learning together. This action does not have to be the first step in a hierarchy—it can be the solution itself. It’s essential to center tangible, positive impact and to address a topic that matters to them and feels safe to participate in. The following are a few examples of community-level civic action our audience has told us are meaningful to them and have impact:
   1. Made a plan to vote in a local election
   2. Volunteered their time for a cause
   3. Attended a town hall or community meeting
   4. Talked to a friend or family member about an issue
4. Show the collective effect of small actions: Illustrate how individual participation connects with others and begins to strengthen the community. To our audience, helping feels natural and powerful. Relationships, connection, and a sense of belonging help them become and, importantly, stay engaged. 
5. Resolve with restored agency and stability: End by reinforcing that participation, especially when people act together, helps protect the wellbeing of the community and makes systems work better for people like them. Make sure that you aren’t pushing a form of “big energy” engagement (like protesting or organizing) our audience isn’t ready for.

For ideologically-moderate white women, the strongest stories begin with a relatable moment in everyday life, often a feeling of uncertainty, concern, or frustration about what’s happening in the world. This could look like noticing how unaffordable prescription drug costs are for a friend, how it’s harder for families to meet up since a local community center shut down, or how online posts are causing her family to fight more. Using a relationship-first approach is an effective way to build awareness with our audience. The moment doesn’t need to be big, but it needs to speak to core values, such as compassion or security. These stories show ordinary people discovering that participation can begin with small, practical steps taken within familiar community settings such as schools, neighborhoods, or local institutions. This approach resonates with our audience’s identity as helpers, without pushing them to a point of disengagement. The narrative resolves by demonstrating how these small actions help restore a sense of stability, connection, or agency for their communities—meeting their desire for meaningful impact.

This approach is less about generating concern or attempts to capitalize on fear-based urgency as a short-term solution, and more about increasing the belief that individual participation can lead to community-level impact. Although leading with engagement at the local level may feel insufficient when democratic threats are so widespread, local campaigns can help build civic confidence and engagement that extends into broader democratic participation.

NARRATIVE FRAMES

Takeaways

While these narratives were not tested for calls to actions, the main principles can be applied and adapted for civic engagement messaging designed to influence support for specific policies or ballot measures.

• Avoid talking about systems and focus on how political outcomes impact our audience’s lived experience
• Highlight the need for leaders and elected officials who solve problems and are helping build a more stable, secure future for our children, and building trust in our communities—not causing division
• Show that elections are not abstract or performative—they are one of the main ways we set rules, choose leaders, and hold them accountable
• Draw a clear line between leaders who abuse power, create chaos, or rig the rules for themselves and the real harm that causes in the audience’s daily lives
• Reinforce that when people like them stay quiet or disengage, they leave decisions up to louder and more extreme voices

OTHER NARRATIVE FRAMES

The following represent narratives that underwent a different testing process, instead drawing on Galvanize Action’s rich history of audience understanding research and individual-level message testing.

SAFE TO TRY

These narrative recommendations are not yet tested, but align with audience research and behavioral science theory.

“Corruption and Chaos”

From an accountability lens, we want women to support policies and elected leaders who prioritize affordability and stability, so calling out those who create chaos and rig the system for their own gain helps create clear lines of support. While it is important not to prime our audience with fear and scarcity, which can activate authoritarianism, offering solutions that speak to fairness and stability can help them navigate a noisy political environment and see who has their backs.

“Loss of Control”

Part of the concern around safety and stability for ideologically-moderate women stems from a perceived lack of control over what is happening in the country. As humans, we want to make sense of the world around us and feel like there are rules in place. Showing how civic and civil rights positively show up in our audience’s lives (such as voting for school funding or transportation), and how they are being unfairly taken away, allows us to speak to loss aversion and create an opening for civic action.

STRENGTHENING YOUR FRAME: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS

Ground Media’s narrative testing reveals that using the following elements can make stories resonate more strongly with ideologically-moderate white women, even when using frames that go beyond the above recommendations.

WHAT’S AT STAKE

What civic engagement problems feel most urgent, personally important, and solvable to our audience

It’s important to frame narratives around what feels most urgent for ideologically-moderate women as a starting point, coupled with showing them solutions. Taking the opportunity to repeat back these challenges increases the chance that our messaging will resonate, while also helping to humanize the women to whom we are speaking.

• Fraying Communities – People feel more alone and disconnected, even from neighbors and loved ones
  • Speaks to audience’s concern about social erosion and disconnection
• Diminished Safety – Our communities are becoming less safe and we are losing trust in the places we call home
  • Acknowledges a primary concern around perceived safety without giving strength to reasons for that loss which can be grounded in internalized biases and disinformation
• Backlash – Women face judgment and social consequences for speaking up, which discourages many from using their voice
  • Speaks to fear of conflict and relationship risk from speaking up, while framing it as a loss of agency
• Lost Future – Our children and grandchildren are losing their shot at a stable, secure future
  • Brings in a future lens that appeals to caregivers, especially parents to children under age 18

CALLS TO ACTION (CTAs)

Motivational approaches that can move our audience to engage

Frame the first action as simple and achievable to encourage ongoing digital engagement. When it comes to CTAs, the ask needs to come from a trusted voice and feel personal to our audience.

“Even a small step can make a big impact”

• Reduces the perceived barrier to engagement while still promising meaningful impact
• Reassures our audience that learning more or taking an initial step is still valuable, which helps grow their political self-efficacy and likelihood of future action

“The future we want is something we build bit by bit, together”

• Similar to the above, but links incremental participation with future impact, a frame that is effective with our audience

Embrace / Replace

SPECIFIC CASES

Appendix

While all narratives are research informed, example content represents varying levels of confidence in how they move our audience (*= content has been lab tested and shown statistically significant movement, **= content is based on theory and audience reaction shows directional evidence of a positive effect)

Narratives Tested with Ground Media

Democracy 101: Mom – “When my daughter turned 18, we sat down together to go over her ballot for the upcoming election. To be honest, it was a little confusing, all those choices and terms we didn’t know. It wasn’t just the big races, it was school funding, transit and neighborhood safety. But we took our time to figure it out, because those are the decisions that affect our daily lives. I told her that the rules we live by, and whether they support our families or stack the deck against us, are decided by who shows up. And when regular people like us get involved, from casting a vote to volunteering at the polls, we start to make sense of what’s happening around us and gain a little more control over it. The system doesn’t fix itself. But when we participate, we help write the rules that keep life fair and stable. That’s how change starts. Not from the top, but from people like us choosing to step in.”

Connection Through Engagement: Safety – “I used to feel completely overwhelmed. Every time I opened the news, it was another crisis and another reminder of how much felt out of control. I didn’t know where to start, or whether anything I did would really matter. Then I saw a post from a group of parents organizing to help make sure every student at our school felt safe, supported, and ready for the year ahead. I decided to show up. Just being in the room helped. I realized I wasn’t the only one who wanted every kid, no matter their background, to have what they needed to feel secure and welcomed. We listened to each other, shared concerns, and made a plan to speak with the school board about practical steps we could take. That first meeting led to more involvement. Now I volunteer at the front desk once a week, and we’re working on adding crossing guards to make arrival and dismissal safer for everyone. I still worry sometimes. But I’m not stuck anymore. I’ve learned that using my voice, even in small ways, helps protect the wellbeing of my community. And that feels worth it.”

Democracy is the Solution: Library – “Sometimes when we talk about democracy, it feels abstract, like something I learned about in high school or hear about during big elections. But democracy isn’t just about voting. It’s how we make decisions, together, about the things that shape our lives. Take this example: every Saturday, I take my granddaughter to the public library. She picks out books, I use the free Wi-Fi to pay bills or look for work, and we both feel safe and welcome. That may not seem like “democracy”, but this space only exists because people like me voted for it. Leaders listened and delivered the budget and resources that our communities need. That’s democracy at its best. My family relies on these things to provide stability, and we have to protect the institutions that make our lives better. Democracy is one of them, and we each have a role to play in protecting it.”

Future Focused: School – “I work at the front desk of our elementary school, so I see a lot, like kids who need more support, parents doing their best, teachers stretched thin. It’s hard not to wonder what kind of future these kids are heading toward. But we started working to change things, and it didn’t come from any big policy or leader. It started small. One mom organized a weekend food drive. Another put together a coat swap. I joined in just helping with flyers and sorting donations. It wasn’t much, but it added up, and it’s working. Bit by bit, we’re building something stronger. If we want our kids and grandkids to have a real shot at a stable future, it won’t come from the top down. It’ll come from all of us, helping where we can, building something better together.”

Strength in Numbers: Safety – “I kept seeing posts on the neighborhood app about missed package deliveries, power flickers, and people asking if anyone else noticed. Nothing serious, but something felt off. We’d all gotten used to keeping to ourselves, keeping our heads down, and our doors closed. But the quiet didn’t feel like safety. It felt like we’d stopped looking out for each other. So I knocked on my next-door neighbor’s door who was someone I’ve known for years, and asked if she wanted to start walking together in the evenings. She said yes, and we invited one more neighbor, then another. Pretty soon, we had a small group. Nothing fancy, just a few of us walking, talking, catching up. Now, we’re checking in more, sharing updates, feeling less alone. It just feels good to know the people around me again. It makes all of us feel a little more steady, a little more safe.”

Coffee Break – “Your coffee takes three minutes to brew……and in that time, you can text a friend about helping at a food drive. You could feed over 100 families within 30 minutes when volunteering at a food bank. One small action can make a big difference. Do something for your community before your coffee’s ready. Click to get inspired on how you can help today.”

Ruffle Feathers – “I often stay quiet and don’t speak up because I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. But the other day I was listening to my friend talking about how she sees civic action and getting involved in the community as an opportunity to give back and make her voice heard. She shared how she had signed a petition to reopen a local hospital and joined a group of people calling her representative about it. Now the city is talking about getting more healthcare funding, which would help so many people. I realized that if everyone stays quiet then nothing will change. But even little actions can make a meaningful difference.”

We’re Living It – “With all the chaos and violence in the news none of us can just sit silent. I want to be on the right side of history. I want my grandkids to not be embarrassed by me. We grew up reading history books and thinking, ‘How did they let this happen?’ And now we’re living in it. So if I can do something, even as small as sharing how I feel about what the administration is doing, it makes me feel a little better.”