How we help
Organisations working to move opinion and policy on contested issues face three complex questions.
These questions cut across climate, health, and democracy, because the same narrative structures drive all three. What drives climate obstruction in Germany drives vaccine hesitancy in the Middle East and far-right recruitment in France. The actors overlap. The tactics recur.
What's shaping public attitudes on our issue?
We map the narratives, actors, and dynamics driving opinion.
Why isn't our position landing?
We diagnose why opposition narratives resonate and where your framing falls short.
How do we prepare teams for this environment?
We build organisational capability through simulations, training, and strategic frameworks.
What's shaping public attitudes on our issue?
Why is climate policy losing public support in Germany but for different reasons than in Spain? What's drawing young men toward far-right ecosystems? How is opposition to nature legislation being organised across platforms? We map the narratives, actors, and emotional dynamics driving opinion on your issue, across countries, languages, and audiences.
Across six European countries, we mapped how opposition to climate policy is structured, revealing a repeatable four-stage formula used to move undecided audiences away from pro-climate positions.
Read the LightSwitch project →Why isn't our position landing?
Environmental organisations lead with scientific consensus while opposition actors lead with electricity bills. Health campaigns cite institutional authority while influencers speak to identity and lived experience. Democracy advocates stress democratic values while populist movements offer simple answers to complex frustrations. We diagnose why opposition narratives resonate with persuadable audiences, how they're structured, and where the framing gaps are.
For a Brussels-based philanthropy, we examined why progressive communicators were failing to reach young men drawn to far-right ecosystems, and identified the creators who were succeeding.
Read the manosphere study →Honestly, I went in expecting another landscape report. We had been watching the opposition get louder for a couple of years, but we were seeing it in pieces, a campaign here, a talking point there. What Ripple Research did was put it together and show us it was one thing, not twenty. I still reach for that framing when I have to explain it to our board.
Programme Director, European environmental foundation
How do we prepare teams for this environment?
A climate communicator in Poland faces different narrative dynamics than one in Sweden. A foundation running a pan-European coalition needs consistent strategic instincts across national contexts. A policy team encountering hostile framings daily needs more than talking points. We build capability through simulations, frameworks, and training grounded in the narrative environment each organisation faces.
Working with a network of 40+ European advocacy organisations, we designed a simulation exercise where participants construct opposition messages using the same formula they encounter in the field. Six country-specific toolkits followed.
Read about the Hot Seat →We run a lot of these sessions and, if I am honest, most of them do not survive a busy week. This one stuck, and I did not expect it to. I think it was that people built the opposition messaging themselves instead of being talked at. Months later someone will spot something in the wild and go, that is the formula, isn’t it. I did not see that coming.
Communications Lead, pan-European advocacy coalition
We combine large-scale discourse analysis across platforms and languages with behavioural research and expert human interpretation. Our work spans long-form and short-form video, forums, messaging apps, and mainstream social media. Most engagements are comparative, spanning multiple countries or audiences to reveal patterns that single-market research cannot surface.
We do not apply off-the-shelf models. We develop original frameworks grounded in our research: Meet and Move, a counter-messaging framework built from analysing how opposition narratives actually persuade. The Beef to Debate Matrix, a diagnostic for distinguishing productive disagreement from toxic polarisation. The concept of climate obstruction, which reframed how the sector understands opposition to climate policy. Each emerged from the work itself, not from theory.
Our engagements take three main shapes
Flagship projects
Multi-phase engagements that combine research, investigation, and strategy. Typically include a published report, public events, and follow-on advisory or capacity building.
Commissioned studies
Focused, single-question investigations delivered in defined timeframes. Typically include a deep research output and a working session to interpret findings with your team.
Retained partnerships
Ongoing advisory and monitoring relationships with institutions, coalitions, and foundations managing live information environments. Regular briefings, on-call advisory, and rapid-response research.
What I tell people is that they did not hand us a PDF and move to the next client. They were still in the room when we were adapting it country by country, which is the hard part and usually where these things fall apart. I do not have many partners I would say that about.
Senior Adviser, Brussels-based philanthropy
If any of these questions sound familiar, we'd welcome the conversation.
Most engagements start with understanding what you're trying to achieve and where the narrative environment is working against you.