A public interest communications framework for mapping systems and finding leverage
Most campaigns fail not because people don’t care, but because they push in the wrong place. They pick the sphere of influence that feels most familiar — usually media or policy — and ignore the others. The Six Spheres of Influence framework, developed by the Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida, gives changemakers a structured way to map the full landscape of any social issue and identify where they’re most likely to make a difference.
The framework holds that lasting change rarely comes from a single lever. Successful public interest communications campaigns work across a combination of six spheres — policy, media, communities of influence, the market and industry, activism, and social norms — and the strategic question isn’t which one matters most in the abstract. It’s which ones are most accessible, most fertile, and most likely to create momentum in the others given your specific issue, your specific resources, and your specific moment.
In the real world, the edges between spheres are fuzzy and overlap regularly. Some actions won’t fall cleanly into a single sphere. That’s fine — the framework isn’t a taxonomy, it’s a thinking tool.
The science behind it
The Six Spheres of Influence draws on systems thinking as its organizing principle. As Donella Meadows writes in Thinking in Systems, systems thinking is “a way of thinking that gives us the freedom to identify root causes of problems and see new opportunities” (Meadows, 2015). Magnus Ramage and Karen Shipp describe systems thinkers as people who “make sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than splitting it down into its parts and looking at each in isolation” (Ramage & Shipp, 2009).
A phrase often used to introduce systems thinking: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does.” The quote is widely attributed to W. Edwards Deming, though that attribution is contested. The insight holds regardless of its origin — and it’s the core provocation behind the Six Spheres framework. If a system is producing an outcome you want to change, you need to understand how that system works before you can figure out where to intervene.
Each sphere also draws on its own body of research. The media sphere connects to agenda-setting research, which shows that media shapes what audiences consider important — not just what they think, but what they think about. The social norms sphere is grounded in decades of research showing that people’s behavior is powerfully shaped by their perceptions of what others like them do. Both fields have robust empirical literatures, and the framework translates their core insights into practical strategic questions.
The Six Spheres of Influence
Policy: The formal laws, regulations or official governing systems of a government, corporation, or organization. This sphere is often activated, but as we know, it’s hard to govern hearts and minds. While policy is an enticing and common focus for social change efforts, a policy change that isn’t implemented, enforced or supported by cultural norms is unlikely to be effective. Many states have laws banning texting and driving, but it’s common to see people holding their phones while they’re driving.
Media: The media sphere includes news, but also digital social platforms, marketing, advertising, entertainment, sports, games, music, and the arts. The media we consume shapes how we see the world, signals what issues matter, reinforces our identity, and affirms our sense of right and wrong. Understanding the media sphere means understanding not just how to get coverage, but what narratives and frames are already active — and how to connect to them.
Communities of influence: Communities of influence are the people or organizations that shape others’ perceptions of issues. They include associations, trade groups, scholars, think tanks, faith groups, social influencers and aspirational figures specific to the issue. A vast and complex community of influence exists around every social issue. However, organizations and leaders rarely align around a shared position on a social issue. For example, the National Rifle Association and Moms Demand Action are both active on gun issues, but visit their websites, and you’ll find they’re advocating for very different approaches.
The Market and Industry: Companies, industries, financial sectors, and markets can significantly affect a social issue. Companies regularly take positions on issues or give to causes, and they shape perceptions of what matters through their business decisions. When CVS stopped selling tobacco products in 2014, it didn’t just change its inventory — it made a visible statement about the incongruity of a health company profiting from cancer-causing products. That signal rippled well beyond the store.
Activism: Activism describes collective, organized, sustained efforts by a group working to create pressure for change in one of the other spheres. It often focuses on systems of power — governments, corporations, institutions — to pressure them to serve the greater good. Activism is the sphere that creates urgency and demonstrates that a constituency exists.
Social Norms: Our behaviors and choices are heavily influenced by our perceptions of what people we see as being like us do. This phenomenon aligns with our human desire to fit in and avoid alienation. Social norming campaigns are most effective when reinforcing existing positive behaviors — like saving water or vaccination rates — rather than trying to correct negative ones. The framing matters: messages that inadvertently normalize a problem behavior can backfire, increasing the very behavior they aim to reduce.
These spheres give public interest communicators a way of thinking about the different levers they can pull to drive change and how they interact and intersect.
How the spheres interact: the Montgomery Bus Boycott
The power of the framework isn’t in the spheres individually — it’s in how they connect. Action in one sphere creates pressure and possibility in others. No successful campaign has ever worked in just one.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott illustrates this clearly. The organizers, including Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council, worked from their position in the communities of influence sphere — organizing, connecting people, creating and distributing a national newsletter that kept faith groups, movement leaders, and funders engaged. That organizing drove action in the activism sphere: a sustained boycott that created direct financial pressure on National City Lines, the private company that operated Montgomery’s buses, which drew the campaign into the market sphere. The boycott was highly visual, which made it enticing to media around the world. And the organizers activated social norms within the Black community — not just around boycotting the buses, but around attending weekly meetings and making regular financial contributions.
All of it was in service of a policy change, which came when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Alabama’s bus segregation laws unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
The organizers worked in the spheres where they had or could build power — then used that power to create pressure in the spaces where they didn’t. That’s the strategic logic the Six Spheres framework is designed to help you replicate.
Which spheres should changemakers focus on?
Mapping the spheres helps you understand the larger context of the issue you’re working on and see how systems are shaping the outcomes you’re trying to change. Here are questions to guide that analysis:
- Which sphere are you working in? If you work for a nonprofit or foundation, you’re in communities of influence. A journalist or documentary producer works in the media sphere. A government employee or elected official works in policy. A corporation puts you in the market sphere. Knowing where you already have standing shapes how you can work toward change in other spheres.
- What is happening in each sphere that might create favorable or unfavorable conditions for your campaign or issue? It’s always easier to join a conversation than to start one. Look for events or conditions you can join to engage your actors in your issue.
- Are paths to change closed off within a specific sphere? Existing laws, missing resources, or skill gaps may rule out certain approaches.
- Where do you have relationships, influence, or resources? People who work on a cause that’s deeply important to them can lean into goals that may be far beyond what their resources can achieve. For changemakers and movement builders, it is critically important that they align their resources and goals. This can be done by taking a hard look at what they’ve got to work with.
- What is the role of opposition within a particular sphere? Opposition isn’t always a bad thing. It can create the foil that sharpens your strategy and opens legal or political opportunities you didn’t anticipate.
Identifying your resources
People who work on causes they care deeply about can lean into goals that are far beyond what their resources can achieve. Aligning goals with resources starts with an honest inventory. Resource mobilization theory identifies five types of resources that matter for social movements: material (money and supplies), human (people to do the work), social-organizational (a supporter network), cultural (understanding the political landscape or creating messages that resonate), and moral (legitimacy, including endorsements from trusted figures) (McCarthy & Zald, 1977).
Ask yourself: What’s your budget, and how flexible is it? Who’s on your team, and what are their skills? What relationships and credibility does your organization have? What other organizations are working on adjacent issues you could collaborate with?
The worksheet below will help you map your resources across the six spheres. You may discover strengths you didn’t know you had.
The Six Spheres of Influence is one of several frameworks developed by the Center
for Public Interest Communications. Learn more about the field →
You probably know what you want to change. The harder question is where to push.
Every social issue exists inside a system. Policies shape it. Media frames it. Markets profit from it. Communities of influence interpret it. Activists agitate around it. Social norms sustain it. Change any one of those and you might move the others — or you might not. It depends on your issue, your resources, and your moment.
The Six Spheres of Influence worksheet is a practitioner tool designed to help you answer that question before you build your strategy. It walks you through each sphere with specific questions about what’s happening right now, what assets you bring, and what contextual factors are working for or against you.
It’s not a quick exercise. Done well, it takes an hour — and it will likely surface assumptions you didn’t know you were making, resources you hadn’t counted, and paths you hadn’t considered.
The worksheet closes with a theory of change framework: a structured way to articulate exactly why you believe action in a particular sphere will produce the outcome you’re after. That’s where analysis becomes strategy.
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Learn more
McCarthy, J.D. & Zald, M.N. (1977). Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. American Journal of Sociology, 82(6), 1212–1241.
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015)
Christiano, Ann. (2017). Foreword: Building the Field of Public Interest Communications. Journal of Public Interest Communications, 1(1). doi:10.32473/jpic.v1.i1.p4
Ramage, M. & Shipp, K. (2009). Systems Thinkers. Springer London.
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