Public relations, communication strategy, law, policy studies, education, journalism and creativity are the foundation of No, Pero Why?
Every case brings them together. The story changes; so do the concepts we need to understand it. A paycheck calls for different questions than a public statement or a school rule.
Read the original, compare accounts and identify what a document can establish. Journalism and legal reasoning keep the investigation grounded.
Consider whose concerns are missing, how the problem is framed and which responses are possible. PR, communication strategy and policy analysis help make those choices visible.
Draft something another person could use. Try a different approach, check its meaning and explain what you revised. Creativity and learning are part of the investigation.
The case-specific assignment connects all seven fields. Research notes identify selected ideas that are especially useful in that situation. You can go deeper without choosing a different world or a fixed academic track.
| Source | What it does here |
|---|---|
| Research and foundational writing | Give us concepts to question an account or structure an investigation. They don’t establish the facts of a fictional case. |
| Professional standards and frameworks | Guide practices such as verification, ethical communication and design. A code of ethics is not a law. |
| Case-specific primary sources | Support a factual or legal explanation within the source’s scope, place and date. Find these in each case’s source file. |
| Our teaching adaptations | Turn those ideas into scenes, tasks and authored feedback. The researchers and organizations below have not endorsed this project. |
Ask who has something at stake, what they need to know and how an institution should listen and respond.
Jeong-Nam Kim and James E. Grunig, 2011. Research article.
How people recognize a problem, connect it to their lives and perceive barriers helps explain their communication about it.
Keep in mind: A prompt for asking about people’s circumstances, not a way to infer someone’s beliefs from their identity.
Read the original sourceExamine how a message frames a situation. Build a response for a real purpose, audience and setting, then check whether it helps.
Robert M. Entman, 1993. Research article.
What a message selects and emphasizes can shape how a problem, its causes and possible responses are understood.
Keep in mind: Identifying a frame does not establish a speaker’s intent or prove how every audience member will respond.
Read the original sourceAMEC. Professional evaluation framework.
Distinguish communication activity and outputs from audience responses, outcomes and longer-term impact.
Keep in mind: Reach and likes do not by themselves establish understanding, behavior change or causation.
Read the original sourceQuestion how a problem has been defined. Compare responses, assumptions, trade-offs and effects on different people.
Carol Bacchi. Author’s explanation of a policy-analysis approach.
Examine the view of the problem built into a proposed solution, including its assumptions and omissions. Question your own proposal, too.
Keep in mind: Our entry questions adapt part of WPR. They are not the complete approach or a substitute for evidence about an option’s effects.
Read the original sourceMake your reasoning visible. Encounter information that challenges it, explain what changed and try again.
John Dewey, 1910. Foundational text: How We Think, chapter 1.
Reconsider a belief by examining the reasons supporting it and the conclusions that follow from it.
Keep in mind: This is a foundation for our revision tasks, not evidence that this particular app improves learning outcomes.
Read the original sourceCAST, 2024. Research-informed design guidance.
Provide options for engaging with material, understanding it and expressing learning while keeping the learning goal clear.
Keep in mind: Options should address actual barriers. Offering a choice of formats alone does not make an experience accessible.
Read the original sourceTrace a claim to its source, compare accounts, preserve context and tell people what remains uncertain.
Society of Professional Journalists, 2014. Professional ethics code.
Check information, preserve relevant context, consider harm and correct errors openly.
Keep in mind: Professional ethical guidance is not a statute or a guarantee that a claim is true.
Read the original sourceExplore more than one way to respond. Make an explanation, question, design or story, test it and revise it.
Design Council. Professional design framework.
Understand the situation, define the challenge, explore alternatives, then test and improve a response.
Keep in mind: We adapt the process for small creative assignments. A polished artifact does not make an unsupported claim accurate.
Read the original sourceYou can ask that about our work, too. A named theory does not make an activity effective by itself. The questions and feedback are authored applications; the project has not yet had independent subject-expert review or a learning-outcomes study.
Sources checked September 23, 2026. The SPJ code linked here is the 2014 adopted code. Proposed revisions are not treated as adopted guidance.
See the ideas at work in the casesPlan a sessionRead our source standards