Frames not only shape societal debates but underpin the legitimacy of industries and institutions. Yet, even the most resonant frames can be turned on their head—weaponized against their initial intent. While framing research has studied competition between distinct frames, less is known about how a single frame’s meaning can be strategically inverted to serve opposing agendas. We conceptualize this process as “frame co-optation,” a potent but underexplored mechanism of discursive power that can alter institutional trajectories. The striking reversal of Germany’s nuclear energy phaseout provides a unique opportunity to examine frame co-optation. Using a multimethod machine-learning approach, we analyze three decades of the German nuclear energy debate to understand how the security frame, initially mobilized by antinuclear activists to justify a nuclear phaseout, was co-opted by pronuclear actors to advocate for its reversal. Our analysis shows how the pronuclear actors co-opted the security frame by perforating, camouflaging, infiltrating, and overwriting the frame’s meaning to invert its direction while preserving its resonance. We contribute to framing theory by introducing frame co-optation as a mechanism of strategic meaning inversion that can restore the legitimacy of controversial industries, and, more broadly, destabilize shared meaning and thereby amplify discursive polarization.
