Framing

Framing is setting up a particular party to be blamed for, or suspected of, another party's actions. It is most commonly done against one's enemies.

However, very often a power structure consists of people who have agreed to permit a degree of framing of each other, in order to create some strategic ambiguity. They put aside their minor discomforts with this in order to achieve a greater objective. Typically, the higher level person in hierarchy takes responsibility or at least "covers for" the lower level person, and so is strongly motivated to exercise at least minimum limitations on their actions. In such circumstances, outing, say of a trollherd, may be useful to get a large number of people looking closely at them, and not at more guilty folks. Such measures can easily frustrate soft security, which is one of many reasons to prefer troll-friendly policies.

See also: libel, outing