By the time a political narrative is widely recognised as a communications crisis, its most important features may already be visible: a portable grievance, an emotionally effective format and a distribution network capable of amplifying it. This evidence-led session reconstructs a real case from an initially marginal signal detected during its first 72 hours, through activist amplification and official response, to its later adoption by a pre-existing political network. Using timestamped posts, early-warning data, direct content-sharing traces and coordination evidence, it distinguishes what communicators could genuinely have known at each stage from what became obvious only in hindsight. The session concludes with a practical framework for deciding when to monitor, when to intervene and how to respond without inadvertently strengthening the narrative.