Introduction
Learn about the the fundamentals of narrative-change advocacy and the merits of taking on a narrative change approach.
This chapter, Narrative Change as an Advocacy Approach, is from the #KommMit Narrative Change toolbox. The toolbox is a step-by-step guide based on a 2023 German pilot project.
The toolbox adopted a value-based, narrative change approach to advocate for diversity and social cohesion. It focused on:
- finding effective ways to engage sceptical middle audiences on migration and integration,
- starting constructive conversations framed around social cohesion, and
- tipping the balance of public attitudes to get diversity and inclusion back on the mainstream policy agenda.
This toolbox supports Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) with different levels of narrative change experience and expertise, ranging from: those who have significant narrative change practice and wish to apply the approach themselves or support others in doing such work; to those who are inexperienced but wish to learn from or apply the approach independently.
1. What is Narrative Change Advocacy?
A narrative-change advocacy approach is built on the premise that in emotionally-charged and often polarised discussions such as the debate on migration, the values, concerns and emotional investment of stakeholders become an important gateway to engagement and constructive dialogue.
Members of the public in such debates tend to get quite attached to one of the influential stories or frames in the public debate which act like a GPS in how they react, telling them what the problem is, what the solutions are, and who are the good and bad guys.
The aim in this approach is to reframe the debate away from the well-worn pro- and anti-positions and frames fought out in the public and political space, and reduce anxiety enough to get often sceptical public audiences into a constructive discussion on the issue.
In this way, public audiences become more open to changing their attitudes and previously held positions on an issue. And there is tried and tested evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach.
More specifically, a narrative change approach focuses on the emotional, engaging pathos, telling personal stories of experience, striving to create warm feelings that engage the audience through establishing common ground with them.
Once you have the audience’s attention and interest, the focus is then on challenging the assumptions they make. All of this serves as the basis to open a constructive conversation between people whose opinions differ.
Following Marshall Ganz, narrative change starts by appealing to the heart and then opens a discussion about the issues and facts (an appeal to the head) with the aim to move people more to your side, or at least, to reduce anxiety in the discussion enough to inoculate them against more right wing populist positions.
| What Narrative Change is ✅ | What Narrative Change is not ❌ |
| Leading with values and authentic stories | Leading with the issues, facts, and rights |
| An opening to a constructive conversation based on shared values and/or shared experiences | Magic words that can instantly change attitudes |
| A compliment to more facts and rights-driven advocacy | A replacement for facts and rights-driven advocacy |
| A pragmatic solution to win back the middle ground in a polarising debate | Giving up on your principles or denying a power/rights-based analysis |
| An emotionally smart way to have difficult conversations with sceptics | A way to avoid confronting people about their discriminatory views |
| Finding overlapping values as an authentic starting point to open a conversation | Trying to please the audience to convince them |
| Expansion of your advocacy toolbox that compliments the messaging to your supporter base | A way to lose your existing supporter base |
Table 1: Defining key dimensions of narrative change (ICPA 2024)
2. Why Adopt a Narrative Change Approach?
During the last decade, there has been growing frustration and anger among progressive CSOs at the dominance and mainstreaming of anti-immigrant narratives in Europe, which had previously been the preserve of the far-right.
Many are also feeling a sense of helplessness as they experience that their usual advocacy approaches (e.g. evidence-driven advocacy) have now become less effective in building back public support in the polarised narrative landscape on migration and integration.
6 Factors
In putting forward a pragmatic, ethical, value-based narrative approach, we ask CSOs to consider the following six factors which convinced us about the merits of this approach:
1. It’s about Values and Emotions
Changing attitudes is not just about facts, it’s also clearly about values and emotions.
All the research conducted in this area comes to the same conclusion: humans first line of processing political debates is emotional, or more specifically, we tend to be open to proposals that are framed in values that are important to us.
The opposite is also true: we close down, ignore or even react angrily to proposals that make no connection to or run counter to our values (even when such proposals are backed up by solid evidence!).
So, effective communication with the goal of changing attitudes is never just about facts on the issue; rather, finding value appeals that mobilise and open the door to a constructive debate with various audiences is key.
A value-led narrative change approach doesn’t ignore the facts and analysis; instead it’s about sequencing the message in an emotionally-smart way, so that sceptical public audiences will come to the table and be open to having a debate on often polarising issues.
In summary, it would be unproductive to ignore the realities of how human brains process information: narrative change and strategic communications seek to more consciously and deliberately recognise what the brain does by default anyway.
2. The Public are Movable
60%-70% of the public are movable in this debate, and currently represent a hugely untapped potential.
Many advocates working on different societal issues tend to consider the public in debates as broadly divided into supporters and opponents. However, in-depth (and repeated) segmentation and polling research on attitudes to societal issues (including migration) in Europe over the last decade clearly show that around 60% to 70% of the public are in the so-called ‘movable middle’, including in Germany.
As a group, the movable middle are not so involved or engaged in issues and often hold conflicting views. However, as the #KommMit pilot narrative change project detailed in this toolbox and much previous campaigning experience shows, it is possible to change their minds, i.e. they are movable or winnable.
If the goal is to shift the balance of the broader public debate and win back the centre ground, then the untapped potential of this middle group is key.
3. Engaging the Middle doesn’t mean Losing your Supporter Group
Engaging the middle doesn’t mean you stop mobilising your supporter base: this a case of “both/and, not either/or”.
In tactical terms, advocates in the broader social movement need to focus on BOTH building the base of supporters AND engaging the middle in order to achieve the movement’s social change goal.
The following diagram provides a snapshot of the comprehensive and complementary strategic communications tactics for supporters, middle and opponents:
Targeting the movable middle as one tactic in a comprehensive strategic communications strategy
While this middle work is challenging and is not for everybody, it is an essential part of a progressive movement’s overall narrative and policy advocacy strategy.
An insight from the RESET project: from the broad spectrum of CSOs we supported from the CLAIM Allianz, the ones on the ground who already engage in communities with middle groups at various levels as a target group were more immediately interested in taking on this middle work. This middle-oriented focus resonated with them, as this is already their everyday challenge.
4. Political Agreement is Made from Overlapping Consensus
Having developed and tested multiple campaigns targeting the broad public over the last decade on the migration issue in Germany and Europe and knowing that 60% are really not that engaged or involved in the issue (i.e. the movable middle), the idea that agreement on the issue will be reached by finding ‘overlapping consensus’ is a pragmatic political reality.
This means that agreement will be built from a variety of public groups, each of which will have different reasons for their decision to support the agenda. See the work of the political philosopher, John Rawls for more on this.
For example, in Germany, the public can hold positive attitudes about migration and integration for a wide variety of reasons, e.g. they support a diverse society, think the economy needs migration, have a humanitarian perspective, and/or want Germany to be a country that provides asylum for people in need.
Recent progressive victories in Europe have been won by working from this more pragmatic overlapping consensus understanding. For example, a huge turning point for marriage equality campaigners in Ireland before 2015 was a challenge posed by an experienced campaigner, who asked: ‘Do you want to win an argument or a referendum?’ Of course, the answer was a referendum and in 2015 they did so by engaging and mobilising the public around the variety of issues, narratives and emotional appeals needed to get over the line.
5. Understanding does not Equal Agreement
Some advocates have concerns about campaigning to the middle because members of the middle may hold racist, sexist, and/or anti-democratic views and advocates feel uncomfortable with the idea of empathising and finding a shared value space with them.
The first point to clarify is that digging into the research and trying to understand their positions is not a bridge to accepting their positions. Rather, this is a strategic need towards finding a starting point from which you can have a constructive conversation and then, challenge them.
Secondly, in a narrative change approach, the idea is not to start a conversation to please the middle, but to find shared values that are also authentic to you and your organisation, network or community. When working on the #KommMit pilot, for example, the starting point for engaging the middle focused on unifying values around social cohesion, e.g. community, interdependence, participation, intergenerational future.
Equally important, the coalition running the pilot was not happy to build a campaign based on the economic ‘utility’ (Nutzbarkeit) argument for migration and, hence, were not open to using that value appeal. So, the overall idea is to find entry points that can serve as a unifying starting point, which then provide the chance to have the difficult conversation.
6. Commitment to Having Difficult Conversations
The key to an ethical narrative change approach is transparency and commitment to having the difficult conversations. Some people challenge the approach saying it is too soft and smacks of political manipulation.
However, we know from extensive practical experience that there is an ethical way to adopt this communications approach:
Firstly, it is important to be transparent with your network or community from the start that you are taking a value-based approach because you think this is what is needed; and
Secondly, secure commitment to having the issue and facts-based conversation once you open the space with value appeals.
So, taking this softer approach does not mean you will avoid the difficult conversations (around the issues, problems, facts, and analysis that advocates really want to talk about); rather, it means you will be able to have conversations in a more constructive manner after building a space for civil engagement. Only then, is there a real chance of the audience changing their minds.
Checklist
Here is a checklist to get started – Could narrative change be a good fit for you?
Consider the following questions to reflect on whether narrative change could be a good addition to your advocacy toolbox:
- What are your usual advocacy approaches and tactics?
- What successes have you achieved? What challenges do you face?
- What are your current big picture advocacy priorities and ambitions? Could a narrative change approach support this work?
- What is your experience communicating with more sceptical target audiences? How effective have your tactics been so far?
- Could a methodology that starts with a softer, values focus and leads to constructive dialogue fit the DNA of your organisation?
Access Full Resource
Explore Further
- The Role of Narrative Change in Influencing Policy
- Narrative Change, Popular Culture and Cultural Strategy
- The Features of Narratives: A Model of Narrative Form for Social Change Efforts
- How Do Other Fields Think About Narrative? Lessons for Narrative Change Practitioners
- Conditions to Flourish: Understanding the Ecosystem for Narrative Power
- Building Narrative Power for Racial Justice and Health Equity
- Moving Mindsets:A Playbook for Building Momentum
- Reframing Migration Narratives Toolkit
- Framing Issues for Social Justice Impact: Directory of Messaging Guides
- Narrative and Storytelling: Training and Planning Tools
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