Introduction
During the early years of Narrative Initiative, we interviewed more than 100 thought leaders working on narrative change. This report captures some of what we learned.
In early February 2017, we set out on a listening tour of over 100 experts, innovators, and visionaries from a range of disciplines and communities working at the intersection of social justice and narrative change.
This report presents an overview of common challenges, hard-earned lessons, and urgent needs for the field, as well as insights into best practices.
Foreward
The field of narrative change is both emerging and eternal. From mythology to marketing, the human impulse — no, necessity — to make sense of the world, to justify values and bolster beliefs, is innate and immutable. We build, inherit and rely on schematic shortcuts for our own cognitive comprehension and physical survival. We learn codes and internalize signals meant to protect us: which colors and sounds represent safety or danger, whose authority we trust or reject, whose lives and dreams matter.
Humans, as pattern-seeking social creatures, assemble collections of mutually-reinforcing stories, in turn establishing shared common sense and constructing stereotypes about people and places, communities and cultures, ideologies and institutions.
These core narratives, fundamental to our understanding the world and to our ability to navigate through it, nurture feelings of belonging and marginalization; that is, they subconsciously delineate who is in your group and who is not — who “we” are and what “they” do.
We obtain, maintain and challenge systems of power based upon tribal affiliation, nationalist affinity, class and partisan distinctions, and constructions of coalitions. These deeply-rooted paradigms are mental models of how the world works and one’s place in it. Often formed and fed by media, politics and pop culture, and ossified by personal experience, narratives often determine who deserves our solidarity or our scorn, our compassion or our contempt, our fear or fealty.
Narratives are messy. Nonlinear, emotional and contradictory, they often resonate with visceral meaning, feel authentic and ring true, regardless of their relationship to facts and evidence. They provide us with frames of reference that determine how we comprehend complex realities and define the important boundaries between what we imagine to be possible, probable or practical. They facilitate interpretation of the past, understanding of the present, and a vision for the future.
Narratives are powerful. They can swing juries and elections. They can fill prisons. But they can also fill the streets.
Summary
Narrative work, the shifting of consciousness and values, is not just a long game, it is the long game. It is not just about finding the right words to spread particular messages, but the ability to activate the underlying values and beliefs behind those messages. It’s about normalizing justice, inclusivity and equity.
The Narrative Initiative is a capacity-building and network space for leaders and organisations dedicated to creating a world where equity and justice are common sense. In early February 2017, the newly launched team embarked on a listening tour of over 100 people from a range of disciplines and communities who are working on issues of social justice and narrative change.
Interview participants – movement organisers, advocates, media producers and content creators, trainers, scholars and scientists, communications professionals, and other influential voices – identified challenges, lessons, best practices, and needs, including the recurring desire for sharper definitions of terms related to story and narrative.
This report shares some of the conversations; it is a living document that will be revisited, revised, and rethought as the Narrative Initiative develops.
Envisioned as something critical to effecting change in systems, policies, and practices, narrative change is an approach grounded in the realm of language, meaning-making, and symbols. In October 2016, the Ford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies announced the creation of the Narrative Initiative, as new conditions, trends, and realities were revealed, including:
- The evolving use of data and social media – The proliferation of digital communications tools, mediums, and platforms means that symbols can succeed over substance in the new public square.
“Combined with increasingly sophisticated harnessing of big data, psychometrics and profiling, and ‘fake news,’ the 2016 [United States (US) presidential] election saw techniques of meaning-making and technologies of influencing behavior in ways previously unseen.” - The vulnerability of democratic institutions – “Common threads are stitching together populist narratives – xenophobia and racism fueled by migration and demographic change, disaffection with economic liberalism and market fundamentalism, and disenchantment with establishment political parties.”
- The power of political campaigns and candidates to shape narratives, especially ones that nurture feelings of belonging and marginalisation. These narratives subconsciously delineate who is in your group and who is not – who “we” are. In that context, and “[g]iven the contemporary iterations of this project, what is the role and responsibility of civil society and social movements?”
As the report goes on to outline, social-justice-oriented narrative work involves categories across a large spectrum. Some of these (sometimes overlapping and integrated) categories include the following (with concrete examples provided in the paper):
- Cognitive and social science
“By applying the lessons of psychology, cognition and linguistics to social change communications, organizations can activate narratives that support their goals and help rewire common sense, public opinion and political beliefs.” - Strategic communications
Work is being undertaken that involves “engaging social change organizations in an effort to embed a media power analysis, messaging and communications strategies on the front-end of campaigns and goals, in concert with the deployment of other tactics like arts and culture engagement to achieve longer-term impact.” - Big data research and analysis
Services are available that “scrape big data, harness algorithms and offer quantitative approaches to inform campaigns at both their inception and evaluation.” - Storytelling and sharing
For instance, “Organizations like the National SEED Project and Narrative 4 use interpersonal engagement, testimony and story sharing workshops to reach individuals across political (and narrative) divides with the aim of building bridges and transforming attitudes and beliefs.” - Movement building
This work draws on the power of narrative to motivate and mobilise people toward a political call to action. - Creatives and cultural organisers
“Influencing mass audiences through music, film and TV, videogames, comedy, sports and faith is critical to shifting values and changing public discourse. Visual artists, documentarians and celebrities can play outsized roles in conveying particular messages that inject and legitimize values and diversity of thought into culture with broad appeal and distribution….Although there is no set formula for cultural engagement, effective models can operate upstream or downstream of cultural and creative content, and are largely based on personal and professional relationships.” - Narrative strategists
These individuals “work closely with groups to help design strategy at the organizational level, aspiring to fundamentally shift group orientation to long-term cultural change.”
Further observations related to the field of narrative change at large:
- There is a need for regular sharing of lessons from success and setbacks between peer communities of researchers; perhaps offering prizes for work in this field could create incentives for new networks to form and solidify.
- Although a generation of tools (software, platforms, and services) that leverage big data and quantitative analysis are newly available to social justice leaders and organisations, they are not necessarily accessible.
- A number of the stakeholders who were interviewed lamented that there is currently no trusted space (“strategy table”) where narrative leaders can align, integrate, and iterate.
- A critical mass of campaigners, consultants, and communicators working in the field of narrative change needs to be nurtured and supported.
Aspiring for culture shift and narrative change will require unprecedented levels of alignment, coordination and creativity….The slow, hard work of issue-specific policy change is akin to pushing a heavy rock up a steep hill, sometimes only to see it roll back down…We know the terrain is tilted against us, as we struggle with deeply ingrained ideas about gender, race, the role of government, religion and market fundamentalism, to name just a few….Instead of pushing rocks up a hill, what would it look like to reshape the terrain itself? What, after all, would it feel like to have gravity on our side?
This summary is from here.
About the Author
The Narrative Initiative is a training and networking resource for leaders and organizations dedicated to building fairer, more inclusive societies.
Images, symbols and stories reflect deep narratives about the world around us and who we are. They inform our values and identities, and define whom we love, trust and fear. Narratives can lead a nation to war and keep communities in poverty, but they can also dismantle discrimination and energize movements for justice.
The Narrative Initiative develops the skills needed to align voices and strategies, shape media and public conversation, and broaden perspectives and possibilities.
We connect narrative experts, advocacy campaigns and social change leaders across the globe. We intervene at the intersection of social science and cognitive linguistics, civic and pop culture engagement, strategic communications, technology and art. We build the capacity to use culture, language and stories to shift policy and politics, and move hearts and minds.
Access Report
Toward New Gravity: Charting a Course for the Narrative Initiative (PDF)
Explore Further
- Narrative Change: Start Here
- How Do Other Fields Think About Narrative? Lessons for Narrative Change Practitioners
- Be the Narrative: How Changing the Narrative Could Revolutionize What it Means to do Human Rights
- Changing Our Narrative About Narrative: The Infrastructure Required for Building Narrative Power
- Conditions to Flourish: Understanding the Ecosystem for Narrative Power