Storytelling as a Tool for Advocacy: Making Stories Persuasive

By Rebecca Kahn, Spark Policy Institute

The right story has great potential to change strongly held beliefs and make information easier to remember. Part of the allure of stories is the impact they have on audiences—by tapping emotions, influencing beliefs, modeling new behaviors and even shaping cultural identities.

In other words, we know that stories persuade, and that a storytelling strategy can be a valuable component of an advocacy effort. However, for storytelling to be a successful strategy, advocates need to understand the elements of what makes a story compelling—what exactly is it that makes a story persuasive?

Project Health Colorado (PHC) was a three-year effort designed to engage individuals and organizations in a statewide conversation about health care and how it can be improved. As a part of this effort, PHC partners collected stories and used them to engage audiences around health care access. An evaluation of the impact of these stories found that certain stories did have an effect on people’s perceptions. The evaluation identified specific components that add up to a persuasive story; specifically, stories are effective when they:

• “Transport” the audience into the world of the story
• Contain characters to whom the audience can relate
• Engage the negative emotions of the audience, or empower the audience in the belief that they can make a difference if they take action.

A new brief from The Colorado Trust, prepared by Spark Policy Institute, looks at these elements and how they combine to create a story powerful enough to move people to action. The brief also looks at the storytellers themselves and how sharing a story can help empower a storyteller as well as his or her audience.

The brief is the third in a series that explore lessons learned from PHC. Each brief is designed to provide practical information that advocates, volunteers, nonprofits and others can use to further their health care and advocacy efforts. The first brief looked at strategies to successfully engage people in conversations about health care reform. The second brief examined the role faith leaders can play in social movements. The final brief will share tips on leveraging social media to cause social change.

Each brief will be accompanied by a webinar hosted by Spark Policy Institute, and the webinar on talking about health care reform is available now. For more information and invitations to the remaining webinars, please contact Rebecca Kahn.