Presentation of Model:
Story-Based Strategy
Grassroots Organizing Meets Narrative Power
Progressive Communicators Network Gathering
Chicago, IL
May 29, 2009

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF
POWER
STORY-BASED
STRATEGY

Power Over
EXTERNAL INTERNAL
Physical/Economic Narrative/Ideological

Narrative Power Analysis
 Changing the Stories: not what people
don’t know, but what they do know =FILTERS
 Examining Dominant Stories/Origin Myths in US Culture
 Power shapes Point of View of the story
 Stories can Normalize Power/Universalize
Experience

Meme
“A unit of self replicating cultural information”
Contagious ideas, stories, images, and rituals that spread from
imagination to imagination, generation to generation, shaping and
shifting human cultures…
a capsule for a story to spread…

Elements of a Story-Based Strategy
 Frame the Conflict
Draws our attention to particular details of the
story and avoids others outside the frame
 Amplifies the Voices of Impacted Characters
Stories speak to us through relevant spokespeople
 Show Don’t Tell -- Use Images to Engage Values
A good story emphasizes imagery and values over data
 Foreshadowing --Shows the Future/Offer Vision
People will only go someplace that they have first
been to in their minds
 Targets and shifts underlying assumptions

Deepen Analysis/Connect
Mobilize story Amplify
Organize

The Points of Intervention
 How do we reframe and challenge dominant stories?

The Points of Intervention
 How do we reframe and challenge dominant stories?
 Points of intervention are places in the
system where we can intervene to change
the story. They are “vulnerabilities” or “fissures”
that we can exploit where the dominant stories
are already weak.

The Points of Intervention
 How do we reframe and challenge dominant stories?
 Points of intervention are places in the
system where we can intervene to change
the story. They are “vulnerabilities” or “fissures”
that we can exploit where the dominant stories
are already weak.
 Actions at a point of intervention can interrupt
the control narrative of power and change the
story.

production
destruction Points of Intervention
consumption
decision

production
destruction Points of intervention
consumption
decision
Point of Assumption

Story-Based Strategy
The “shadow” audience
Creating the fishbowl

Reframing Jobs vs. Environment

Winning the Battle of the Story

Design: Campaign Narrative
ELMER
HERE

Meme Campaign

Action Logic:
World Bank on
eBay

Action Logic: Capitol Climate Action

Encapsulating Story as Meme

Action @ point of assumption:
Bush “mandate” meme

Action at the Point of Assumption
War
vs.
Occupation
Making the Invisible Visible

Story-based Strategy
In order to achieve deep
institutional change, we must shift
meaning in the dominant culture

Story-based Strategy
In order to achieve deep
institutional change, we must shift
meaning in the dominant culture
Culture is made of stories & memes

Story-based Strategy
In order to achieve deep
institutional change, we must shift
meaning in the dominant culture
Culture is made of stories & memes
Stories are founded on assumptions

Story-based Strategy
In order to achieve deep
institutional change, we must shift
meaning in the dominant culture
Culture is made of stories & memes
Stories are founded on assumptions
Intervention in stories can shift
assumptions -- and contest dominant
culture -- to help achieve fundamental
change.

A call to innovation…
o Facing the Slow Motion
Apocalypse
o Harnessing psychic breaks
o Post-issue activism
o Towards Ecological Justice…

www.smartMeme.org