What the evidence shows

This report steps outside the usual reference points for climate and social-change narrative work — communications research, framing science, psychology of persuasion — and instead asks what marketing, entertainment/narrative arts, psychoanalysis, and technology/disinformation experts know about storytelling that could be useful to narrative-change practitioners. Interviewees include figures like David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, Susan Choi, Seth Godin, Beth Comstock, Renee DiResta, and Mike Rothschild.

From these conversations plus a supporting literature scan, the authors distill eight cross-disciplinary lessons about how narrative works: empathy, momentum, complexity, shared experience, participation, attention, aspiration, and psychological distance. Each lesson pairs a plain-language explanation with a "what this means for narrative change work" translation and concrete practice steps, making the report a practitioner-facing synthesis rather than a primary empirical study.

Key Findings

• Relatable, authentic (not necessarily similar) characters generate empathy and can broaden audiences' perspective across social difference — a lesson drawn from entertainment, comedy, and advertising's use of "narrative transportation."

• Narrative momentum (wanting to know "what happens next") combined with clear, actionable next steps counters fatalism and motivates audience participation — illustrated via Greta Thunberg's School Strike for Climate.

• Letting an issue's genuine complexity show before asking audiences to judge it is more persuasive than flattening the issue, especially for resistant audiences — though the report flags real tension with Seth Godin's marketing insight that the most persuasive stories tell people they were "right all along," which risks reinforcing rather than shifting worldviews.

Stand-out data points

• Qualitative: Nonprofit/activist communicators typically assume audiences already care, whereas private-sector marketers assume no one does — a mismatched starting assumption Heidi Hackemer identifies as a recurring problem in nonprofit messaging.

• Qualitative: The #MeToo Movement is cited as a real-world case where repeated, similar personal stories from many individuals shifted collective understanding of sexual harassment and assault.

• Qualitative: Renee DiResta's account of vaccine-skeptical content moving between unrelated Facebook groups (e.g., a political "Bernie Sanders Supporters" group to a "New Canaan Community Chat" group) is used as an illustration of peer-to-peer, bottom-up narrative spread on social media.

Examples of how Understories uses this research

• Actionability Several styles (Followers, Controllers) respond specifically to concrete, structured next steps and precedent rather than abstract calls to action.

• Credibility describes credibility as something that can be "transferred" for Skeptic-style audiences, and as needing to come from an "expert" source for Controllers — useful nuance for advocacy contexts targeting specific institutional gatekeepers.

• Emotional resonance Relevant for high-stakes, single-decision-maker contexts rather than general public messaging — the framework describes how emotional appeal should be calibrated (or avoided) by style.

• Explainability The five-style framework and associated tactics are specific and applicable, but the classification of any real person into a style is subjective and observational (per the authors' own caveat), so recommendations built on it should be flagged as a heuristic rather than a rigorously validated assessment.

— non-exhaustive.

Key quote

Warren Leight: "You don't want people to feel attacked... asking people what they think instead of telling them what to think is the better approach. Essentially walking with people instead of standing above people can be effective."

 © FrameWorks Institute 2021 — All rights reserved.

Last update: 3 September 2026

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