From fear, division, and scarcity to hope, unity, and abundance: Building narrative power over the long haul
by: Heather Gehlert and Lori Dorfman
posted on Wednesday, July 12, 2023
Imagine loading a news website or turning on cable news and seeing stories that reflect values like inclusivity, shared power, and liberation — not the occasional headline, but a plethora of them. Envision seeking out local broadcasts as a source of inspiration — a window into the hard work happening by neighbors and advocates in your own community.
After news about the Supreme Court’s recent decisions to dismantle affirmative action, reduce civil rights for LGBTQ+ individuals, and uphold financial obstacles that make it harder for people to attend college, that might seem like a fantasy. Stories of fear, division, and scarcity surround us, drain our energy, and can make social issues seem intractable. Despite this reality, uplifting, solutions-focused stories — ones that offer an alternative narrative of hope, unity, and abundance — do exist. Right now, they are the exception rather than the norm, but we can create more of these building blocks toward long-term narrative change, in support of health for all people, regardless of where they live, what they look like, or who they love.
So, how do we go about creating narratives that reflect and reinforce public health values?
When groups have narrative power, they wield more than just strong messages. They are able to tell their own stories, define what’s true, and shape values, beliefs, and policies across every sector and institution. These narratives appear in everything from classroom textbooks to church sermons to museums; they get replicated in legislation, company practices and procedures, and even judicial decisions; and they are amplified in the media, becoming the water that we swim in.
Although narrative power goes beyond news production, focusing on the media is nevertheless an effective way to put forward a vision for the kinds of communities we want to live in — ones where people feel valued and have the support they need to live healthy, fulfilled lives.
We know it’s possible to do this because public health advocates and practitioners have already transformed the narrative landscape surrounding one of the field’s biggest challenges: tobacco.
Understanding the history of tobacco control offers two key lessons: First, narratives aren’t fixed; they are mutable and can be changed, no matter how entrenched or toxic they are. Second, with a well-resourced infrastructure and clear goals, we can fight back and rewrite the narrative.
Today, in most locations throughout the United States, people can fly on planes, eat in restaurants, and sit in a hospital lobby without much concern of encountering tobacco smoke. These regulations that now seem like common sense were once highly contested, in part because of changes in our media environment.
During the early days of tobacco control, the industry and its neoliberal partners took control of the discourse and created personal responsibility arguments that demonized government actors and connected smoking to values like individual freedom and choice. Doing so effectively shielded Big Tobacco from criticism — and liability — for tobacco’s health consequences. After early public health efforts that focused on education, advocates and practitioners built an infrastructure to change the narrative. With help from journalists and filmmakers, we now have a narrative that elevates freedom from disease over freedom to smoke.
These changes in framing didn’t just appear; they went hand-in-hand with shifts in power: Once the field of public health was able to gain support for strategies like passing excise taxes to tamp down smoking rates, public health agencies used taxes and other revenue to fund power-building work, including community organizing and policy advocacy, and media campaigns, at the local and state levels. Communication was included from the start instead of being an afterthought.
By understanding changes in narrative power and infrastructure within the realm of tobacco control, we can apply similar strategies to enjoy lasting success with other issues. Today we regularly see messaging tactics, which are often ripped from Big Tobacco’s playbook, emerge in public debates about a range of social issues. These include college education (with strong appeals to individual responsibility for loan repayment); LGBTQ+ rights (with religious freedom being used as a shield to allow the erosion of civil rights); affirmative action (with messages that ignore the role of history in shaping current racial disparities); and so much else, from the COVID-19 pandemic to immigration to taxes on sugary drinks.
What, then, does narrative power-building look like beyond tobacco control?
On the advocacy side, we are privileged to partner with people doing the hard but essential on-the-ground organizing to make sure that those most affected by an issue are the ones with the most influential voices across a broad spectrum of issues, from health and racial equity to violence prevention and more.
On the media infrastructure side, groups like the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism are working to normalize a public health lens for reporting; the Maynard Institute is challenging bias within newsrooms with its initiative, Fault Lines; and the Solutions Journalism Network is training reporters to go beyond individual, problem-focused portraits to report more thoroughly on systems and make visible potential policy solutions.
Research from BMSG backs up the need for this approach. Each news analysis we conduct acts as a mirror to help us understand what current media narratives about an issue look like. Then, we glean insights from our findings to provide strategic communication recommendations to advocates; we also suggest new questions and newsgathering approaches reporters can consider to uncover internal biases, challenge what the public thinks they know about an issue.
Though it will take time and tenacity, together, we can build power and change the narrative to create a healthier, more socially just world where everyone can thrive.
What is your organization currently doing to help prune away the damaging narratives that create barriers to racial and health equity? As you move forward in your work, please share with us so we can consider highlighting your efforts in our blog!