Presentation for smartMeme Advanced Training pre-webinar

1. Story-based Strategy
Harnessing the Power of Narrative for Change
Advanced Practitioner’s Pre-Training Webinar
May 2011

3. We are made of stories
Truth vs. Meaning
The currency of narrative is not truth, it is meaning

4. Narrative
narrative (from the Proto-Indo-European root gn -, to
know): a story or account of events, sequenced over
time and space; a fundamental cognitive structuring
process for the human mind to make meaning and
relate with the world.

5. NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF
POWER
STORY-BASED
STRATEGY

6. Consent Theory of
Power
Narrative Power Analysis

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

10. Frame:
“schemata of interpretation”
(Goffman, 1974)
Frame-alignment: a process to explain
social movement theory
(Snow & Benford, 1988)
Core framing-tasks:
1. Diagnostic framing for the identification
of a problem and assignment of blame
2. Prognostic framing to suggest solutions,
strategies, and tactics to a problem
3. Motivational framing that serves as a call
to arms or rationale for action

11. Frame:
The larger story that shapes understanding of
information, experiences, and messages; the structure
and boundaries of a narrative that defines point-of-view
and power. Frames operate as pre-existing narrative
lenses in our minds.

12. “Loots” “Finds”

13. 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…

14. Elements of Story
 Conflict
 Characters
 Imagery/Show Don’t Tell
 Foreshadowing
 Underlying Assumptions

17. Audience
Who are you trying to talk to?
What do they value?
What do you want them to do?
How do they get their information?

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

22. Reframing Jobs vs. Environment

23. Characters
Which characters are in
the frame? Which aren’t?

25. Foreshadowing
Framing with Vision

27. Design: Framing Narrative
ELMER
HERE

28. Meme Campaign

30. Challenging Assumptions

31. Points of Intervention

32. Points of Intervention

33. Point of Assumption
War
or
Occupation?
Making the Invisible Visible

34. Interventions: Re-Framing
Disrupting your Opponent’s Frame

35. Re-Purposing Existing Narratives
Using Pop Culture

36. Encapsulate Frame as Meme

37. Reframe/Build Alliances
Mobilize story Amplify
Organize

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

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

40. 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

41. 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.

42. A call to innovation…
o Facing the Slow-Motion
Apocalypse
o Harnessing psychic breaks
o Towards Ecological Justice…

43. www.smartMeme.org