Develop your Narrative Strategy
Now that we have new frames, we can create a narrative strategy around these frames.
Remember that in module 6 (understanding the narrative space), we mapped the narrative communities and when articulating our narrative objectives, we decided which ones were our target audiences/narrative communities. We also analyzed the dynamics inside the narrative space.
The importance of the narrative strategy is to better define how to disseminate our new frames in the current conversation (more on this in Module 8). In other words, it’s a practical plan outlining what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.
Some guiding questions to help you define your narrative strategy are as follows:
- Where is the conversation going amongst your target audiences?
- What are the intersections between these communities?
- What direction do you want these narratives to take?
- And finally, what kind of intentions and actions do you seek to encourage through your new frames?
In the final module of this curriculum, your narrative strategy will be converted into an actual culture hack!
Get ready to hack!
Footnotes
- A narrative strategy puts your narrative objectives into action.
- The target audience for the messages we want to communicate are the narrative communities we identified in our narrative objectives. They are also the audience whose views matter enough to swing the pendulum on a particular social issue. It is important to understand that all audiences are narrative communities but not all narrative communities are audiences.
- Recall Module 3 and the idea of the “onto-shift” (an ontological shift: a fundamental shift in how we view and understand the word: we want to evolve narratives into the interbeing narrative environment in which human identity is based on entanglement, co-agency, and interdependence.