¿Tienes algo por decirnos? Escríbenos a info@inspiratorio.org.
We are about to start our learning journey. We invite you to put on your headphones, fasten your concentration belt and let yourself be inspired by our introductory video:
This content is based on the ideas of narrative leaders such as Reframe, Hope-based Comms, the Global Narrative Hive, the Narrative Avengers, Race Forward, N-Map and other organizations worldwide. We merge their contributions with our Latin American perspective to offer movements for social justice a renewed vision of human rights communication.
Now, let’s learn!
Narrative Exploration
When we communicate, most of the time we know what we want to say and what changes we want to seehange in the world with our messages.
However, sometimes we are not sure that our communication will fulfill its purpose.
This is where narrative exploration comes in.
Through exploration, we can identify which channels, formats, tones, messages or stories are effective in achieving our communication objectives, allowing us to identify opportunities for improvement that bring us closer to our goals.
Click on each of the cards and discover the 4 pillars of this exploration:
.png)
We have the narrative power to imagine and create the stories that represent us and share them with the world. Let's take advantage of this opportunity to bring them to life!
By exploring different messages, formats, channels and messagess, we can find the most appropriate way to impact the audiences we want to reach with our message.
Making mistakes helps us evolve and take our communication to the next level. Let's embrace mistakes and allow ourselves to live in a constant testing mode that opens up the possibility of discarding what doesn't work and exploring new paths.
Imagination is the limit to narrative exploration. Let's have fun and enjoy creating, trying new ways of communicating and learning collectively.
NOTE: There is no definitive formula for finding, creating and spreading our messages and stories. There are as many ways to do it as there are people, channels, formats, languages, media and social causes; the best way to do it is the one that allows you to meet your goals.
By exploring, each person will find their best way!
Now that we know the pillars of narrative exploration, let's get to know the map that will guide us during the exploration.
Click on each icon on the map and discover the 5 stops on this journey.
To guide us through the exploration, we need to be clear about what we want to explore and what we are looking to test with this exercise.
This way, we will be clear about our goal and can come up with a strategic plan to achieve it.
Let's imagine that we work in an environmental organization focused on digital pedagogy to raise awareness about the importance of preserving the environment.
In this case, we are not sure how to use communication to achieve this effectively and strategically. To figure it out, we will use narrative exploration.
So, our goal can be defined as follows: figure out the best way to raise awareness about the importance of preserving the environment. This can include questions like: what is the best format, channel, message, audience or messenger to do so?
Once our goal is defined, we need to choose the right audience our exploration will be conducted on.
Usually, our communication objectives seek to impact people and cause a change in the world. However, if we want to figure out the best way to achieve our goals, we need to choose the right audience to help us do so effectively.
How to find it? 🤔
To do so, we must ask ourselves:
Are we interested in a specific audience to carry out our exploration? For example: indigenous peoples, elderly, college students, etc.
If our organization’s goal is to educate people to raise awareness about environmental preservation, we can choose from multiple audiences (young people, the elderly, health professionals, among others) to carry out the exploration that will help us achieve our goal.
Among the various audiences that exist, there are some that are more strategic than others in terms of our goals and capacities. For example: young people may be less biased and be more receptive to new information on environmental issues. Also, by consuming more internet than older people, they may be more likely to consume our digital content.
But… There are young people all over the world. Which country should we focus on?
Again, there are audiences in each country that are more strategic than others. For example, if there is a culture that allows new ideas on environmental issues in Brazil, the young audience of this country will be more strategic than that of a country that censors all content that talks about the subject.
NOTE: your audience can always be more specific. The more specific it is in geographic or demographic terms, the more specific the results of your exploration will be. It all depends on what you are looking to find out with it.
Now let's practice what we learned:
If your answer was students on sports campuses, you're right. Their interest in sports and high consumption of digital applications make this audience ideal for maximizing the number of active users of the application.
We have already learned how to choose the right audience. Now, it's time to create our plan to carry out our exploration.
Once we have defined our goal and the audience for our exploration, we will have to choose a path to carry it out.
To figure out what is the best way to raise awareness among young people about the importance of preserving the environment, we could choose from the following plans:
Click on each photo to discover the step-by-step instructions.
Procedure: Create 2 posts for social media (a meme and an infographic), using the same information and approach. Once posted on social media, make sure they reach the younger audience. After a certain period of time, compare the results and determine which one performs better.
Procedure: Invite a group of young people to spend a couple of hours discussing different social media pieces in various formats. Their answers, comments and discussions will help us understand their potential and their type of conversations in order to decipher which one is the best to achieve our goals.
Procedure: Survey a group of young people to find out what they think is the best format for social media pieces to raise awareness among their peers about the importance of caring for the environment. The answers will help us figure out the best way to do it.
NOTE: In this example, the exploration plan seeks to figure out the best format to raise awareness among young people about the importance of environmental protection. However, we can also explore the most appropriate stories, values, tone, channels, media, messengers, among others, to do so. The important thing is that we explore only one of these parameters at a time.
As you can see, there are different paths to reach the same goal. In addition to these three plans, there can be many more. 🎯
Let's imagine, develop our plan, and have fun achieving our exploration goal! ✊🏽
Once we have set the goal and audience of our exploration, we will have to define a way to do it.
To execute plan #1, we need to prepare the posts that we will test on social networks.
To execute plan #2, we need to recruit the focus group participants according to what interests us, prepare the leader of the conversation with the inputs, questions and ways to encourage the debate that we want to activate during the discussion.
To execute plan #3, we need to identify who will interview and who will be interviewed, prepare the survey questions and schedule the interviews.
Each plan may require different materials and it is essential that all materials are clear, direct and accessible to your audience.
Great! We are now ready to test our plan and examine its results.
By the end of our narrative exploration, we will have valuable information that will help us achieve our initial goal.
To extract the lessons from this exercise, it is key to allocate some time to examine all the information collected.
Column A and column B show the number of likes, comments, and shares of two Instagram posts. Column A corresponds to a meme and column B to an infographic.*
*Both pieces were posted in the same time period to reach the same audience: young people.
Thanks to the analysis of results we can draw conclusions about our exploration and finally achieve the goal of our exploration.
For example, we can conclude that memes, although they are not good generators of comments, have a good performance in raising awareness among young people about caring for the environment.
In addition, it is a better format than infographics, since according to the table, there is a big difference in the total number of interactions of both formats.
But… This is not the end!
We can always continue to improve our communication to transform the world into a fairer and more dignified place.
So, let's keep exploring to achieve it!
Throughout this module we learned that by exploring, we can discover the best formats, stories, tones, channels and messengers to communicate our narratives in the most effective way to the audiences we want to reach.
At that level we can call it micro. It means that we have information to define the narrative we want to promote and the most strategic way to do it.
However, as narrative work seeks to contest the hegemonic narratives that have shaped what is understood as common sense, it invites us to seek sufficient scale to achieve this. This means that we must also think about exploration on a macro level. For example: exploring which narratives have the potential to activate the political imagination of millions of people to believe that other realities are possible.
An example, that in our eyes, is a case of how narrative exploration can be used at a macro level, is the Green Tide: an international feminist movement created in Argentina in the early 2000s, that sought to promote new narratives about women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
The Green Tide was a creative, collective and scale process that evolved thanks to the persistence of multiple agents of change and that responded to a key invitation of Latin American feminism: to start telling multiple stories through different voices and in diverse contexts -connected with the symbol of the green scarf- about a world where women want to decide about their bodies, have autonomy over their sexuality and fully enjoy their rights.
Today, this movement has crossed borders, inspired millions of women and managed to strongly position a fair and dignified narrative about the demand for Latin American women’s sexual and reproductive rights. 💚
Finding these vehicles with the potential for widespread impact is key to narrative work. It is essential that they do not run short, so all actors in social movements must activate our ability to constantly develop new ideas.
Narrative exploration is a way to achieve this.
The Green Tide phenomenon is impressive, right? 💚
Well, at Inspiratorio we believe that we all have the same power. ✊🏽
Therefore:
If you found this content useful and want to be part of our gathering of activists and change agents to continue learning, join our Community of Practice on WhatsApp now. Here you will be able to:
Your opinion is important
Is this content useful for your movement or activism? Rate your learning experience and let's build the future of narrative work hand in hand:
