Sponsor
This research was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Grant 72793). We thank Joshua Charles and Siobhan Robinson-Marshall for their indefatigable coding assistance.
Published In
International Journal of Communication
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
Narratives can convey the need or community-level action to address social problems. Yet narratives often tell stories about specific individuals rather than the broader collectives these problems affect. Some theorists argue that individualizing collective problems inhibits audiences from recognizing upstream causes and solutions. This study tested how narrative individualization (whether a story focuses on an individual case or a larger collective) might produce trade-offs when mobilizing support for community-level policies to address childhood obesity. We also investigated whether narratives using language congruent with political partisans’ morals (equity or loyalty) might minimize polarized responses to such narratives. A large, Web-based experiment with a national sample of U.S. adults demonstrated that both individual and collective narratives increased policy support relative to a no-message control group. Individual narratives promoted policy support via narrative engagement, tender emotions, and external thoughts about the issue. Against expectations, morally congruent narratives did not outperform morally incongruent ones.
Rights
Copyright © 2020 (Chris Skurka, Jeff Niederdeppe, and Liana Winett). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44233
Citation Details
Skurka, Chris; Niederdeppe, Jeff; and Winett, Liana, "There’s More to the Story: Both Individual and Collective Policy Narratives Can Increase Support for Community-Level Action" (2020). OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations. 602.
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44233