The Joe Rogan Experience. Modern Family. The Daily Show. Needless to say, the audiences of these types of content are usually on different political wavelengths. A new project from The Radical Communicators Network (or RadComms) and Rising Majority says that in order to build a stronger force willing to fight back against authoritarianism, we need to understand how different kinds of stories and content affect how people perceive issues and digest meaning. Starting there, we can then be strategic about how we build narratives about organizing and activism tailored to specific audiences to better form a movement base; issue by issue.
The report distinguishes four different kinds of groups of audiences, from the Fox News crowd, to the types of people eager to watch the latest episode of HBOs “The Pitt.” Analyzing these differences in audience taste and values can help organizers build narrative strategies that bridge divides with the power of storytelling. The full, easily digestible report is linked in the show notes and we strongly suggest those who are interested in any form of movement comms work check it out.
Today’s guests are two of the authors behind the report, called Rising Narratives for Radical Futures: Talking Across Difference for a Multi-Racial Democracy. Shanelle Matthews is the founder of Radical Communications Network, which organizes movement communications workers across the US and internationally. And Yewande Addie is a communications scholar and narrative strategist with the BLIS collective.
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Episode Guests
Shanelle Matthews is a movement communications strategist and founder of the Radical Communicators Network. She co-edited Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements and leads narrative strategy for coalitions, including M4BL and the Rising Majority. Shanelle teaches narrative power and political communication at City College of New York and across movement spaces globally.