Narrative alignment can be a force for evil, or a force for good. We see how corporations, politicians, influencers, media, and talking heads can echo the same worldview. They may have different ways of talking about it. Some are more coded, and some are more outright. But at the core, there is alignment around a particular worldview. Together, these voices shape the worldview of others. While people may disagree on the nuance of the message, the underlying worldview is accepted as fact. They see the power in that worldview - or rather, the power it could bestow on themselves - and they make it their own.
Big narrative alignment is one of the most powerful ways to create durable societal change.
Narrative alignment can also be a force for good when social changemakers, organizers, and funders no longer focus solely on aligning on messages and start thinking about narrative alignment; we see the power of narrative change in action. (Read more about messaging vs. narrative here.) This means embracing polyvocality, “an approach that relies on the power of many voices speaking the same core change.”
How do we get there?
Movements succeed in short-term wins and the long-term work of building a better world when many people come together across differences. But how do we get there?
This work has been done in many different ways by many different people. Sometimes it is centralized, done in formal networks. Advocates, activists, and organizers come together within a coalition space. Sometimes, it’s decentralized and happens organically - we start to see what is working, and we build on it.
At Narrative Initiative, we often work alongside organizers to provide the space and structure to achieve narrative alignment. We call this process defining "a Narrative North Star.”
What is a Narrative North Star?
A Narrative North Star (NNS) consists of core values and concepts that build a new worldview. Like a color palette, they might be drawn on in different proportions for different audiences and use cases. The language used to convey them is illustrative and intended to be adapted and iterated upon.
One NNS can span issues and movements because it is built from core values. For example, for the Green New Deal Network, the Narrative North Star was “the good life for all,” grounded in three deep narratives: repair, care, and prepare. While they were focused on passing Green New Deal legislation soon, this NNS didn’t focus on energy or environment-specific values. The long-term Narrative North Star was broad enough to support efforts to address the housing crisis, honor care workers, and build worker power. It was also specific enough to see how these efforts are linked. A Narrative North Star offers an opportunity to build alignment across issues and see the intersectionality of our work.
Another example of narrative alignment in action comes from Minnesota and Greater Than Fear campaign. The "Greater Than Fear" campaign focused on uplifting Minnesota values of welcoming warmth and hospitality to advance a vision of multiracial populism. Many mosques band together to celebrate eid in a massive professional football stadium. Starting from the invitation”Eid is for everyone,” more than 40,000 Muslim and non-Muslim people gathered to celebrate the festival at Super Eid. Sharon Goldtzvik described how they fought against a fear-driven, anti-immigrant backlash with a smartly branded narrative campaign: "Greater Than Fear - In Minnesota, We’re Better Off Together."
More examples of Narrative North Stars from outside NI include the Winning Jobs Narrative framework for advancing good jobs in the U.S., the Housing Justice Narrative framework “to advance a vision of racial justice and homes for all,” and the Reparations Narrative House to “expand both the conception of and the movement for reparations for Black people.”
A Narrative North Star is only the point toward which we set our compass. A truth we collectively believe in. But it is not the path. We breathe life into a Narrative North Star by defining the many paths to get there.
The ingredients for success
What needs to be true before embarking on this work? We’ve noticed that their NNS processes are more successful when groups have these things in place:
A shared understanding of narrative: We need a bit of narrative capacity and basic narrative knowledge to engage in this work. Without a shared understanding of what narratives are and how narrative change happens, a Narrative North Star process can quickly become derailed as people equate it to messaging work and start quibbling over the words, or when policy strategists and organizers opt out of the process, not understanding how narrative builds their power to win. You can’t embark on narrative alignment work without first building some common understanding of everyone’s inherent narrative power and showing them how it can be activated.
Everyone's involvement: Determining narrative alignment isn’t just a project for a communications team—it should happen alongside policy, communications, direct action, and organizing.
Network built-in trust: It needs to be networked, arising from a collective vision of the future and not from the top down.
Narrative power at the ground level: Those with institutional power are usually the ones who are centered in narrative authorship as they are the ones who usually control resources and, therefore seen as most able to effect change. We believe narratives should be authored by those closest to the ground, by people most impacted by harmful dominant narratives. Recognizing and directly addressing power dynamics is essential to the process. Examine what proximity people have to narrative authorship and why. Do people most impacted in the issue you are addressing participate in this process?
The process
We are sharing some of our Narrative North Star process here, recognizing that this is just one way of building narrative alignment and there are many other ways.
Five Phases
Identify your cohort. Build a core team that comprehensively represents place, issue, capacity, lived experience, and identity. This may be representatives from organizations in your campaign, but you may need to look wider. For the Green New Deal Network, the Narrative North Star process needed to involve people from every organization at the national table and representatives from local organizations in the broader network. This coalition included grassroots organizations, labor, and climate and environmental justice organizations, and the national network extended to all parts of the United States, from the Bay Area to rural Appalachia.
Build a shared understanding of narrative/narrative change. Understand your network and consider individual capacity, diversity of identity, and familiarity with narrative concepts. This phase is all about getting on the same, practical page together. Some related tools that might be useful for your phase are in Orienting Together: Mapping Your Narrative Landscape.
Uncover possibility together. We uncover possibilities for a new worldview through thoughtful dialogue in group and 1:1 spaces. This is where we do narrative landscaping, power mapping and identify shared values. The BROKE Project is an example of a deep excavation of the narratives we are told about how the rich got rich, why the poor stay poor.
Collective meaning-making. Gather all the ideas that have come up in research. Altitude-adjust them so that you can read for the narratives in-between and cluster narrative themes. Are these values, messages, narratives, or deep narratives? Find the most essential - the deep narratives at the root. Sort them in clusters and label them with themes. Have conversations and test ideas. Stare at them until it makes sense. Then, you have the building blocks of a new worldview. While this work is not easy, this phase will benefit from having someone trained in surfacing narrative themes. While narrative practitioners can’t author the narrative alone, they can offer some great outside perspectives to help you find kernels of inspiration. Narrative Initiative uses sensemaking meetings to surface and cluster narratives.
Narrative North Star tour. Share it around; train people in it. Put it everywhere. Once a Narrative North Star is developed, it needs to be translated across many mediums and actions. The NNS is both a concept and a living narrative. What are the ways in which a story can be told and embodied, to activate participation and involvement from audiences? For example, ProsperOK did a tour by sharing a memo of its NNS with its broader coalition, coalescing around the idea of “Mistakes don’t make us. Care creates us. The practice of liberation is our legacy.” This framework solidified a stance that united varying parts of their movement to counter carceral systems in Oklahoma. Here are some ways to start implementing a NNS:
Strategic communications: Often the most visible and straightforward uses of the NNS is to intervene in the public narrative through internal and external communications (i.e. op-eds, guiding documents, etc.)
Popular culture and media: Understanding the human interest expression of an NNS, through a first-person or plot-driven storyline. This is seen in short films and movies, literature, social media and other things.
Infrastructure and action: Embodying the narrative in public space or through material conditions, demonstrable and replicable. Models of narrative culture that signal helpful culture or reflect pathways out of harmful narratives.
A Narrative North Star reflects the vision and values of a group and serves as a functional tool for alignment. It is a point of orientation for strategic communications, policy, funding, and organizing efforts. As a guide point, it must be durable and flexible enough to serve short- and long-term goals. The utility of a Narrative North Star lies in its ability to signal to a broad group of stakeholders with diverse needs and perspectives. We see this narrative alignment work as essential for many efforts to coalesce towards the same guiding vision that a Narrative North Star signals, ensuring it can be visible from every angle as different parts of a coalition move in synchronicity and unison. Ultimately, a Narrative North Star helps you build greater people power through a shared point of orientation in the future you’re working toward.