Fiction for Social Change

By Laura Vidal

Research & Project Specialist,
Latin America

IRIS

September's Tertulia was an inspiring display of ideas, traditional blended with new. Our discussion explored how storytelling—a profoundly human activity—can have powerful social and cultural consequences. 

Our conversation was guided by Marianne Díaz Hernández, an exceptional writer, researcher, and internet human rights activist.

September's Tertulia was an inspiring display of ideas, traditional blended with new. Our discussion explored how storytelling—a profoundly human activity—can have powerful social and cultural consequences. 

Our conversation was guided by Marianne Díaz Hernández, an exceptional writer, researcher, and internet human rights activist. It has been a pleasure to share Marianne's knowledge with the Tertulia participants, especially since we have worked on many projects combining fiction with awareness of privacy and data policies in several countries over the past few years. Regardless of what she’s working on or involved in, Marianne's greatest passion is finding a way to help people tell their own stories. 

We gained a lot from the conversation. We went deep. Our discussions touched on the power of stories, their many forms, and how they are being told now in a hyper-connected age. 

Even though the time was short, and this conversation was just the beginning of a much deeper exploration, we came away with notes that will serve as the spark for more. Some of the main ideas were:

The truth lies beyond reality

While many stories are based on real events, the core of a powerful narrative lies in the truth it conveys. Stories can be fueled by accurate facts and lived experiences, but they don't have to stick to one reality or testimony. To tell an impactful story, we need to tell it more from truth than from reality.

Many fictional works express complex realities in this way. Let's take the HBO series Chernobyl as an example. One character—Ulana Khomyuk, a Belarusian nuclear scientist who readily recognizes the danger—represents a combination of several people who lived near the plant and denounced the misinformation surrounding it.  

Stories that offer emotional authenticity and universal truths enable listeners to identify with them. Diverse experiences can be woven into a cohesive story, forming an emotional tapestry for the audience.

Fiction as protection 

The use of fiction can provide truthtellers and whistleblowers with anonymity that helps them stay safe. It is especially important to consider this when stories are trying to expose and denounce human rights violations. The simple act of changing names or altering details is not always sufficient in such cases. A fictional story can be as shocking as true facts and help them travel beyond where the facts originally occur. 

Marianne described an example of a research presentation where this strategy was useful. The research describes the precarious journey of those who cannot count on identification and, like millions worldwide, move and cross borders to escape violence or poverty. As part of the effort to make the data and the realities of the sources more understandable, the findings follow a narrative thread through “Liliana,” a character conceived to humanize a reality experienced by millions of migrants.

This brings us to another important element:

If you have data, you have stories

The conversation led us to consider how we set the wheels in motion. As individuals, communicators, and professionals working in civil society circles, we have access to a wealth of data, realities, and testimonies. We are all connected to communities, journalists, filmmakers, communicators and artists.

Those committed to social change and advocacy often find the answer in the most obvious places: in the people they work with, the everyday reality they live with, and the data they collect. The information and people around us allow us to weave a story. 

The most important thing: tell a good story

Sharing stories, especially if they aim to promote social change, should not obscure their essential purpose. We still need a central character, intrigue, climax, and denouement, just as we did in the oldest stories. Those who listen make an unspoken compact with the storytellers: we know your story is fictional, but if you tell it well, we'll believe it as if it really happened.

Rather than just conveying a message, stories should be told for their intrinsic value.

We often encounter stories in civil society and its work where the intent is too evident, and we don't connect with them. The same happens when fiction has an obvious message that eats away at the storyline.

The conversation led us to think deeply and respectfully about the stories and the people we tell them to: the platforms, the tones, the languages, the interests, the tastes. The most important thing is not to forget that these people are not passive. This is an act of humility and trust. Those who read us, hear us, or play our game can fill in the blanks and follow the thread. In short, let's take care of the story first. Everything else will fall into place on its own.

Let's talk about measuring impact (even if it’s hard)

By Laura Vidal

Research & Project Specialist,
Latin America

IRIS

If measuring impact and evaluating success is already complex in any project, in the world of narrative change, there’s an extra layer. The idea of measuring what changes because of the work of a specific organization or group is as fascinating as it is difficult.

That's why we gathered last July: to talk impact and MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning) with our friends from La Sobremesa Anca Matioc, Laura Lehman e Tania Altamirano.

If measuring impact and evaluating success is already complex in any project, in the world of narrative change, there’s an extra layer.

The idea of measuring what changes because of the work of a specific organization or group is as fascinating as it is difficult. That's why we gathered last July: to talk impact and MEL—monitoring, evaluation and learning. 

Can the impact of a change in narrative be measured in numbers? What do clicks, views, retweets, comments tell us? In this world where we seek to change representations, sow ideas about our communities or make excluded people more visible, concrete changes often happen slowly, over time, only visible through subjective, personal, and collective experiences. If we throw ourselves into bean counting, dance to the rhythm of corporate tech algorithms, target virality or nothing: aren’t the numbers just the tree hiding the forest?

To reflect together on this, we called on our friends from La Sobremesa—Anca, Laura, and Tania—to kick us off. Our goal is for this conversation about impact—and how to evaluate it—to be the first of many. Through them, we’ll learn how to keep evaluation strategies central from the inception of the project.

Growing inward

La Sobremesa invited us to think not only about the impact of our work on the communities we work with but also to think about the impact that work has on us and the ways it can strengthen our own ecosystem. 

La Sobremesa highlighted that an important element in the process is aiming to understand the problem we are aiming to tackle; and that’s something that can be done best when working together with—and not only for—those who are facing those challenges every day. In all of this, the keyword is exchange. 

It's about creating a project design that invites us to ask ourselves questions about those involved; and also, paying attention to who is not present or represented in this particular context and ask ourselves why.

Fewer answers and more questions

It would seem that even our own ideas around “impact” are in need of their own narrative change. We were excited – though not necessarily surprised – at the range of ideas that came out of this first conversation. The experiences of those who participated in the gathering gave us an important clue to understanding the key elements in the design and development of narrative change projects. We could say these are projects that aim to change perceptions and even imaginings: measuring such changes is quite the complex task. 

Nearly every project present in this Tertulia benefited from a special kind of intuition, something that proved essential in the development of their methodology...but this intuition would have been impossible without an extensive and well-connected experience with the communities themselves.

We were left in the end with a question, one that often swings on a pendulum between the quantitative and the qualitative: how do wepresent impact that isn’t primarily numeric. The importance of learning to understand that in social change, numbers do not always answer the questions we have, or at least not necessarily. Indicators, by their nature, are imperfect and uncomfortable, and we have to learn to integrate them into more flexible, more fluid observations.

It's about learning where to shine the light and what to do with the sources we have. To make visible the data we can learn from and determine which elements truly give us a full portrait, with all of its light and shadow.

So far, we have no fixed schemes or ready-made answers. Which means that it is possible we may have to create them by ourselves. It is our hope that these conversations become a first step towards that goal, and that this new learning cycle will show us the way.