Mobilizing personal narratives: The rise of digital “story banking” in U.S. grassroots advocacy

ABSTRACT

This article interrogates digital “story banking,” a storytelling practice that has become increasingly popular among U.S. grassroots advocacy organizations. Through the examination of LinkedIn data and in-depth interviews with story banking professionals, this technique emerges as the centerpiece of the growing institutionalization, professionalization, and datafication of storytelling in progressive advocacy. Following the 2016 election, political crisis and an increasing awareness of changing information consumption patterns promoted story banking diffusion. Story banking ushers in the era of stories as data and political story on demand. Yet, political constraints currently limit story banking to a reactive approach based on news monitoring, algorithmic shortlisting of stories, and audience testing. Furthermore, an unresolved tension has emerged between the growing centralization of storytelling functions and the participatory potential of crowd-sourced story banks. The implications of these trends for progressive advocacy organizations and the groups they aim to represent are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Storytelling; story banking
• grassroots advocacy
• digital media
• crowd-sourcing
• mobilization

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Filippo Trevisan

Filippo Trevisan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Deputy Director of the Institute on Disability and Public Policy at American University in Washington, D.C. Filippo researches digital mobilizing and organizing, as well as the impact of new media technologies on political participation, civic engagement, and citizenship. He is the author of Disability Rights Advocacy Online: Voice, Empowerment and Global Connectivity (Routledge, 2017).

Bryan Bello

Bryan Bello is a Ph.D. student in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., where he studies the representation of public interests in media and technology policy debates. Bryan is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker. His community media projects with under-represented groups have been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Tribeca Film Institute, and covered by The Atlantic, PBS NewsHour, and The Washington Post.

Michael Vaughan

Michael Vaughan completed his Ph.D. in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney on movements around international tax justice in Australia and the UK. He is currently an Associate Researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, studying digitalization and the transnational public sphere.

Ariadne Vromen

Ariadne Vromen is a Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Sydney, and her research interests include: political participation, social movements, advocacy organisations, digital politics, and young people and politics. Ariadne has completed extensive research on young people’s political engagement, and recently completed a book on digital citizenship and new advocacy organisations.