Crafting different stories: changing minds and hearts

Abstract

This chapter assesses how one might change the conversation on child protection. It explores the specific issues of seeking to effect social change within a ‘post-truth’ climate and discusses how one might draw from work in social psychology, cognitive linguistics, and the sociology of emotions to learn the craft of telling stories. It has long been clear that hurling ‘facts’ in the form of statistics at people is likely to change very few minds. Rather than facts and pie charts, it is stories that have the power to animate people and bring them together to change the world. Organisations such as the New Economics Foundation, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have been using methodologies derived from framing theory to explore how different stories could be crafted on poverty, child abuse, and neglect.