Research Can Inform a Strong Narrative Strategy

10/03/2024

How three of our partners use narrative research and message guidance.

Author: Grover Wehman-Brown

Narrative research is a powerful tool in building broad, strong support for the changes we need to create a world where we all can thrive. That said, sometimes people in the housing and advocacy field feel that certain recommended messages or phrases aren’t a good fit with their current way of communicating or the vibe of their organization. But message guidance doesn’t need to be merely prescriptive. It provides a starting point for long-term narrative change work, which requires many different people to communicate with diverse audiences through a range of words and stories, messengers and communication channels. 

In September, we had a conversation with three partners in the Heartland region of the U.S. about how they implemented our narrative research and message guidance to address housing unaffordability and homelessness. Their experiences highlight the broad range of ways message guidance can shape narrative change.

Jenny M. Jones with the Minnesota Housing Partnership initiated the research project to better prepare their coalition for a statewide ballot measure aimed at creating permanent funding for affordable housing in the state. Our Minnesota partners recognized the need to shift people’s beliefs, starting by meeting them where they are and connecting housing to issues they care about. Seeing narrative change as a process helps contextualize message guidance. For many audiences, especially persuadables, advocates need to use the words and phrases highlighted in the research guidance as a way to start important conversations.

“What we had to work through is that people like me are not the base. We are actually insiders. So insiders have a very different perspective on this stuff. The point of the narrative change is not about saying things that people WANT to hear, it’s about saying things in a way that people CAN hear. So that what the narrative change can be is a start to a conversation, it’s not necessarily the whole conversation.” – Jenny M. Jones, Minnesota Housing Partnership

Narrative research provides a strong foundation for efforts to change widely held views by helping community leaders first understand what people currently think, including which people agree with our values and policy perspectives already and which people are persuadable or solidly against them. Often, certain values or solutions resonate strongly with multiple segments of the community, generating new ideas and approaches for messaging. 

Ginny Hensley is the Chair of A Way Home for Tulsa and the Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs at the Tulsa Housing Authority. She shared how a finding from the research — that Tulsans strongly support repurposing existing spaces and shifting resources instead of new spending commitments — has shaped how she talks with public officials. 

“For example, one thing that I’ve said so many times is the phrase “shifting resources.” I’ve said that word so many times since the research came out because one of the first questions you’re going to be asked is ‘where is the money going to come from’ ‘where is this 1.45 million dollar gap going to come from.’ So being able to phrase things in a way that’s palatable and again focusing on repurposing and trying to help people cast a vision of what it could look like and warm them up to that is super helpful.” – Ginny Hensley, A Way Home for Tulsa

Narrative research should also inform how we build support for affordable housing or solutions to homelessness, not just the specific messages we use to do it. Mark Smith of Housing Solutions Tulsa shared how they used our narrative message guidance to inform their approach to storytelling and strategy. Mark knew, from his deep experience working in public service, that the news media can be a powerful way to share constituent support for solutions to homelessness with elected officials. In our webinar, he explained how they engaged the press with proactive stories and recommended messages to reach public officials during times of critical decision-making. 

“When a difficult decision is being made, like a housing proposal that is going up and you’re dealing with concentrated NIMBYISM, does that public official feel like the broader community supports the initiative, even though a few constituents may be upset?  To get to that [official], having a partnership with local media that is frequently talking to the community can drive the narrative. It’s a little bit of a roundabout path, but it’s very important to the average member of the community and we know our public officials watch the news too and they read the newspaper and they look at opinions. And so having those active working relationships with members of our media is really important.” – Mark Smith. Housing Solutions Tulsa

A key to building a housing justice movement is how we communicate with others so they move to action. We created a summary of our narrative research findings in three heartland communities, pointing to what’s unique in each community and what they all have in common. For example, the majority of people in each of the three Heartland communities we surveyed think housing unaffordability and homelessness are big problems and addressing them should be a high priority for elected officials. When we work together across organizations, coalitions and communities, we can and should adapt our words, frames and stories to meet the right audience with the right message at the right time. Narrative research will point to opportunities to expand the number of people taking action and expand the tools we have available to ensure everyone has a quality home they can afford.