THAT'S OUR STORY & WE'RE STICKIN' TO IT

Not just for kids: how telling stories about the world shapes society. (Jenny Ostini, June 16, 2003, OnLine Opinion)

Aside from entertaining children, storytelling is also fundamental to our society today. From stump speeches to policy releases to talkback radio, managerial statements, teaching, soap operas, interpersonal exchanges and even the news, we tell stories. To focus on one aspect of storytelling, what is the news but a story about the day? Every day many of us settle down with a newspaper or watch the evening news to read or hear a recounting of the events of the day.

News stories help us to make sense of what is happening, who is involved and sometimes why events have unfolded in a particular way. Stories about the world help us to understand our place in society, what is considered important by those in power, and appropriate behaviour in a range of situations. [...]

Storytelling can be thought of as a mapping of space that imposes coherence on ideas. Once stories become entrenched and repeated, that story becomes the story to the exclusion of alternative interpretations. This is particularly relevant when news stories are being examined because telling a story in a particular way can have measurable effects. Think of how a story about asylum seekers throwing their children overboard invoked ideas about how "we aren't those kind of people" and "they won't fit in here" which led to a government being able to make previously inconceivable decisions about refugee policy. So perhaps ABC critics should be anxious again.

Stories not only provide overt content but they also construct ways for us to think and in some cases allow us to think and articulate the unthinkable.

More than anything else this would seem to be the function that blogs and other online news communities serve--they help groups of like-minded or at least sympathetic people to "gather" and organize their thoughts about what might otherwise be a terribly confusing world. At best they can help us to analyze issues that we're not sure how to process and provide us with reassurance that the explanations we've come up with aren't totally demented. To this extent at least, they really do serve as communities.

Now if only someone could explain why we're the only ones to have noticed that Eric and Julia Roberts are the same person... Posted by Orrin Judd at June 17, 2003 12:29 AM