Using Narrative Power to Advance Liberation: Six Key Elements

In their forthcoming book Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements, coeditors Shanelle Matthews and Marzena Zukowska share a compilation of stories by communications workers from some of the most impactful social movements in the United States, along with a few international examples. In this excerpt, they share the basis for how a narrative-power framework can help build power and resist oppression.

Narratives are not mere backdrops but the very mechanisms…shaping what we see as “normal,” “right,” and “justifiable.”

This excerpt is from Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements (New Press, 2025) edited by Shanelle Matthews, Marzena Zukowska, and the Radical Communicators Network. All rights reserved. Reprinted here with author and press permission.

At the core of every dominant power structure is a narrative foundation. White supremacy, for example, is built on a narrative of inherent racial inferiority, insisting on a racial hierarchy as both a natural and essential order. Colonialism champions narratives of boundless expansion, justifying resource exploitation, Indigenous subjugation, and genocide as manifest destiny. Meanwhile, neoliberal capitalism infiltrates every corner of our existence, from health care commercialization to the enforcement of borders and prisons, propelled by the narratives that prioritize profit over people and individual success over communal well-being. These narratives are not mere backdrops but the very mechanisms through which power is exercised and maintained, shaping what we see as “normal,” “right,” and “justifiable.”

Society’s narrative hierarchy, underpinned by institutional forces—government, economy, religion—and mediated through culture and digital spaces, assigns credibility in a way that often silences marginalized voices. This hierarchy dictates who gets to speak and whose stories are deemed legitimate. Narrative oppression and the dominance of specific stories precondition our perceptions of worthiness, identity, and entitlement, perpetuating old debates about humanization and deservedness. These dominant narratives—rooted in imperialism, capitalism, and other power structures—frame our collective consciousness and societal values.

A narrative-power framework is a way of seeing and acting to use symbolic resources, stories, messages, and narratives to…build power for a liberatory society for all.

Counterhegemony involves creating and popularizing counternarratives, values, and beliefs that question and resist this so-called common sense. It seeks to build a new cultural and ideological consensus representing oppressed groups’ interests and perspectives. By unraveling these stories, we confront the foundational myths that uphold systemic inequalities and challenge ourselves to envision a radically different world. In these pages, communications workers from the most impactful social movements of the twenty-first century—from the fight for immigrant rights and the work of organizations like M4BL to the #MeToo uprising and the struggle for labor justice—explore how narrative organizing and power are used to dismantle and rewrite the stories that shape the material conditions of our lives.

Narrative power refers to the ability to shape and control the stories told within a society, including which ones are told, who tells them, and how they are interpreted. It’s about the capacity to influence perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors through storytelling, using frameworks grounded in social-movement traditions.

A narrative-power framework is a way of seeing and acting to use symbolic resources, stories, messages, and narratives to resist oppression and build power for a liberatory society for all. At the Radical Communicators Network (RadComms), we believe a narrative-power framework can be understood as a function of six interconnected elements:

Narrative power analysis, which examines how stories influence perceptions, behaviors, and social outcomes.
Principles, which are values-based and provide guardrails for communicating about people, places, and ideas in inclusive and humanizing ways.
Traditions, which provide a foundation for movement activities, fostering collective identity and continuity while connecting movements to historical roots.
Narrative possibilities, which refer to the potential within the political system to influence beliefs and behaviors through storytelling and assessing what is desirable and achievable in the current context.
Narrative opportunities, which are specific situations that allow effective influence on public policy or social change, arising from accessible political channels, changes in government, the presence of allies, times of crisis, and shifts in public opinion.
Narrative interventions, which are strategic actions to reshape or introduce new narratives, including reframing narratives, introducing new ones, and using counternarratives while focusing on both potential and specific moments for achieving goals.

For stories to truly resonate and catalyze change, they must be woven into the fabric of everyday life and become part of our lived experience.

Not all frameworks within social-justice and nonprofit communications work to subvert oppressive systems—indeed, many reinforce them. This leads to the implementation of reformist reforms, which are changes or adjustments within existing systems (particularly those related to social, political, or economic structures) that aim to improve conditions or address specific issues without fundamentally altering the system’s underlying power dynamics or structures.^[9]

The essence of building narrative power lies in its potential to aid oppressed communities in envisioning a world beyond their immediate circumstances.

Stories are the lifeblood of social cohesion, acting as the adhesive that binds the framework of societal norms and expectations. Within this framework, narratives spark the imagination, creating the blueprint for emerging cultures and social paradigms.

The transformative power of narrative means that the stories of the oppressed can forge new paths of resistance and redefine power dynamics.

Counternarratives don’t just challenge the status quo; they are acts of dissent that manifest the change we envision. But for stories to truly resonate and catalyze change, they must be woven into the fabric of everyday life and become part of our lived experience. In this way, narrative power shapes, and is shaped by, the interplay of power and resistance, laying the groundwork for a reimagined future.

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