Reanimating Civil Society: A Lifeline Guide for Narrative Change
Across the world, authoritarian governments and non-state actors are restricting civic space and trying to silence critical voices or those that challenge the status quo. In some contexts, governments are launching smear campaigns to taint the work of civil society organizations (CSOs) and human rights defenders (HRDs). These campaigns put individual HRDs or CSO staff members at risk and undercut the ability of civil society organizations to operate safely and effectively by eroding their reputation in the eyes of the public.
This guide is meant to support activists, CSOs, and social movements who want to explore tactics and strategies to respond to smear campaigns or negative stereotypes by creating new, positive narratives to counter them. It provides a framework for thinking about narrative change, with examples and resources. Of course, each context and smear campaign against civil society is different, so the content below will need amending for each context. We encourage you to use this guide as a stepping stone for crafting your own campaign.
We hope this guide fuels the ability to take control and tell the story you aim to share.
(note: All featured images in this Toolkit are from The Greats and published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).