Yesterday, The Harvard Crimson posted a fascinating article about the power of storytelling. Neal Baer, executive producer of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, spoke at a Radcliffe event titled “Telling Tales: How Stories Can Make a Difference.” The Crimson quotes Baer as saying that when the medical television show ER did a storyline on human papillomavirus (HPV), the number of viewers able to correctly define the disease jumped from 9 percent before the show to 28 percent a week after it aired.
I found a summary of the Kaiser Family Foundation study that Baer referred to, and it also showed that awareness of the link between HPV and cervical cancer tripled in the week after the show ran. What’s more, 1 in 7 viewers actually consulted a doctor about something they had seen on ER.
Given that ER highlighted HPV for less than one minute, the study is a testament to the ability of story to make a real difference in people’s lives. Interestingly, the report notes that viewers indicated the greatest interest in health-related storylines on ER when they “centered on a personal drama involving one of the main characters of the show. However, the more abstract policy-oriented health story lines… were of less interest to viewers.”
Here at Nieman Storyboard, we’ll be focusing on medical narrative for the rest of the week. In light of the Kaiser study, I’m wondering if reported nonfiction narratives have the same kind of public health impact that fictional television narratives do. While it seems logical that true stories might be even more likely to move people, does the freedom afforded to fiction make it easier for screenwriters to get viewers to identify with characters?
4 comments
this reminds of the census taker plotline built into the telenovela.
Wonder how far you can take this trick before viewer tires of obvious placement
You mention that ER viewers were most interested in health stories that involved the central characters. This may explain why the typical opening anecdote that reporters use to put a face on an issue is less powerful than when reporters follow someone’s story, say a person’s struggle with cancer, over time. People become engaged with others over time – whether in the real world or the fictional world. Perhaps the lesson for journalists is that we can have more impact with a series of stories following the same people than if we simply put a human face on a problem in one story and don’t follow up.
Michael, I think you’re onto something. Your comment put me in mind of John Hockenberry’s keynote at the 2008 Nieman Narrative conference. He emphasized the difference between tacking a narrative lead and kicker onto a piece and creating vivid characters via a fully narrative approach. He wasn’t specifically talking about follow-up, but I think the concept is similar: why should readers commit to a person in a story if the reporter hasn’t?
The problem is, as Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Hallman recently noted, that committed narrative takes space. And that space is much harder to come by these days, even online, where ostensibly there’s room, but where news organizations struggle with how to present long-form journalism.
Hallman had some other interesting remarks on the future of narrative journalism. We’ll be posting a piece from him on the topic next week.
And David, yes, a little like the telenovela/census thing: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/business/23telemundo.html
Maybe also narrative as a metahpor for the bubblegum flavor they put in my kids’ medicine at the pharmacy…