week 1 post 2

Empathy, facts, and Change

The utilization of both Storytelling and journalism has the capability to effectively bring about social change through solutions, empathy, and facts. According to a lecture by Anita Gonzalez, storytelling has the capability to create empathy through words, change in belief systems, and using a creative stance to allow for conversations which would typically be very tense. All stories must have an element of truth behind them for them to carry significance. These stories must exhibit pathos appeals which help create natural human desire for change. To be powerful stories must happen between two people. The use of human roots within stories makes it more universal and out reaching. As said by Daniel Heimpel In journalism many similar things hold true however, the use of solid, unarguable facts, and use of solution based journalism is key to the success of the piece. Solution based journalism is the ability to describe solutions to complex problems. This is a stark contrast from that of traditional media which provides the public with some devastating story without providing an opportunity for a solution. This has lead to disengagement from the public and the media because it is depressing and hopeless to constantly read of the terrors of this world if there is no room for positive opportunity. The goal of this is not to change minds; rather to show possibilities. This ties into the essentiality of facts, which have become seemingly scarce from traditional news sources. The use of facts and solution based journalism opens up opportunity for unbiased, true reason for social change and public policy.

The reason that these specific forms of writing are particularly useful is because they use atypical and creative approaches to create rumination over social issues. Story tellings ability to create empathy is extremely necessary because it helps promote the state of human condition and change if it is necessary. Storytelling allows for history to be retold, through many perspectives, to new generations, and without this humans are unable to change and grow better. Storytelling allows people to lose the idea of the ‘other’ and see how history happened from many standpoints. THis is essential to teaching people about something that is very different from their typical belief system because it allows them to consider the other. The use of solution based journalism is vital to social change and public policy because it allows stories to be put out that have practical solutions, better at maintaining the anonymity of the people, and clear revealings of rights and wrongs and highlights opportunity for responsible change. This is vital to making public change because all have important and extensive effects on the public.