Not just for kids: how telling stories about the world shapes society

Every day I sit down with my kids to tell them stories. Sometimes we read old favourites like Enid Blyton or C.S. Lewis while at other times they want to hear stories about when they were born or when I was a little girl. Most of the time we simply enjoy spending time together and the stories themselves.

Often, though, I find myself thinking about the function of storytelling and what they are learning in these exchanges. I hope that they are learning about my values and experiences in an informal and non-threatening manner. I hope that their imaginations are being freed to roam around the world and not be limited to a small town or even to a country. I wonder if my stories would make sense to a child not my own.

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.

Social cohesion is achieved in news storytelling through identifying key aspects of events and setting the parameters of acceptable responses to these. That is why it is so ironic to hear the ABC criticised by its old foes for its "biased" coverage of the Iraq war. Radical news agencies with specific political agendas aside, mainstream media are essentially conservative. Especially during times of war, the government is able to define situations and set limits on press coverage that restrict the influence that the press can have on policy-making.

Following a review of three decades of literature, communication researcher T.K. Chang has concluded that while media play a role in political and social structures they cannot be considered in any way as independent actors in the policy-making process. Critics of the ABC can rest easy.

The news media may not have an immediate role in policy-making but when one talks about news in terms of storytelling, you can start to think about ideas and ideology and how they are circulated and reinforced in society. Many scholars, from political scientists to cultural studies to communication researchers, study news and political discourse, even gossip and rumours, because such storytelling reveals much about the world in which we live.

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. In Plato a muthos is a story or fable embodying a series of propositions about the world. Many news stories or political arguments do just this. A series of propositions about the world are laid out and the listener or reader is asked to reflect on these.

Consider the fable of Australian involvement in Iraq. The basic propositions laid out by Howard were that Australia is a civilised country; civilised countries care about human rights; Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator therefore Australia must be involved in his removal. A similar political fable begins with a similar proposition that Australia is a civilised country; civilised countries care about rule of law and fairness; asylum seekers break the law and don't wait their turn; Australia must detain these people. Each fable asks the listener to accept that they are civilised and that certain actions inevitably follow from that presumption. These fables are clearly stories because they not only lay out propositions about the world but also meet the narrative requirement of storytelling - moralising closure. That is, the proposed action is the right action, the only action that can be taken in that situation.

Storytelling can be useful in that it allows discussion of difficult topics. For example, when considering immigration policy, thinking about who we are as Australians can be a worthwhile exercise that can bring our society together. It can also be a destructive process of self-satisfaction and exclusion.

Analysis of the stories being told, the narrative, is important because, narratives not only contain ideology; they are inherently ideological by delineating and interpreting reality. Narratives not only reveal details about what individuals and institutions consider important; they also reveal what is considered unimportant and therefore excluded.

Consider the recent furore over the Governor General. Whose voices narrated the story? While there were various voices, Hollingworth's was a privileged voice backed by the institutional power to request and be given national television time to tell his own story. Whatever opinion you hold on the matter, it is clear that the voices of the alleged victims were considered less important.

Storytelling seems to me to be vitally important in almost every society. Almost as important is analysing and interpreting the stories in order to understand the values held by society and the relations of power within that society. These questions have been very much on my mind since I returned to Australia from the United States. Having made the choice to live in Australia - what stories will I be able to create for my children? Tonight as I tell my children about going off to school in a different country or a funny story about a magic chair that can take them on adventures I'll be thinking about the power of myth. What kind of world are they are learning about and what kind of world do I want them to learn about?