We Will Rise: How Stories Unite Social Movements

Stories can inspire and propel people’s individual and collective action to unite social movements. In this article, we outline key social movement storytelling practices and integrate them with insights from academic research to build a framework for understanding how stories unite social movements. This framework includes research-supported storytelling practices for two types of essential social movement stories: individual me and movement we stories. Stories of me are the personal stories of individual changemakers. Stories of we are the stories that these individuals tell about the movement. We identify how individual changemakers’ me stories intersect with and strengthen a movement’s we story. Finally, we highlight insights that deepen our conceptual and practical understanding of social movement storytelling.