Green and Brock’s (2000) concept of transportation describes being “lost” in a story. When transported, a listener’s critical defenses lower, making them more susceptible to the story’s conclusions. A survivor who concludes, “Asking for help saved my life,” can implicitly persuade the audience to seek help more effectively than a poster reading “Get screened.”
Awareness campaigns are critical in promoting social change, supporting survivors, and preventing future incidents. Effective awareness campaigns:
Awareness campaigns that ignore survivor stories do so at their own peril. They become noise. But campaigns that listen—that center the survivor not as a prop but as a protagonist—create movements. They build bridges of empathy that statistics cannot cross.
Consider the most effective public health campaigns of the last decade: