Kate McDowell on Storytelling

We have loads of theories about the production of misinformation that focus on those generating it (manipulators, liars, propagandists), but so little that centers the audience. Such an exploration would point us toward its voluntary rapid circulation and the collective behaviors of sharing. The closest thing we've got is storytelling in terms of how gossip and rumors blaze across communities, now and historically. But of course the spread of stories, true or false, is enabled by the internet and platforms for information sharing that amplify polarizing information. A key model for qualitative research in these areas is storytelling, but until recently storytelling has been more practice than theory in library and information science (LIS) and the information sciences (IS). So I'm working on theorizing storytelling as information for multiple reasons, and the rapid spread of misinformation is one of them. Another is that indigenous knowledge is routinely shut out of (settler co...

Today's Saturday story comes from my listening to many friends who are talking about not wanting to be afraid right now, and it features a postcard from The Courage Connection, an organization headed by my friend Elizabeth McGreal Cook who helps people survive domestic abuse.

I took a couple of weeks off, but I'm back with a new Saturday Story, this one all about a story I heard this week about what staying calm can do and how it can be a gift for others. The talk I mention can be found here: https://www.awakin.org/calls/470/parker-palmer-with-mary-pipher-and-michael-penn/

Here's this week's flawed, weird, but heartfelt video offering to my friends.

Digging Deep It's gardening time and covid-19 time, all at once. Today the winds are a constant whistle and howl here in the flat midwest, though yesterday it was warm and rainy. March is going out like a lion. This week, I came as I was. In the previous videos I had dressed up more or less as I would be for teaching. But, with so many home and emotionally exhausted, it felt more authentic to show up in my gardening clothes, clean faced, just to have a conversation. After all, this is for my friends as an audience, and they don't mind. Audience matters here. Though I've set these for public viewing in the thought that they might bring comfort to others, I mean this to be for those who have been friend enough to me to stay on Facebook. It's a wide swath of people from all across my life, family and childhood all the way to professional connections from this year. I had some requests to move the time for the West Coast folks, but in truth my energy is limited to...

Here we are in March 2020, and if we had told ourselves that we'd be sheltering in place and wondering how to get to the grocery store a month ago, we would have looked at ourselves very oddly. And yet here we are. I've been trying some experiments with live video on facebook. It started this last weekend, when I couldn't sleep on Friday night. I just kept thinking about how much we need to spread the word about these brand new unfamiliar CDC safety protocols (trying not to catch the covid-19 virus, who is most vulnerable, how to wash our hands). And how, in most of human history, we spread the word just by telling each other. Some people just need to hear things from a friend. The first one was about reading the CDC guidelines, and being caring to each other and gentle with ourselves. I thought I might call it "Heard it From a Friend": The second one probably jammed too much in, but it was about soap, videos, people we know, and tenderness, and now I'...

Before you can defeat a dragon, you need some help. Everyone seems to understand the idea of the helper in a narrative as a figure that the hero encounters on their journey. The helper helps the hero, sometimes through an outright gift but, often, as a reward for some relatively small kindness that the hero rendered to the helper well before the hero knew that this figure might offer such rewards. But how much do we ever really know about the helper? And how might that relate to the helping work of nonprofit organizations? Take the Russian tale of  Vasilisa . At the house of the evil witch Baba Yaga, Vasilisa is kind to the hungry cat, so the cat gives her a ribbon and a comb. When she is making her escape from the witch, she throws the ribbon behind her and it turns into a river, then she throws the comb behind and it turns into a thick forest. Vasilisa had her instructions to throw the ribbon and comb behind her, but she did not have any way of knowing that ...