Research | ICTD | Evidence Narratives

 

Evidence Narratives: ICT storytelling from anecdote to evidence

 

The ICTD field is filled with individual success stories extolling the benefits of ICT access and fluency.  These stories can be highly influential and rhetorically powerful. They can be memorable narratives that form lasting frames to contextualize and interpret other data.  Unfortunately, they are often driven by the demands of public relations not rigorous analysis. 

When the goal is to share the story of a super star and tug heart strings for PR, important detail can be omitted.  To understand how ICT works for typical trainees, to spread narratives that illuminate deeper dynamics and to amplify broadly useful lessons, stories should be researched and constructed with intention and rigor.

CIS is developing a methodology and story series to tap the rhetorical and qualitative explanatory power of detailed, contextualized, and personalized ICT case studies.  While tension may sometimes exist between the PR desire to elevate certain cases of success and the critical researcher’s commitment to rigor, a methodology built on intensive questioning and storytelling rich in the right details can uncover evidence of successful programs.

By crafting exemplary stories, by developing and disseminating useful methodological tools and by training NGO managers and grant makers in these techniques, CIS aims to shape a research framework that can fulfill the PR needs of NGOs and donors with stories that accurately represent realities in underserved communities.  Properly constructed, these stories can shift more emphasisserve the ends of rigorous analysis and public relations.

 

Evidence Narrative Toolkit

Stories featuring individuals from the following International Organizations

 

Two years ago Pavel was paralyzed from the waist down after a car accident which fractured two vertebrae in his neck and damaged his spinal chord.  Today Pavel has a new career and a positive attitude about life: he designs websites for NGOs and soon will teach fellow paraplegics the magic of web design. Watch for his story soon.

 

Project Team

Andy Gordon
Joe Sullivan
Mark West
Maria Garrido

Sponsors:

Microsoft (Community Affairs)