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In our first post, we defined media narratives as curated stories that shape how we see the world and propaganda as manipulative communication serving hidden agendas. But how are these narratives constructed? Who decides which stories dominate, and why? This second post in our series pulls back the curtain on narrative-building, revealing the deliberate strategies behind the stories we’re told. We’ll explore this through the lens of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Jacques Ellul’s insights on propaganda, and a bold real-world example: the Yes Men’s 2010 BP Bohai media hoax. Buckle up—it’s a masterclass in narrative construction.
The Anatomy of Narrative Construction
A media narrative isn’t an accident; it’s a calculated act of storytelling. At its core, narrative construction involves three steps:
- Selection: Choosing which facts, events, or voices to highlight (and which to ignore).
- Framing: Presenting those elements in a way that suggests a specific interpretation—think “heroic whistleblower” versus “reckless leaker.”
- Amplification: Spreading the narrative through repetition, emotional appeals, or media channels to cement it in the public’s mind.
These steps sound clinical, but they’re wielded with creativity and intent. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whom we met last time, might call this the creation of a “simulacrum”—a manufactured reality that feels truer than the truth. Whether it’s a news outlet framing a policy debate or an activist group staging a stunt, narrative-builders know their power lies in controlling the story.
Saul Alinsky’s Playbook for Narrative Control
Saul Alinsky, a legendary community organizer, laid out a blueprint for narrative construction in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. Written to empower activists, his rules are equally instructive for understanding how media narratives are crafted. Three rules stand out:
- Rule 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky argued that humor and mockery can discredit opponents and make a narrative stick. A well-placed jab can shift perceptions faster than a dry policy paper.
- Rule 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” Narratives thrive when they’re engaging—think viral memes or dramatic protests that capture attention and inspire sharing.
- Rule 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Alinsky emphasized creating a decision dilemma, where the target faces a lose-lose choice: respond to a provocative narrative and risk amplifying it, or stay silent and let it fester. This traps opponents in a strategic bind, ensuring the narrative gains traction.
Alinsky’s rules aren’t just for activists; they’re used by corporations, governments, and media to shape stories. His focus on emotional resonance, engagement, and strategic dilemmas shows how narratives are planned to cut through noise and leave a lasting impression.
Jacques Ellul: Propaganda and Narratives as Inseparable
French philosopher Jacques Ellul, in his 1965 book Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, argued that in modern literate societies, propaganda and narratives are inseparable. Unlike crude posters or slogans, modern propaganda weaves itself into the fabric of media, education, and culture, shaping beliefs through subtle, pervasive stories. Ellul’s concept of “sociological propaganda” describes how narratives—say, the glorification of consumerism or national exceptionalism—emerge organically from societal structures, aligning public attitudes with institutional goals. In Western media, this means the line between a news narrative and propaganda often blurs: a story about economic growth might subtly reinforce corporate interests, even without overt lies. Ellul’s insight reminds us that narrative construction isn’t just tactical; it’s a systemic force we swim in daily.
The Yes Men and the BP Bohai Hoax: A Narrative in Action
Enter the Yes Men, activist-pranksters who weaponize Alinsky’s principles to expose corporate misdeeds. In 2010, amidst the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, they staged a media fiasco targeting BP’s lesser-known Bohai Bay spill in China. Posing as BP executives, they issued a fake press release announcing BP’s commitment to a massive cleanup fund—complete with a forged website and staged press conference. The media, hungry for a redemption story, initially took the bait, amplifying the hoax before realizing it was satire.
This stunt is a textbook case of narrative construction:
- Selection: The Yes Men chose the Bohai spill, a real but underreported event, to piggyback on the Deepwater Horizon outrage. This gave their fake story plausibility.
- Framing: They framed BP as suddenly contrite, promising billions for cleanup—a stark contrast to BP’s actual cost-cutting image. The absurdity (aligned with Alinsky’s ridicule rule) made the hoax memorable.
- Amplification: By mimicking BP’s branding and exploiting media trust in “official” sources, they ensured the story spread before being debunked. Even after the reveal, the narrative lingered: BP’s negligence was back in the spotlight.
The Yes Men also applied Alinsky’s decision dilemma (Rule 9). BP faced a trap: debunking the hoax drew more attention to their Bohai failures, while ignoring it let the narrative of corporate irresponsibility spread. Either way, the Yes Men’s story won. Their goal wasn’t just to prank; it was to craft a hyperreal narrative, as Baudrillard might say, that exposed corporate spin and forced a real conversation about accountability. Their success lay in understanding how media operates—outlets crave dramatic stories and rarely dig deep before publishing.
What We Learn—and What’s Next
The BP Bohai hoax shows that narratives are built with intent, whether by activists like the Yes Men or media giants. Alinsky’s rules and Ellul’s insights reveal the tactics and systemic forces at play: pick your moment, frame it with emotion, create dilemmas, and weave it into society’s fabric. But this isn’t just about pranks. Every day, Western media selects what to cover, frames it to fit editorial or commercial goals, and amplifies it through headlines and algorithms.
Next time, we’ll apply these lessons to a recent news story, dissecting how its narrative was constructed and what it reveals about media agendas. You’ll leave with practical tools to spot these tactics yourself. For now, ask: What narratives are grabbing my attention, and who’s behind them?
Curious for more? Stay tuned for the final part of this series as we unpack a real-world news cycle and keep chasing the truth together.
It’s time to organize against the gender religion. I’ve got the book… somewhere. One of the worst feelings in the world is to know you have the book in question, but cannot find it. So here is a quick summary I found on the web.
“According to Alinsky, the organizer, especially a paid organizer from outside, must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.
Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
I consider this text a long form of the very basic radical assumption – the Masters’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house’. That is, working within the bounds of any oppressive system, one can only do so much and the chance of affecting meaningful structural change approaches zero. The People Centred Human rights approach realizes this axiomatic truth and works to expand the notion of what is to be done instead of working inside the system.
“The people-centered framework proceeds from the assumption that the genesis of the assaults on human dignity that are at the core of human rights violations is located in the relationships of oppression. The PCHR framework does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political project in the service of the oppressed. It names the enemies of freedom: the Western white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy.
Therefore, the realization of authentic freedom and human dignity can only come about as a result of the radical alteration of the structures and relationships that determine and often deny human dignity. In other words, it is only through social revolution that human rights can be realized.
The demands for clean water; safe and accessible food; free quality education; healthcare and healthiness for all; housing; public transportation; wages and a socially productive job that allow for a dignified life; ending of mass incarceration; universal free child care; opposition to war and the control and eventual elimination of the police; self-determination; and respect for democracy in all aspects of life are some of the people-centered human rights that can only be realized through a bottom-up mass movement for building popular power.
By shifting the center of human rights struggle away from advocacy to struggle, Malcolm laid the foundation for a more relevant form of human rights struggle for people still caught in the tentacles of Euro-American colonial dominance. The PCHR approach that creates human rights from the bottom-up views human rights as an arena of struggle. Human rights does not emanate from legalistic texts negotiated by states—it comes from the aspirations of the people. Unlike the liberal conception of human rights that elevates some mystical notions of natural law (which is really bourgeois law) as the foundation of rights, the “people” in formation are the ethical foundation and source of PCHRs.”
We are not taught radical history/analysis for a reason. The elites make sure that education doesn’t arm the people with the tools to change society, and really why would they?
[Source: Ajamu Baraka writing on Counterpunch]
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