Introduction

In this penultimate chapter we shift gear in order to think about how we might change the conversation on ‘child protection’. We explore the specific issues of seeking to effect social change within a ‘post-truth’ climate and discuss how we might draw from work in social psychology, cognitive linguistics and the sociology of emotions to learn the craft of telling stories. It is hoped such stories might promote identification across divided sections of the population and key into and promote shared values, in order to develop a social model of protecting children.

In doing so we remain mindful of the quote with which we opened this book:

Who tells which stories and who is heard are political issues and we seek to offer some thoughts on how we can develop new kinds of ‘politics’ that support the telling of multiple stories by a range of constituencies in inclusive and respectful forums.

Navigating a post-truth landscape

In 2016, The Oxford English Dictionary selected ‘post-truth’ as its word of the year. Defined by the dictionary as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief ‘, editors said that use of the term ‘post-truth’ had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to the previous year (see Flood, 2016).

Post Brexit, Davies (2016) has noted that one of the complaints made most frequently by liberal commentators, economists and media pundits is that the referendum campaign was conducted without regard to ‘truth’. He argues, however, that this was not quite right. It was more accurate to reflect that it was conducted without adequate regard to the ‘facts’. To the great frustration of the Remain campaign, their ‘facts’ never caught on with the electorate, whereas Leave's ‘facts’ (most famously the £350m/week price tag of EU membership) did appear to be believed.