Give Me a Story Memorable Enough, and I Shall Move the World: A Proto-Typology of Storytelling in Online Petitions of Human Rights International Non-Governmental Organizations

This study investigated the storytelling elements of 81 online petitions from 10 human rights international non-governmental organizations (HR-INGOs). The purpose was to analyze the content, structure, and context of the stories in these petitions and reconcile them into a typology—or “proto-typology,” since it was based on a specific sample of HR-INGOs and was intended for future studies to build upon. The study adapted the combined content-analysis (CCA) methodology devised by Hamad et al. (2016). There were three text-mining techniques (word frequency analysis, sentiment analysis, and hierarchical clustering) and then a qualitative stage of narrative inquiry to conduct the data analysis that developed into the proto-typology. The narrative inquiry stage involved: (1) a cycle of narrative coding, (2) code landscaping, (3) a cycle of pattern coding, and (4) categorizing. The completed proto-typology includes three main categories, with a few pattern codes under each one to symbolize sub-categories, i.e., the story types.