It is known that individuals who are deeply involved in politics are hyperpartisan, typically engaging in hostile interactions with “both outparty supporters and those within the party who they perceive as not sufficiently extreme” (citation). These tend to be the dominant voices in online political discussions, who then get disproportionately reported on by journalists. It is also known that disadvantaged groups may lack access to formal argumentative skills to effectively share their perspective in the public sphere (citation). Counteracting this, Polletta says storytelling can be equalizing in deliberative settings where people have different knowledge and argumentation skills, “since everyone has his or her own story” (citation).
They find that politically disinclined individuals (PDIs) were:
- more likely to use personal narratives in their comments in political subreddits than more politically active users,
- comments containing personal narratives were slightly more likely to receive responses from other PDIs than other comments, and
- PDIs who employed personal narratives in a given month were more likely to continue participating in political discussions in the subsequent month compared to those who did not.
They interestingly find that personal narratives were positively viewed (measured by karma) by the political community members themselves.
They do not find weaknesses because they did not investigate whether personal narratives were employed for misinformation and the content of the personal narratives, but they cite citation for why it can.
This paper does not say anything about the role of storytelling in a deliberative setting.