Finding Hopeful Narratives for a Greener Appalachia

This report summarizes key findings from a recent round of audience testing that NMAP conducted with people living in the Ohio River Valley using ​dscout, a flexible online tool that provides fieldwork-quality insights by allowing participants to deeply immerse themselves in our content on their own time, and in their own homes. We tested core narratives created during a weeklong workshop with organizational representatives from the People Over Petro Coalition (POPCo), as well as potential written and visual messages created by NMAP in response to POPCo’s narrative ideas.

We tested these narratives and messages with a diversity of 18+ audience segments in Eastern Kentucky, Southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, and Southern Pennsylvania, to determine which narratives and messages resonate with Appalachian audiences the most. The narratives and messages are intended to help ground regional advocacy efforts that strive to stop petrochemical expansion and build a cleaner, greener, more equitable future for Appalachia.

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