From reel life to real social change: the role of contemporary social-issue documentary in U.S. public policy

Abstract

This article examines three digital-era social-issue documentaries – Sin by Silence, Playground, and Semper Fi – to reveal elements of cultural and narrative influence that contributed to legislative change in the United States. Expanding the coalition model of documentary’s political impact through case studies and in-depth interviews with policy subnetworks shaped for each film – policymakers and legislative staffers, advocacy group leaders, and documentary directors – this study finds that social-issue documentaries are influential for U.S. policy engagement when they are perceived as emotional, factual, and nonpartisan. Documentary is thus positioned as ‘situated knowledge’ in a policymaking context – narrative that presents human implications and lived experiences. Ultimately, the policy impact of these documentaries is attributed to the dual defining characteristics of documentary: creative expression and reflection of truth. The present work contributes to expanding literature about documentary and social change.

Keywords

documentary legislative change public policy social change social impact social-issue documentary

In 2012, documentarians Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering released The Invisible War, their searing indictment of sexual assault in the U.S. military (Jenkins, 2012). Beyond a general public audience, the filmmakers shaped the screening campaign to reach Capitol Hill and the Department of Defense directly (Jenkins, 2012). After a PBS broadcast, The Invisible War won both Peabody and Emmy Awards (Dick, 2013).

From 2012 to 2014, throughout the course of a strategic outreach campaign that included 1,400 community screenings and Capitol Hill events (BRITDOC, n.d.), signs of policy movement appeared: U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel publicly announced new victim-protection and reporting initiatives (Steinhauer, 2013), and U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced federal legislation to improve reporting and prosecution processes (Newton-Small, 2014). In January 2013, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Bill into law, which included new measures to improve military sexual assault prevention (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year, 2013).

For Senator Gillibrand – who held a 2013 congressional hearing (U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2013), proposed legislation, and continues related policy efforts in Congress – the push for policy engagement ignited when she watched The Invisible War: ‘My fury watching these stories unfold was so strong I just said, “I just had to do something about it”’ (Laslo, 2014).

While documentary films have resided within policy engagement efforts prior to the digital era (Abrash and Whiteman, 1999; Christensen, 2009; McEnteer, 2006; Whiteman, 2004), the practice of leveraging nonfiction stories to advocate for change in the networked Internet age is robust (Nash and Corner, 2016) and influential (Borum Chattoo, 2018). However, a deeper understanding of the process by which intimate, emotionally engaging contemporary documentary films can successfully engage with – and shape – public policy is limited.

The purpose of this study was to analyze three contemporary social-issue documentary films that fueled definitive legislative change on the federal and state levels in the United States within the last decade: Sin by Silence, Semper Fi, and Playground. The study locates its foundation within scholarship about documentary and policy (Whiteman, 2004). Ultimately, this work endeavors to illuminate key elements of influence that explicate how and why contemporary social-issue documentary storytelling may contribute to policy change related to social justice issues in the United States.

Through in-depth interviews with the films’ directors, advocacy group leaders, and policymakers and their staffers who worked together in a policy engagement capacity, the article constructs case studies to reveal cultural and narrative elements of influence that helped to change laws around domestic violence, environmental health, and child sex trafficking, respectively. Following policy theorist Sabatier (1991: 148), this work asserts that these collaborative individuals comprised collaborative ‘policy subnetworks’ essential to fostering policy in the United States. The article also posits that the dual characteristics of the documentary narrative – creative art but truth (Nichols, 2010) – solidified successful policy engagement. The emotional resonance of creative storytelling, bolstered with factual material, was influential to a policy audience.

This research fills a gap in the literature about contemporary documentary films and policy in the United States, particularly by revealing the direct perspectives of policymakers and other policy professionals themselves, generally not reflected in scholarship. In addition, while earlier research has considered the organizing role of documentary in a policy context (Christensen, 2009; Whiteman, 2004), it has not profiled the decision-making nuances around campaigns that led to definitive legislative change, not simply the attempt. The article contributes to the growing literature about contemporary documentary as a form of social influence and public engagement mechanism (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017; Nash and Corner, 2016), as well as the professional practice of fostering civic participation through nonfiction storytelling (Barrett and Leddy, 2008).

Literature review

The societal influence of documentary storytelling

Documentary is a mediated storytelling form and practice that endeavors to artistically reflect real life (Aufderheide, 2007). A durable 1930s definition from documentarian and social reformer, John Grierson, explains the genre as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ (Nichols, 2010: 6). Both parts – art and real life – are key to understanding documentary.

Documentary’s rising influence is partially due to the proliferation of outlets that distribute nonfiction stories in the digital age (Kenny, 2017; Nichols, 2010). Perhaps reflecting the increased access and impact of 21st century documentaries, scholars have begun to examine the impact of nonfiction storytelling through audience effects research. In so doing, such research has reflected the primary aspects of documentary’s definition as both creative visual storytelling expression and reflection of truth.

Theoretical work about the persuasive influence of storytelling is meaningful in the context of documentary. Green’s (2004) seminal work helps to establish storytelling-based persuasion as a function of both narrative transportation and perceived realism of the story. Emotional engagement, too, is a highlight mechanism to explain human-narrative-centered documentary’s potent audience impact potential (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017). Indeed, scholars have found that documentary can influence audiences because of its emotional appeal and narrative transportation into an engaging story (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017), perceived realism (LaMarre and Landreville, 2009), capacity to fuel empathy (Schutte and Stilinović, 2017), and ability to re-frame audience attitudes about fraught – often ideologically polarized – social issues (Bruneau et al., 2017).

While emotional resonance is a vital characteristic of creative documentaries that spotlight dire social problems, albeit with artistic license, this trait also is shared by journalistic narrative developed within norms of objectivity. We argue that the emotional potential of mediated nonfiction stories that reveal social challenges – and may prompt institutional or public response – are not, by categorical description, propagandistic manipulation but rather, as the documentaries profiled here reveal, exposure of unseen narratives. Indeed, as this article’s first author has previously articulated along with colleagues:

As scholars have repeatedly demonstrated, journalism generally develops narratives that may cause discomfort and awareness of problems that may trigger concern for action, without exhibiting partisan bias (Scheufele, 1999). Indeed, the role of exposing issues has, from the origins of the nation, been seen as a core function of democratic life, in which ordinary citizens take political action based on knowledge. Research on the relationship of media and democracy demonstrates the vital link between a rich information environment and democratic participation. (Borum Chattoo et al., 2018: 1544)

In these films, then, intimate human narrative is crucial, but so, too, is a demonstrable command of credible factual information. This study focuses on this approach to social-issue documentary storytelling.

Documentary and public engagement

Documentary ‘has become the flagship for a cinema of social engagement’ (Nichols, 2010: 2). The idea of a documentary’s social responsibility originated in the early 20th century, as John Grierson canonized a perspective about documentary as a means to champion social reform (Aufderheide, 2007). This underpinning has remained firmly at the core of a distinct articulation of a digital-era genre as social-issue documentary (Borum Chattoo, 2018), or ‘strategic impact documentary’, which ‘aims to achieve specific social change by aligning documentary production with online and offline communications practice’ (Nash and Corner, 2016: 227). Contemporary social-issue documentaries foster public engagement through a synergistic combination of intimate nonfiction storytelling and coordination with the public and civil society around social justice themes (Borum Chattoo, 2016; Nash and Corner, 2016).

Professional practice that combines community engagement and documentaries is robust (Barrett and Leddy, 2008). Documentary is an apparatus for public engagement as it facilitates community organizing (Abrash and Whiteman, 1999), leverages the participatory aspects of the Internet age (Aguayo, 2013), and involves the public in shaping stories (Canella, 2017; Christensen, 2009). Public engagement in social issues through documentary storytelling is influential, in this perspective, not only due to the emotionally engaging aspects of the storytelling itself, but through amplification from the public, as well as media coverage and overt activation by issue-expert organizations (Borum Chattoo, 2016).

Policy engagement: narrative and documentary

From a theoretical lens, scholars have addressed the contributing role of narrative in public policy. Bartel (2015) asserts that conceptualizing policy requires the use of humanities and narrative to help reflect ideas of humanity and empathy. Clemons et al. (2012) argue that policy views may be shaped by stories, not only science. In the policy decision-making process, Epstein et al. (2014) emphasize the dominant role of facts and evidence as the core decision-making mechanism for policymakers, although specific narrative types can be useful for engaging policy decision-makers. Narratives that include ‘situated knowledge’ – that is, ‘information about impacts, problems, enforceability, contributory causes, unintended consequences and so on, that is known by participants because of lived experience in the complex reality into which the proposed regulation would be introduced,’ (Epstein et al., 2014: 251) can be instrumental in the policy decision-making process. Niederdeppe et al. (2016) assert that individual narratives are meaningful in garnering policymakers’ support of a health-related policy solution when paired with statistical information. Although existing work situates documentary as a potentially potent source of such narrative in the policy process, extant literature has not yet considered a more explicit connection between documentary narrative and policy decision-making; this study aims to contribute toward this end.

The policy process itself is collaborative. Seminal work from policy theorist Sabatier (1991) has noted that a full understanding of the policymaking decision-making process must include a focus on a wider, collaborative group of policy experts than individual governmental institutions alone; this ‘policy community or subnetwork’ includes interest groups, researchers, and legislative staffers, along with policymakers themselves (Sabatier, 1991: 148). This perspective squarely positions nonprofit issue advocates within the professional policy vortex – that is, the issue experts who provide in-depth information about an issue and raise public awareness but are not engaged in formal regulated lobbying activity (Independent Sector, n.d.). Similarly, policy staffers who work for elected policymakers are expert professionals within the policymaking business (Fox and Hammond, 1977; Romzek and Utter, 1996; Sabatier, 1991).

Along the spectrum of public engagement for positive societal impact, the intersection of social-issue documentaries and policy has been considered in a limited way in peer-reviewed literature; this is the focal point of this study. Whiteman’s (2004: 51) ‘coalition model’ argues that, rather than focusing centrally on individual audience members’ viewing experiences with a finished film in order to articulate a documentary’s societal impact (an ‘individualistic model’), assessing the policy impact of a documentary necessitates examining the influence on policymakers and advocacy groups. According to the coalition model, the policy impact of a documentary on a social issue occurs because the film successfully engages an existing network of advocacy and activist groups – professionals and community members working on an issue and capable of mobilizing publics – and policymakers (Whiteman, 2004). The coalition model expresses the policy impact of documentary by examining two specific arenas of impact: (1) effects on activist groups and (2) effects on decision-makers and political elites (Whiteman, 2004: 54).

This study follows, but expands, this model for articulating documentary’s policy impact by explicating additional elements of influence that follow documentary’s seminal definition as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ – art and truth (Nichols, 2010: 6). Thus far, scholarship that connects public policy engagement and contemporary documentary has not included the characteristics of the social-issue documentary narrative as a storytelling genre with particular attributes – artistic, emotional, and factual. In the context of policy, documentary can be seen as a source of situated knowledge – that is, narrative that reveals the human impact of policy, following Epstein et al. (2014). The present work includes these considerations.

Research questions

This study builds on the coalition model for assessing the political impact of documentary (Whiteman, 2004) by answering what is not yet explicated – that is, the precise influence elements from the documentary’s narrative and campaign that helped lead to policy success. It also positions documentary film policy engagement as the collaborative process of policy subnetworks that include advocacy groups, policy staffers, and sources of external information (Sabatier, 1991). The article addresses the following questions:

RQ1. How did disparate professionals in a policy subnetwork – across documentary film, public policy, and professional issue advocacy – work together to successfully change public policy in the United States based on core social issues of three films?

RQ2. What are the key elements of influence within a successful documentary-based social change campaign that endeavors to change laws in the United States?

Method

Case studies and interview protocol

After a scan of film festival screenings and media coverage of social-issue documentaries released within the last decade, three documentaries were chosen for analysis based on their success in fostering public policy change: Sin by Silence, Semper Fi, and Playground. This study employed a case study method (Yin, 2009). Given the insular nuances of individual policy processes and limited literature that connects policy with documentary, qualitative case study was an appropriate methodological approach. Here, each case study provides a chronology of the film and the nuances of its associated grassroots-enabled public policy campaign and eventual policy victory. Final analysis highlights shared elements of influence.

To generate the case studies, we completed in-depth interviews (Yin, 2009) with the disparate professionals who worked together, successfully centering documentary films in their efforts for federal or local policy engagement. Yin (2009: 102) references interviews as one of six primary sources of case study information, particularly appropriate in cases where the inquiry into a phenomenon is specific and ‘targeted’. For this study, interviews were both focused, with the same questions for each professional, but also in-depth, allowing unanticipated reflections and thus, new conclusions that expand beyond current literature (Yin, 2009: 107), given the nascent positioning of this topic in existing literature. In addition, we consulted public and media sources to provide additional detail; Yin (2009) notes that, ‘for case studies, the most important use of documents is to corroborate and augment evidence from other sources’ (p. 103).

For each documentary, we completed three or four in-depth phone interviews with professionals from disparate sectors who worked together to shape legislative change: (1) the film director, the documentarian who created the film and directed its public outreach campaign; (2) the professional issue advocate, the decision-making leader from a nonprofit issue advocacy organization who worked with the film, filmmaker, policymaker, and staff; and (3) the policymaker or key legislative staffer who shaped or facilitated the final law. For two of the films (Sin by Silence and Semper Fi), the main adult on-screen characters were also interviewed. For Playground, the primary narrative focused on a young sex-trafficking survivor, so an interview was not appropriate.

Interviewees and questions

The Sin by Silence interviewees were: Olivia Klaus (film director), Brenda Clubine (on-screen character), Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (California state legislator), and Heidi Rummel (legal expert and advocate). The Semper Fi interviewees were: Rachel Libert (film director), Jerry Ensminger (on-screen character), Heather White (former executive director from the Environmental Working Group), ‘Burr Staffer’ (pseudonym for then-legislative staffer for Senator Richard Burr, North Carolina), and ‘Dingell Staffer’ (pseudonym for then-legislative staffer for Congressman John Dingell, Michigan). The Playground interviewees were: Libby Spears (film director), Carol Smolenski (executive director of ECPAT USA), and ‘Wyden Staffer’ (pseudonym for then-legislative staffer for Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon).

Based on relevant literature across film and policy – centrally, the Whiteman (2004) coalition model to assess policy impact of a social-issue documentary, evidence of documentaries’ emotional resonance with audiences as a mechanism for public engagement (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017), the foundation of the policy subnetwork collaborative process (Sabatier, 1991), and contribution of narratives as situated knowledge in the policymaking process (Epstein et al., 2014) – the interview questions focused on three key areas: (1) an in-depth chronology and understanding about how the film and policy efforts intersected symbiotically, guided by disparate professionals working together in a created policy subnetwork; (2) factors that were influential in educating and mobilizing grassroots publics and policymakers; and (3) perspectives about leveraging a human-narrative-focused documentary film as a mechanism to achieve aligned policy goals.

Data collection and analysis

In total, we completed 12 in-depth interviews. This approach adheres to a well-cited Guest et al. (2006) methodological study (p. 59), which asserts that data saturation from in-depth interviews for thematic analysis with a nonprobability sample takes place within 12 interviews, although adequate themes emerge in six. All interviews took place by phone between November 2015 and June 2017, using a consistent interview guide. Each lasted approximately 1 hr and was audio-recorded with consent. A university Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviewed the protocol. Following data collection, the interview transcripts were analyzed by emergent themes, following an iterative process. For analysis, we examined the written transcripts to identify themes and categories of influence based on the research questions, and we also leveraged the transcripts to develop the detailed chronological case studies. We included available media coverage as needed to corroborate evidence from the interviews, following Yin (2009).

Results

Case studies

Sin by Silence (2009)

From behind prison walls, SIN BY SILENCE reveals the lives of extraordinary women who advocate for a future free from domestic violence. Inside the California Institution for Women, the first inmate-initiated and led group in the U.S. prison system, shatters the misconceptions of domestic violence. (Sin by Silence, n.d.)

The director of Sin by Silence, Olivia Klaus, started making her film after volunteering with the women of Convicted Women Against Abuse (CWAA), a group of self-organized incarcerated women working to change the system and repeal their cases. At that time, California state law did not consider the women’s abuse in sentencing decisions; consequently, they were sentenced as murderers in the first or second degree. The film’s main subject and CWAA founder, Brenda Clubine, had been incarcerated for more than 20 years, sentenced on a second-degree murder charge after killing her husband in self-defense. After she was released in 2008, Clubine became a key spokesperson for the film (B Clubine, personal communication, 7 June 2017).

Sin by Silence premiered in film festivals in 2009 and aired on Investigation Discovery in 2011 (Sin by Silence, n.d.). As her core education and outreach strategy, Klaus launched a grassroots engagement tour, screening the film in the ten states with the most troubling domestic abuse statistics. She partnered with community organizations and coalitions that were part of state chapters for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, hosting hundreds of screenings over a few years.

Following a community screening at the University of San Francisco, a copy of the film was sent by a member of the audience to California State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco and San Mateo Counties), who was chair of the Domestic Violence Select Committee for the California State Assembly at the time. Ma started the path to policy change after hosting Klaus at the Domestic Violence Caucus in Sacramento, where they screened the film for legislators. ‘The legislative change really started there at that screening, because every legislator who watched it wanted to do something about the issue [after watching]’ (O Klaus, personal communication, 8 May 2017).

For Assemblywoman Ma, watching the film was a professionally defining moment:

We [staffers in my office and I] watched the film and we knew immediately we had to do something about this issue; we had no idea this was happening. The elected officials and their staff who saw the film was sympathetic … This had vast bipartisan support – Democrats and Republicans. (F Ma, personal communication, 8 May 2017)

After the screening, Assemblywoman Ma contacted Heidi Rummel, a public interest attorney and professor at the University of Southern California who was an expert on domestic violence policy in California. Rummel, along with the California Habeas Project, helped to shape the two eventual pieces of legislation, the Sin by Silence Bills: AB 593 and AB 1593, which allow expert testimony in jury trials about the effects of long-term domestic violence, and require that parole boards ‘give great weight to any information or evidence that proves the prisoner experienced intimate partner battering (IPB) and its effects at the time the crime was committed’, respectively (Sin by Silence Bills, n.d.).

Assemblywoman Ma became a public champion for the film, the women’s stories, and the proposed legislation. She hosted screenings, hearings, and meetings with traditionally oppositional groups, and she leveraged media opportunities about the film to build awareness of the issue. On October 12, 2012, California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed the two Sin by Silence bills into law; they went into effect on January 1, 2013 (Sin by Silence Bills, 2012).

Semper Fi (2011)

Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger was a devoted Marine for nearly twenty-five years. As a drill instructor he lived and breathed the ‘Corps’ and was responsible for indoctrinating thousands of new recruits with its motto Semper Fidelis or ‘Always Faithful’. When Jerry’s nine-year-old daughter Janey died of a rare type of leukemia, his world collapsed. As a grief-stricken father, he struggled for years to make sense of what happened. His search for answers led to the shocking discovery of a Marine Corps cover-up of one of the largest water contamination incidents in U.S. history. (Semper Fi: Always Faithful, n.d.-a)

Semper Fi: Always Faithful (n.d.-b), directed by Tony Hardmon and Rachel Libert, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2013, and it was placed on the short list for the 2012 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award. Since 1997, Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger had been investigating the 1985 leukemia death of his 9-year-old daughter, Janey. He suspected that the Marine Corps and U.S. Department of Defense may have known but failed to provide information about chemical contaminants in the water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where he had lived with his family in prior years (J Ensminger, personal communication, 11 December 2015).

In 2004, The Washington Post published an in-depth story about Ensminger and his work (Roig-Franzia and Skipp, 2004). Documentary filmmakers Rachel Libert and Tony Hardmon, who had heard about Ensminger’s story from his sister while working on a different project, set out to track him down to tell his story visually, through a film. ‘You can be invested in the story of this man and his passion, even if you didn’t connect with that issue’ (R Libert, personal communication, 2 December 2015). The legislative hope was to secure health care for the Marines and their families who had been harmed by the toxic water contamination. Ensminger’s quest attracted the attention of U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.), who served at the time as the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell and his staff had been working for several years on environmental regulation related to toxic contaminants; to push the policy engagement forward, they had been actively looking for human stories to reveal the impact (‘Dingell Staffer’, personal communication, 29 March 2016).

Ensminger and the film team established additional relationships in Congress, focusing on North Carolina, home to Camp Lejuene. After Ensminger’s meeting with Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Burr’s office assigned a senior staffer, ‘Burr Staffer’, to work with Ensminger; this staffer eventually wrote the legislation that became law.

Over the next few years, documentarians Libert and Hardmon established connections with professional issue advocates in order to build an active grassroots infrastructure for the film’s awareness and education objectives (R Libert, personal communication, 2 December 2015). While they filmed, they worked with issue-expert advocacy groups to help them reach other congressional offices, distribute press releases and information to their members, and facilitate Capitol Hill screenings. Two groups were key: Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). Heather White, then Executive Director of the EWG, assigned a policy expert in her office to work directly with Ensminger and the film team. She said, ‘Our role at EWG was to get media attention, to provide another voice from the victims’ (H White, personal communication, 13 November 2015).

The documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2011 and broadcast on MSNBC in February 2012. Several months later, after considerable media coverage and vocal public awareness after the TV broadcast (R Libert, personal communication, 2 December 2015), the Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012 – the ‘Janey Ensminger Act’ – was signed by President Obama (Ordonez and Barrett, 2012). The new law, based on Senator Burr’s legislation provides health care for Marine Corps veterans and their families who lived or worked at Camp Lejeune from January 1, 1957, through December 31, 1987, and who have a condition linked to exposure to the toxic chemicals as listed in the legislation (Ordonez and Barrett, 2012).

Playground: The Child Sex Trade in America (2009)

Challenging the notion that the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children is limited to back-alley brothels in developing countries, the documentary feature film, PLAYGROUND: The Child Sex Trade in America traces the phenomenon to its disparate, and decidedly domestic, roots – among them the way children are educated about sex, and the problem of raising awareness about a crime that inherently cannot be shown. (Nest Foundation, n.d.)

Documentary director Libby Spears began producing her film after she learned that sexual trafficking of children was misunderstood by the American public and its leaders (L Spears, personal communication, 11 December 2015). As the film team wrapped the editing of the film, she noted:

…it became clear that the film could have a tremendous impact in addressing laws that we encountered in the making of the film – laws that disproportionately criminalized victims and the lack of policy advancements that earmarked funding for resources, services and shelters. (L Spears, personal communication, 11 December 2015)

Spears built a grassroots community and advocacy relationships during production, and the screening tour started with a 2009 Tribeca Film Festival premiere (L Spears, personal communication, 11 December 2015). A legislative opportunity emerged as the film screened with policy experts:

At the time, there were no laws that differentiated between adults who willingly engaged in sex work, and children who were being forced to sell themselves. Because children were being arrested and treated like criminals, there were no services available to them. The most important thing that needed to happen for policy change was for minors to be recognized as victims, then resources would be made available to them. (L Spears, personal communication, 11 December 2015)

As the screening campaign continued, the film team created partnerships with nonprofit advocacy groups who were leading experts on the issue of exploited children: Polaris Project, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and ECPAT-USA. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) saw the film at a private screening, which led to awareness and early legislative engagement related to the narrative (L Spears, personal communication, 11 December 2015). In 2010, Senator Durbin hosted one of the first U.S. Senate hearings focused on child sex trafficking in the United States, citing Playground as the inciting reason:

Recently I saw a powerful documentary, along with Senator Wyden … It was a documentary entitled ‘Playground’, and it was directed by a visionary filmmaker named Libby Spears, who is with us today …

I am glad you did and opened our eyes to this, and thank you for your inspiration that led to this hearing today, and I hope it leads to new laws that will protect these children and deal with them in the right, humane way. This documentary opened the eyes of Senator Wyden and myself and many others … (U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2010).

The bi-partisan Wyden–Cornyn Bill, known formally as the Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act (S. 596, 2011), was introduced by Senator Wyden (D-OR) and Senator Cornyn (R-TX) in March 2011, providing funding for essential services like shelters for child victims of domestic sex trafficking, training for law enforcement, and calls for states to treat minor as victims rather than criminals. In January 2015, Senator Cornyn introduced the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act; the bill, sponsored by original co-sponsors, Senators Wyden (D-OR), Kirk (R-IL), and Klobuchar (D-MN), became law in May 2015 (Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, 2015).

The policy opportunity also existed on the state level: The state-level Safe Harbor laws, which focus on U.S. child trafficking, ‘have two components: legal protection and provision of services’– notably, they officially recognize children as victims (Polaris Project, 2015). According to ECPAT-USA executive director Smolenski, Playground was a vital, unique mechanism by which the advocates could help educate the public and state legislators, to increase their understanding that the young people were not ‘prostitutes’, but victims needing help (C Smolenski, personal communication, 11 March 2016). Playground was an instrumental centerpiece to build awareness and mobilize the public. ‘We used (the film) in a lot of public education things in general, and that’s the first stop for changing laws is to educate the public and the legislators in the first place’ (C Smolenski, personal communication, 11 March 2016). The first Safe Harbor law went into effect in New York in 2010; as of 2015, Safe Harbor laws have been adopted in 34 states (Polaris Project, 2015), an increase from 18 states in 2013 (Polaris Project, 2013).

Shared elements of documentary film influence in the policy process

The role of policy elites networks

The disparate professionals profiled here – advocacy/issue experts, policymakers and staffers, and filmmakers – formed distinct policy subnetworks (Sabatier, 1991), with the films’ narratives at the epicenter, acting as situated knowledge, or the articulation of lived human experience as a component of policymaking process (Epstein et al., 2014). The advocacy expert leaders, policymakers, and their staffers educated their members and constituents. Issue advocates acted as expert policy guides, helping to point the filmmakers in strategic directions to maximize their films’ policy potential and reach, and they helped amplify media coverage. In so doing, the policy networks leveraged the films as persuasive, nonpartisan material, and the filmmakers as spokespeople.

In the case of Playground, for example, due to the endorsing and organizing work of issue advocacy and policy leaders, the film screened at public events and closed-door sessions with policymakers and influencers, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) screening for 450 agents, a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, the Judicial Conference for U.S. Judges, Senator Wyden’s Human Trafficking congressional briefing, and a screening for federal judges. The documentary was valuable for issue advocates: ‘Playground was the only movie that really showed this issue. [Without it] I wouldn’t have had any other way to tell engaging case study stories about this issue’ (C Smolenski, personal communication, 11 March 2016).

In the case of Sin by Silence, as Assemblywoman Ma championed her new bills – crafted and named after seeing the film – she and her office worked directly with Klaus and the active, engaged group of community supporters who had seen the documentary during the grassroots screening tour. As public support intensified, support for the legislation moved through the California House and Senate on the way to the governor’s office:

We met with the governor’s office, giving them copies of the film, hosting a screening just for the governor’s office and bringing Brenda [the film’s subject], and engaging all of our grassroots lists of supporters to bombard the governor’s office with letters and calls … every time they shared their story, it really moved us along. (F Ma, personal communication, 8 May 2017)

Also engaged by policy networks – alongside the grassroots efforts of the filmmakers in community screenings – media amplification and mobilizing grassroots publics played a strategic role in the interplay between these documentaries and their policy engagement victories. For Semper Fi, for example, by the time the film screened on MSNBC in 2012, the earlier momentum of the proposed legislation had halted. The resulting news coverage, public outcry, and timing of the TV premiere was key to pushing the legislation over the edge, according to interviews. The amplified community created by the symbiosis of media coverage, advocacy groups, and public pressure in the form of letters, emails, and calls to Congress was the key to final policy success.

The role of emotion and facts in social-issue documentary narrative

The emotional, human-centered narrative of the three social-issue documentaries was a primary element of decision-making influence in this study, but command of factual information also was crucial. All policymakers, staffers, and issue advocates interviewed here emphasized the immediate emotional responses to the documentaries. In the case of Playground, the policymakers spoke of seeing an issue with a new lens. Similarly, for Sin by Silence, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma responded emotionally to seeing an issue that was new to her, compelling her immediately into legislative action:

A fact sheet would not have moved me. The movie is powerful because it humanizes what the issue is. For me, the film was the big driver. If someone had just handed me stats about 7,000 women sitting in prison who needed my help, it wouldn’t have been the same, compared to us saying ‘we need to help Brenda’. The documentary was strong and powerful because it gave us a broader scope and opportunity to actually hear and see these women’s stories. (F Ma, personal communication, 8 May 2017)

The documentary narrative provided a new tool of public education and engagement for the issue advocacy. Interest groups, attorneys, survivors, and families had been engaged in advocacy around domestic violence and the justice system for years by the time Sin by Silence was released. ‘Grassroots advocates and groups finally had a way to share the stories of these women, which they didn’t have before’ (O Klaus, personal communication, 8 May 2017).

For Semper Fi, the story fit into an existing policy framework around toxic environmental contamination, but the human-centered emotional narrative allowed issue advocates and policymakers to work across usual partisan perspectives. According to the EWG leader,

Every story needs to be personal; the conversation needs to be values-based, not technological, and needs to be bipartisan as much as possible … If we can’t encapsulate these technical, complex issues in a meaningful storytelling way, we won’t be effective. (H White, personal communication, 13 November)

Said the legislative staffer who crafted the eventual law,

Most staffers want to make a difference and feel like they are part of making a difference. So, when something as significant as this documentary came along, we all felt like there was a way to be a part of something bigger. (‘Burr Staffer’, personal communication, 6 January 2016).

The interviewed policy experts asserted that the documentaries provided new stories alongside nonpartisan command of facts – not propaganda. For instance, the Playground policymakers spoke about the nonpartisan narrative as a point of influence. According to the former senior aide to Senator Wyden, ‘Libby became an expert … It’s very easy to dismiss films that are seen as partisan’ (‘Wyden Staffer’, personal communication, 8 January 2016). In the case of Playground, the film’s story also served as a narrative re-framing that was crucial to unlocking a legislative path, on both federal and state levels. Prior to the new legislation around, exploited minors were referenced as ‘child prostitutes’, failing to recognize their victim status. Smolenski saw the film’s role in shifting the narrative as key:

In some ways, Playground was part of a movement that was already taking place. It came out as the shift was just starting to take place and it contributed to that shift … It also really contributed to a recognition by law enforcement that these were not bad kids but kids that needed help. The film is a completely different way of looking at it. (C Smolenski, personal communication, 11 March 2016)

For all advocates and policymakers, focusing on partisan-framed unrealistic solutions – even unwittingly – would have meant the films likely wouldn’t have been taken seriously by issue experts and policy leaders. Policy staffers engaged with Semper Fi, for example, pointed to the film’s nonpartisan, human-focused narratives, noting that unlikely groups – environmental justice, Republicans, and military families, normally opposed on ideological levels – came together in pursuit of a common goal. ‘I’ve seen a lot of partisan activist groups really flame out – some in frustration or some who make it conspiratorial – but they did this exactly the right way to ultimately be effective, even in a polarized world’ (‘Dingell Staffer’, personal communication, 29 March 2016). In sum, members of the policy networks profiled here pointed to emotional resonance, documentary narrative as source of new insight, and the command of facts and nonpartisan framing.

Discussion

The documentaries profiled here coalesced the machinery of policy toward legislative success, through a collaborative process with human narrative at the core. The filmmakers situated themselves in the hands of elite, connected policy networks that conferred credibility to the films through their association, and in turn, incorporated the documentary narratives into ongoing efforts for public education and policy engagement.

This study locates digital-era social-issue documentary within policy literature that asserts the collaborative nature of legislative work through policy subnetworks (Sabatier, 1991). Centrally, it supports a coalition model to assess the political impact of documentary (Whiteman, 2004); that is, it finds clear evidence in support of the model’s original elements: the role and impact of advocacy organizations, and the impact on policymakers. We extend the model by articulating additional influence elements that position a human-focused social-issue documentary narrative style at the center of policy decision-makers’ endorsements of the films.

We also expand existing literature on the role of documentary for strategic impact (Nash and Corner, 2016) by explicating original case studies. First, following documentary’s most enduring definition – a dual focus on artistic expression and real life (Nichols, 2010) – this work finds evidence of policy engagement due to the nature of both story (creative expression) and commitment to reflecting truth. Indeed, the interviewees in this study pointed to both as elements of policy influence. Crucially, the films were perceived by policy professionals as nonpartisan, an honest articulation of facts that did not take explicit ideological, partisan positions on policy solutions. They were not seen, in other words, as propagandistic expressions, but as journalistic, intimate portrayals of human lives and facts. This point may be particularly salient for documentary professionals: in a culture of partisan gridlock, U.S. policy decision-makers here point to the human-centered, truthful narrative and the explicit rejection of ideological doctrine as the key reason for successful issue education and policy engagement. The films reached beyond partisan choirs. Still, a cautionary note applies: tremendous ethical responsibilities and challenges exist for social-issue documentarians leveraging artistic license. Further research must include additional inquiry about social-issue documentarians’ ethical challenges and solutions, adding to literature focused on perspectives of on-screen documentary subjects (Nash, 2012).

Second, in parallel fashion, this study finds influence due to the emotional resonance of a human-centered documentary narrative. Indeed, the coalition model (Whiteman, 2004) does not address the nature and role of the storytelling narrative itself. Rather, the original coalition model positions the information available to policy networks from documentary as just that – information. It does not consider the potentially persuasive role of this genre as a story. A byproduct of creative license in documentary may be its ability to spotlight human stories at the center, but to do so in an artistic way that may deepen its emotional influence. The centrality of emotional resonance is not only a key characteristic of documentary and mechanism of influence in audience research (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017; LaMarre and Landreville, 2009), but indeed, it is an explicit characteristic of influence experienced by these policy elites.

Finally, although the role of documentary narrative is not explicitly mentioned as a potential source of ‘situated knowledge’ in a policy arena in the original source material from Epstein and colleagues cited here (Epstein et al., 2014: 251), the present study positions documentary thusly. Indeed, the original work is not specific about the genre or format of this provision of situated knowledge narrative, so this conclusion may expand that lens and point to future work. This article positions policy engagement networks in the context of documentary, representing documentarians here as individuals who can provide situated knowledge in a policy context – that is, narrative that illuminates policy impact on real lives (Epstein et al., 2014), to policy-shaping elites such as policymakers, legislative staffers, and issue experts within advocacy organizations. Policy advocacy leaders, policymakers, and their staffers described watching these documentaries as the experience of seeing a human issue for the first time, or in a new way. In turn, these lenses prompted specific policy initiatives. Seeing the real-life impact on human lives through documentary narrative was crucial.

The present work is limited in its ability to make quantitatively based conclusions about the three documentaries’ overt emotional engagement with the audience – including policymakers as ‘audience’ – based on effects-based mechanisms of influence, such as narrative transportation (Green, 2004) or the role of emotion (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017). That said, evidence of the films’ emotional appeals is seen from the perspective of the policy professionals interviewed here, all of whom pointed to emotional response as key to their motivation to pursue legislative change. Future research might examine a broader group of documentary films over time to assess the extent to which these elements of influence and collaboration are evident.

With fact-based, emotional documentary narrative at the core, we were interested in the nuances of the collaborative policy process not explicated in the literature, and indeed, difficult to obtain – that is, the decision-making perspectives of policy professionals who shaped definitive legislative victories. Still, future research may endeavor to pair this study’s interview-based approach with an audience study. Similarly, investigating nonfiction forms of expression with overt partisan lenses and essay-argumentation approaches (such as D’Souza’s Death of a Nation) would be a worthwhile comparative, given that the nonpartisan perspective of the films profiled here was meaningful for public and policy education, according to these professional policy voices. Finally, this work does not include several areas of important inquiry within the context of social-issue documentary, including the production context of the films and the expectations of their funders. Future work might consider these questions, along with a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between grassroots advocacy groups and documentarians who endeavor to make change.

This study found evidence that a human-centered social-issue documentary film can unveil an unseen story to U.S. policy-making audiences, and further, it can foster policy change by spotlighting the experiences of real people in emotionally engaging ways. As explicated, when a documentary reveals an artistically rendered, intimate real story – and the narrative is backed with credible facts – policymakers and advocacy groups may embrace the film strategically into existing or new efforts to advance a social justice issue. This is a mutually beneficial practice. In the information age, characterized by digitally engaged civic engagement, social-issue documentaries are positioned to harness the attention and commitment of publics and specialized professionals whose decisions impact daily life – policy experts and decision-makers – because they illuminate stories about the shared human condition.

Footnotes

Funding

Through the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University, the authors received a grant from the Fledgling Fund, a private foundation based in the United States, to support this research.

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