Digital storytelling and public stigma: Investigating recovery narratives and intersectionality

Digital storytelling can shift public beliefs, attitudes, and actions towards stigmatized groups, such as people recovering from opioid use disorder (OUD). However, research on digital storytelling often overlooks storytellers’ multiple social identities. Drawing on intersectionality theory, we investigated how a storyteller’s gender and race impacts the process and outcomes of digital storytelling for OUD stigma reduction. Participants (N = 213) read a digital recovery story in which storytellers’ race and gender (Black man, Black woman, white man, or white woman) were varied. Results showed that digital storytelling promoted stigma reduction via narrative involvement, storyteller ease, intergroup ease, and outgroup variability. Gender and race moderated the process: for Black women storytellers, the effect of storyteller ease on intergroup ease was dampened.