Narratives About Democracy: Parliamentary Communication Between Neutrality and Plurality

Parliaments have invested heavily in communications to redress declining levels of trust. This is a delicate venture, as they must remain non-partisan to be accepted by different political groups. Whilst research has documented the expansion of public engagement, little is known about how parliaments balance meaningful interaction with impartiality. Informed by narrative theory, we examine how parliamentary staff build this balance through the use of storytelling by the Chamber of Deputies (Brazil) and the House of Commons (UK) in instances where they responded to violent attacks. Our research combines narrative analysis of website and social media content with 12 semi-structured interviews of parliamentary staff. We show that impartiality is central to parliamentary communication, but that it can be interpreted differently, namely as ‘neutrality’ (UK House of Commons) versus ‘plurality’ (Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies). Our findings make a novel contribution to understanding how parliamentary institutions communicate with the public.