Meet Our 2022 Rising Star Winner: Shaun Cammack!
Even though our 2022 Annual Gala & Awards Ceremony has come and gone, we wanted to make sure we gave our 2022 Award Winners the attention and praise they deserve for all their work making their communities and this country more free and prosperous places. Let’s take a look at one of our 2022 Rising Stars: Shaun Cammack!
In August of 2020, Shaun Cammack was working on a proposal for Ph.D. research in cultural evolution. On the 25th of that same month, a young midwestern man shot four people in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The next day, two very different stories emerged. This divergence of the political narrative was a real-world example of what Shaun was researching, and so he decided to put together and tweet out a rough sketch mapping how, through transmission, omission, and mutation, two entirely different narratives emerged. Shaun was fascinated by how people on both sides of the issue were talking about it, and how that dynamic was producing divergent narratives of the exact same event.
This off-the-cuff, messy sketch was widely shared and discussed. People began to request this kind of analysis for every divisive news story. In response, Shaun started the Narratives Project, first as a blog hosted on Substack. After a few months of experimentation and analyses, the project received funding to scale up into the organization it is today, a non-profit think tank & media organization aimed at reducing political polarization and increasing media literacy in American politics and culture.
While that might sound like a big task, Shaun believes his organization is tackling the greatest challenge currently facing the country. In his words, “Our attention has been nationalized.” While this world and this country are more interconnected than ever, Shaun believes this has caused us to “obsess over people who disagree with us,” seeing these differences as an “intolerable threat to our way of life, or even a threat to the entire country.” He points to a quote by the poet Wendell Berry which states “If you care what they think, how will you not hate them, and so become a monster of the opposite kind?” To Sean and the rest of the NP team, far too many of us in this country have begun to do just that, deepening our polarization and dividing our narratives.
Shaun’s vision for the Narratives Project stems from his strong belief in freedom and pluralism. As he puts it, “Human cultural diversity is real and wonderful. Freedom is necessary for people to be able to live and participate in those different, meaningful worldviews.” The baseline of cooperation and collaboration comes from seeing others as having a full human experience, no matter how wrong it may look to us.
While the Narratives Project has already begun making waves, Shaun has done his best to keep things in perspective, stating “I’ve been able to turn a convoluted tweet into a fledgling nonprofit that organically reaches hundreds of thousands of people. I’m proud of that, but I’m more astonished and grateful.” While getting the NP off the ground was a challenge in of itself, Shaun says the issue they’re currently running into is designing a news product that both is attention-worthy and yet also has serious value, that age-old question of how to package substance that remains competitive in a crowded market. While they’re still finding their way, Shaun believes the NP’s current balance of form and function is working well, pointing to their Instagram page as a particularly good example.
What began as an earnest attempt to understand the dynamics of our social divisions has become the beginnings of a movement that hopes to do the impossible and bridge the American divide. While there are still many obstacles and hurdles his way, Shaun is confident that he and the Narratives Project are only getting started. In his words, “There’s a lot to figure out and there’s a lot of work to do, but we’re on a good trajectory.”
If you’re interested in contributing to the Narratives Project and their cause, Shaun says their biggest needs at the moment are the “two big F’s: Feedback and Financial support.” For more on Shaun and the Narratives Project, follow them on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok!