Human activities have increasingly affected Earth’s natural systems, threatening ecological balance and sustainability. Social-Ecological Systems (SESs) are complex structures where human and environmental processes interact. Within these systems exists the concept of “tipping points” thresholds where small changes can trigger non-linear, irreversible shifts towards a new state. This concept has been widely studied in the natural sciences and has recently become popular within the social sciences, as research on Social Tipping Points (STPs) looks to uncover the tipping mechanisms at play within societal systems.
Discourse and narratives, as key linguistic practices, play a crucial role in how humans perceive, understand, and disseminate information across all levels of society. This makes them particularly interesting for the study of STPs, as they may act as key tools for triggering feedback mechanisms within SESs. Such feedback mechanisms are identified as complex contagion and cascading effects. Social actors within SESs create and share discourses and narratives between them, which in turn influence these feedback mechanisms and shape social behaviours towards positive change.
The study introduces the Discourse and Narratives-Social Tipping Points (DN-STP) framework, integrating six societal spheres (Politics, Industry, Society, Media, Science and Culture) which house actors at institutional and individual levels. These actors, through discourse and narratives, interact within and across spheres to trigger feedback mechanisms and shape behaviours towards the management of an ecological system. The ozone layer issue, where damages to the stratosphere were reversed through global coordinated action, serves as an ideal case study for the DN-STP framework and highlights the role of discourse and narratives in guiding positive change.
The study finds that discourses and narratives are indeed powerful avenues for understanding societal change within an SES. Integrating them within the study of STPs showcases the vital role of actor spheres within a socio-ecological issue and aids in explaining its developments and dynamics. While the study establishes the relevance of including discourse and narratives within STP research, further studies are needed to credibly establish the specific role of narratives in influencing social behaviours at the system level. Further expansions of the DN-STP framework can look to integrate other relevant societal mechanisms that may be central to triggering positive feedback effects towards STPs.