Breaking the Silence in a Crisis: Disrupting the German Poverty Discourse via Everyday Storytelling on Social Media

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing energy crisis reignited debates in Germany about poverty and the basic social assistance system; a topic that has long been marred by moral contention, the dominance of complex quantitative measures, and a disregard for individuals’ subjective experiences (Smith Ochoa 2020). Both crises simultaneously resulted in emergency reforms, culminating in November 2022 in a controversial reform to the basic social assistance system (formerly Hartz IV) now known as the citizens’ income (Bürgergeld). Since May 2022, the citizen-led social media campaign #IchBinArmutsbetroffen (#IAmAffectedByPoverty) has raised awareness of the everyday hardships faced by the poor and those living on basic social assistance. Using emotional, personal storytelling, thousands of individuals have shared their experiences to explicitly counter dominant meritocratic poverty narratives anchored both in media and politics while demanding fundamental change to the existing welfare system. This represents a major shift in how poverty is narrativized in Germany, providing a platform to those both most affected by and at the margins of social policymaking. This contribution therefore aims to analyze the new storytelling practices of #IchBinArmutsbetroffen, while examining how the campaign has coordinated with German civil society and hitherto impacted social policymaking. Based on an interpretive discourse analysis of a text corpus of leading print media (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung), activists’ tweets, and interviews with individuals and civil society organizations (e.g. welfare associations and private foundations) involved in the campaign, this contribution reconstructs central narrative strategies and contextualizes them in the general dynamics of policy conflict over poverty in Germany. The findings contribute to understandings of how poverty is discursively constructed, debated, and politically addressed amidst major reform change. Ultimately, it shows how marginalized citizens utilize methods of self-empowerment, emotionalization, and coordination with powerful organizations to challenge established narratives, influence the policymaking process and effect social change. References Smith Ochoa, C. (2020) Trivializing inequality by narrating facts: a discourse analysis of contending storylines in Germany, in: Critical Policy Studies, 14(3), 319–338.