Giving Coronavirus a Face: Municipal Storytelling as Discursive Legitimation

While storytelling has become widely used in organizational communication, the mechanisms through which it shapes legitimacy remain insufficiently understood. This study addresses this gap by applying linguistic methods to analyze three stories from Swedish municipal communication campaigns during the Covid‑19 pandemic. The aim is to deepen understanding of the mechanisms of organizationally crafted storytelling and how they may shape discursive legitimation in local government. Drawing on narrative linguistics and multimodal discourse analysis, we examine how meaning is produced in these narratives. The analysis identifies three intertwined mechanisms structuring municipal storytelling: personification, values, and a shared narratorship. These mechanisms foster emotional engagement, construct images of responsible and caring municipalities, and invite readers into communities of action. At the same time, we show the complex – and at times paradoxical – nature of storytelling: while stories can clarify information and enhance accessibility, they may also obscure or blur understanding by allowing municipalities to promote themselves subtly, make strategic selections about which aspects to emphasize, and communicate organizational interests without clearly revealing themselves as the sender. The study contributes to a more critically informed perspective on discursive legitimation and underscores the need for reflexivity when public authorities use storytelling to reach out to citizens.