Stigma interferes with all aspects of opioid use disorder (OUD) recovery. One way to reduce public stigma of OUD is through exposure to a type of digital storytelling, in which the public is exposed to outgroup storytellers sharing their experiences with recovery in short videos or narratives posted online. The past two decades have seen an explosion in digital storytelling projects, but we still have much to understand about why exposure to digital stories reduces public stigma. We drew upon theorizing in narrative persuasion, mediated intergroup contact, and character construction to make a predictive model. In addition, we considered how differences in the end of a recovery plot (e.g., abstinence) shape narrative processes and effects. The theorized model and research questions were tested with an experiment (