The below are on-going research notes, periodically updated and not in strict chronological order, for a planned article on the current use (overuse?) of the word "narrative" by the media, academe, government, and business (among other areas of human activity).
The article will cover the months November, December (2016), and January (2017).
The tentative title for the piece is "Three Months of Trying to Keep up with 'Narrative.' "
The article will cover the months November, December (2016), and January (2017).
The tentative title for the piece is "Three Months of Trying to Keep up with 'Narrative.' "
image from
Considering Counter-Narratives: Narrating, resisting, making sense (Studies in Narrative) by Michael Bamberg (Editor), Molly Andrews (Editor); image and text from Amazon thecounternarrative.org
Counter-narratives only make sense in relation to something else, that which they are countering. The very name identifies it as a positional category, in tension with another category. But what is dominant and what is resistant are not, of course, static questions, but rather are forever shifting placements. The discussion of counter-narratives is ultimately a consideration of multiple layers of positioning. The fluidity of these relational categories is what lies at the center of the chapters and commentaries collected in this book. [JB note academic gobblydook]The book comprises six target chapters by leading scholars in the field. Twenty-two commentators discuss these chapters from a number of diverse vantage points, followed by responses from the six original authors. A final chapter by the editor of the book series concludes the book
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The mission of The Counter Narrative Project is to advocate around issues impacting Black gay men, and stand in solidarity with other movements committed to social justice.
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Dave Gold, "‘Data-Driven’ Campaigns Are Killing the Democratic Party," Politico (February 9, 2017)[D]espite losses on top of losses, we have continued to double down on data-driven campaigns at the expense of narrative framing and emotional storytelling. …
Years ago, my political mentor taught me the problem with this approach, using a memorable metaphor: issues are to a campaign message what ornaments are to a Christmas tree, he said. Ornaments make the tree more festive, but without the tree, you don’t have a Christmas tree, no matter how many ornaments you have or how beautiful they are. Issues can advance the campaign’s story, but without a narrative frame, your campaign doesn’t have a message, no matter how many issue ads or position papers it puts forward. Storytelling has been the most effective form of communication throughout the entirety of human history. And that is unlikely to change, given that experts in neurophysiology affirm that the neural pathway for stories is central to the way the human brain functions (“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor,” as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written). …
For Democrats, a useful metaphor to frame our storytelling is that while conservatives believe we are each in our own small boat and it is up to each of us to make it on our own, progressive morality holds that we are all on a large boat and unless we maintain that boat properly, we will all sink together. That metaphor could serve as our narrative frame, and addressing issues within this frame—rather than as separate, unrelated bullet points—would allow us to present emotional stories using language that speaks to voters’ values. …
Ironically, in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, Secretary Hillary Clinton presented a similar metaphor—American society as a village where everyone is interconnected. “From the moment [children] are born, they depend on a host of other ‘grown-ups,’” Clinton wrote, “untold others who touch their lives directly and indirectly. … Each of us plays a part in every child’s life.” Yet in 2016, instead of using that as a narrative frame, the Clinton campaign presented health care, jobs, debt-free college, paid family leave and myriad other issues as emotion-free position papers without any connective thread tying them together. …
I believe we would be better served if we paid less attention to quantitative political science and instead created a Storytellers Institute to teach campaign and committee staff, candidates and consultants the art and science of emotional storytelling, narrative construction and message framing. …
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Addison Merryman, "Narrative and post-truth," Duke Chronicle (January 27, 2027)
deep magic
What a year. America’s election news cycle oscillated between riveting five-star drama rife with side-splitting irony and realizations which induced stomach-churning dismay. But perhaps “oscillate” is not even an appropriate word; 2016 showed us that you could have both at once, as these two elements fused into the ultimate black comedy. 2016 beat fiction, gang.
As people everywhere collected their thoughts and reflected on last year, Oxford Dictionary took a noteworthy stab at 2016 by declaring the word of the year “post-truth,” which they define as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” This definition is a whopper to unravel, but the concept is fully present in our national media conversations through the buzzwords of “fake news” and Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.” And in between the lines there is a part of our culture which we need to consider.
In previous articles, I examined the idea of worldview—the fundamental assumptions we each make about the nature of reality. These assumptions answer questions that are most basically about the nature of God and the nature of man, from which follow implications about morality, purpose, truth and other major concepts which contend for transcendent significance.
But in activism and politics, the conversation centers around agenda—the means which coalitions are trying to execute and the goals they seek to accomplish. These include everything from the Democratic party’s national platform to Trump’s 100-day plan to Obama’s efforts to secure his legacy to Duke’s timetable to become carbon neutral by 2024.
But neither of these categories comprise how our culture and particularly we—as millennials and Duke students—tend to process society day-by-day. If “worldview” is our philosophical pillar of knowing basic reality and “agenda” is the social imperative by which we live every day, this leaves a wide gap between the two which can be best described as “narrative.” This could seem like a superfluous abstraction, but maybe this concept can help explain the phenomena of “post-truth” in our time.
Oxford Dictionary’s definition for “post-truth” can be paraphrased as, “Too many Americans don’t care about the plain facts anymore; they just believe whatever they want to believe.” This is undoubtedly a jab at Trump’s campaign, and it correctly assesses that provable falsehoods are not as odious to the public as they have been previously. There have been numerous occasions when Trump has made false or unsubstantiated allegations that his supporters have shrugged off—from the claim that Bush lied about Iraq War intelligence to Obama literally being the founder of ISIS to his recent assertion that he not perhaps, but actually won the popular vote (if it weren’t for the three-to-five million illegal ballots cast).
Oxford Dictionary has a valid point that the individual facts seem to matter little to the American public; but what its definition misses is the alternative which Americans on both sides are embracing. For instance, many Trump supporters defend his twitter feed by saying that Trump must be taken “seriously, not literally.” It’s true that this approach becomes necessary because of his tendency to spout word salads. But on the other hand, it lets you read into Trump whatever you want to read into him. You feel what Trump is saying. The specifics aren’t of consequence; you buy the narrative. Many Americans who voted for Trump don’t care if Trump gets some of the facts wrong, because they think he has the narrative right.
Why are narratives so compelling? Because they frame the world in a way that is very appealing to our moral sense. They divide the world, through story form, into heroes and villains, victims and oppressors. The theme of this tension is everywhere in the picture Trump paints of America’s situation domestically and within the world theatre—whether the issue involves trade, NATO, the cosmopolitan elite, the political establishment, the mainstream media, the totalitarian PC (politically-correct) Left, illegal immigration and the list continues. Trump supporters are ready to go along with many of the flaws because he’s fighting the right “bad guys,” in their eyes.
Yet the power of narrative (sometimes at the expense of fact and truth) doesn’t only play among Trump’s following. Put the shoe on the other foot. For instance, what about the claim that the Obama Administration has been scandal-free, an attempt to define Obama’s legacy as that of an honest, lovable and virtuous president? This is in light of the “Fast and Furious” scandal, the Benghazi incident and the IRS targeting of conservative NGO’s, to name just a few. Or how about the slogan, “Hands up, don’t shoot”? The fact that this rallying cry of Black Lives Matter was based on an unsubstantiated allegation (arguably falsehood) didn’t matter to many on the Left because it still embodied their narrative of institutional racism and police violence.
As our culture becomes more and more Post-modernistic, I fear that the degree to which tribal narratives shape our social outlook will only increase. G. K. Chesterton articulates this shift as he writes, “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been exactly reversed.” In today's mainstream culture, the only thing that is morally certain to us is our own un-transferrable experience—how things make us feel. It follows that instead of being able to arrive at true principles by which we can know good and evil, the only way to obtain the deepest level of moral clarity on an issue is to have been victimized in that way. If you have not personally been the object of those actions, words or behaviors to directly feel the rightness or wrongness of them, then you must accept the moral judgment of those who have. This type of moral reasoning is shaky ground on an individual level, but becomes especially dangerous to a society when it manifests at a group level. It causes our society to break down along tribal lines, each faction bound by its own sense of grievance.
But what if we could check our tribes and our lists of allies and oppressors at the door? What if we could converse about truth, untruth, right and wrong as ideas that are accessible to all of us as human beings? To quote N.T. Wright, who spoke at the Veritas Forum at Duke a few years back, “The line between good and evil does not lie between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between the West and the rest, between Left and Right, between rich and poor. That fateful line runs down the middle of each of us, every human society, every individual. This is not to say that all humans, and all societies, are equally good or bad; far from it. Merely that we are all infected and that all easy attempts to see the problem in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are fatally flawed.”
Narrative is a powerful element—one that allows us to moralize history and ourselves within it, while weaving in elements of reality. But if there are principles deeper than events and our own experience, and if competing tribal outlooks on the world aren't going to characterize our future, we need to seek absolute Truth. Addison Merryman is a Trinity senior. His column, "deep magic," runs on alternate Fridays.Edit 10:49 AM 01/27/17: Added word for clarity
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Cal Thomas, "The left’s narrative: Having run out of ideas, their only strategy is to protest," Washington Times (February 3, 2017)Just days into the Trump administration, the left’s narrative is clear. First, it was that Donald Trump is an “illegitimate” president because he didn’t win the popular vote, claims about “voter fraud” notwithstanding.
Then the left tried name-calling. Unfit. Immoral. Crude. High-handed. Fascist. His supporters stuck with him when similar tactics were tried during the campaign. Now the narrative has gone “racist,” that all-purpose word the left seems ready to attach to anyone for any reason. ...
Democrats have run out of ideas, even bad ones, and have nothing left but name-calling and protests. The fact that voters have rejected their agenda has not yet resonated with them. They are like people who attend oldies concerts and wave their hands in the air, eyes closed, singing “The Age of Aquarius,” like it is 1969 again. For them, the sun isn’t shining in, it’s setting. That narrative hasn’t changed.
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Matthew Wallin, "The Truth about CVE Messaging," americansecurityproject.org (January 31, 2017)It is easy to lie. It is easy to pretend you are someone you are not on the internet. But that doesn’t mean its effective or right. The U.S. Government should be above this. Arguing against the extremist narrative is a worthy cause, but you don’t do it successfully by pretending you’re someone else. You do it by having an inarguably better narrative.
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Jake Sherman, "Poll: Voters liked Trump’s ‘America first’ address," Politico (January 26, 2017)Dark. Negative. Divisive. That's was the immediate narrative about President Donald Trump's inaugural address. But many Americans liked it.
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Robin Givhan, "Trump is obsessed with what his staff wears. Don’t let their costumes distract you.," Washington Post (January 26, 2017)Team Trump believes in the power of image. The new president believes that a single photograph, re-tweeted ad nauseam, can form the basis of a narrative.
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Brian Ross, Matthew Mosk, "US-Russian Businessman Said to Be Source of Key Trump Dossier Claims," abcnews.go.com (January 24, 2017)Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, told ABC News that he exchanged emails with Millian in order to tell him to stop exaggerating his ties to the Trump Organization. Cohen said he wrote Millian to say it had become clear “that you too are seeking media attention off of this false narrative of a Trump-Russia alliance” and to ask him to stop “attempting to inject yourself into this crazy, [Hillary] Clinton campaign lie.”
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P.S. Raghavan, "Russia then, China now," thehindu.com (January 26, 2016)One should of course recognise that every narrative has a counter-narrative, and the truth probably lies somewhere in between.
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Charlie Savage, "Was Snowden a Russian Agent?" New York Review of Books (February 9, 2017)Stone’s movie [about Snowden], which premiered in September, presents a comic-book version of the pro-Snowden narrative in which a wunderkind super-hacker takes on Big Brother. In telling that story, Stone mixes accurate material with fiction, while simplifying away complexities. ...
Epstein’s book [on Snowden], by contrast, presents a negative view of Snowden. But the two works are not equivalent: Epstein does not merely oversimplify with the purpose of downplaying the benefits of Snowden’s leaks and emphasizing the harms. Rather he contends that the conventional narrative of what happened may have been a deceptive cover story.
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Chris Cillizza, "Sean Spicer held a press conference. He didn’t take questions. Or tell the whole truth," Washington Post (January 22, 2017)I'd also note that it's a shame that the CIA didn’t have a CIA Director to be with him today when he visited, because the Democrats have chosen -- Senate Democrats are stalling the nomination of Mike Pompeo and playing politics with national security. That's what you guys should be writing and covering, instead of sowing division about tweets and false narratives. ...
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Lee Siegel, "In the story of Trump, there is no story: Media in the Age of Trump," Columbia Journal Review (January 13, 2017)Journalists are masters of narrative. The language of journalism reflects this: You have to get the “story”; the “story” will run on the front page; don’t get behind the “story.”
The very idea and promise of America is one great saga of humble beginnings, hard work, redemption and reward. This is why Hollywood plots still bear the influence of Joseph Campbell, the famous explicator of world myths, whose description of the hero’s archetypal journey—call to adventure, trial and travail, acquisition of wisdom/love/wealth/power, return as hero to ordinary life—is really a sophisticated variation on the old Horatio Alger tales of rags to riches.
Even when journalists are dismantling a narrative, they do so with another narrative. Consider The Wall Street Journal’s remarkable recent story about Theranos director George Shultz’s grandson, who blew the whistle on the company and whose grandfather then hung him out to dry. The tale of the wise and good politician turned conscientious private citizen was abruptly replaced with the tale of the good and fearless young man. Or Edward Snowden, whose exposure of state secrets has spawned one story after another: the heroic whistleblower, the naive and tragic truth-teller, the unwitting traitor whose talents, appropriated by the Russians, led to Trump’s election. In every case, one story has been replaced with, or challenged by, another. But the permutations have always been in the service of building or dismantling a narrative.
Now along comes Donald J. Trump, and our first non-narrative presidency. Trump has not merely, at the behest of his supporters, disrupted the status quo. He has exploded the great American story that lay beneath it. What makes Trump so difficult to write about is that he presents no story. Like a cubist portrait, he changes your perception of reality by the minute. At Wednesday’s news conference, he went from being a gracious president-elect, to spiteful winner, to briefly charming self-deprecator (“I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way”), to accuser, to bully, to defender of jobless Americans and neglected veterans, to wily evader, to…disappearing back up into his Ayn Randian tower. While his lawyer was talking, he could be seen looking out over the crowd with wariness and curiosity, as if searching for clues to who he was at that moment.
For the people who oppose him, fear him, or despair of being governed by him, Trump is a disaster. But the media, expected to provide clarity, cannot agree on just what he is or will be. The peculiar effect of a cipher, and especially a cipher given to unpredictable statements, is that the emptier he is, the more he accrues the illusion of enigmatic depths. Trump’s emptiness is a magnet for one narrative after another. There are so many to choose from.
Trump is an authoritarian who will use the pretext of a war or a terrorist attack to curb civil liberties, repress elements of the population he finds undesirable, tighten the borders, and suppress the media.
Trump is an unusually greedy businessman who, like all businessmen, hates chaos and unpredictability and will keep the country on an even keel as he, along with his cronies, proceeds to empty the national coffers and strip the republic bare.
Trump is a needy performer, who will be too caught up in how he is treated by the press and the public to govern.
Trump’s hatred of the press, expressed on Twitter and immediately responded to by the entire press, guarantees that speech will remain free, even as it becomes sicker and more dysfunctional.
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN a presidential administration, at least in modern memory, that was not a product of a great history-making narrative. In the depths of economic despair, FDR was an American aristocrat with the common touch who did not give a hoot about turning against the interests of the class he was born into. In the heady atmosphere of victory that cost the lives of so many people from ordinary walks of life, Harry Truman was the humble son of a farmer who never graduated from college and became a haberdasher. Eisenhower, who had saved the nation from European and Japanese dictators, made America feel safe amid a perilous new world order. Then there was Kennedy, the handsome Harvard prince of Camelot who promised adventure after Eisenhower’s drab stability; and LBJ, the former teacher born poor in Texas devoted to freeing the country from poverty; and Nixon, the earnest common man who was the tribune of the silent majority who felt excluded by the war on poverty, and on and on.
In the end, journalists and eventually historians poked holes of various sizes in these narratives. But the exposures of falsehoods were also narratives, which drew their energy from stories that betrayed themselves.
Trump, on the other hand, offers several scenarios of the future, each of which refutes the other.
The booming economy will benefit media organizations and the creative class generally, which will have the result of keeping the resistance to Trump mostly symbolic.
The booming economy, which will benefit only the growing top of society, will have the effect of making the resistance to Trump all the more impassioned.
Trump will withdraw from the presidency almost immediately upon assuming it. He will allow the Republican leadership, as well as his cabinet appointees, to run the country.
Trump has been only performing the appearance of being the captive of Republican leaders. The moment he becomes president he will seize on the first occasion on which Republicans do not accommodate him, accuse them of obstructing him, and cause his supporters to rise up in outrage and indignation.
The opposition to Trump will eventually tire of becoming hysterical over his every act or utterance and quietly evolve to adapt itself to Trump’s own daily evolutions.
OF COURSE, TRUMP’S PEOPLE INSIST they have a grand narrative, and one that got Trump elected. Making America Great Again consists of disgust with a status quo that has the elites keeping everyone down, of preening nationalism on the world stage, strident economic nationalism, and the freedom to be politically incorrect.
Yet Trump is a born parodist and ironist. He delights not only in deconstructing his own narratives; he takes pleasure in turning them into travesties of themselves. He hires Goldman Sachs bankers even as he rails against economic elites. He allies himself with Putin even as he proclaims that America will once again be the dominant power in the world. He seems to welcome the public refutation of his declarations that he has saved American jobs. He relishes substituting crass indecency for contrarian political incorrectness. His blatant, defiant ironies and parodies are the proof of his power.
Journalists can oppose a narrative that is made up of empty platitudes about truth and justice. But it is almost impossible for a journalist to get an effective handle on actions guided by nihilistic irony.
How do you settle on a story that makes sense of Trump’s real/imagined/tenuous/opportunistic/troubled/wary/dangerous relationship with Putin, and his seeming allegiance to the ruthless Russian leader? Whichever interpretation you choose, it is a burlesque of patriotism, Realpolitik, good, old-fashioned decency, and political horse sense.
How do you build a story out of Trump’s antagonism with the country’s intelligence services, which were once the mendacious bête noires of the American left and the cherished assets of Republican presidents, and now are heroes of the American left and the chief bugbears of the incoming Republican president?
A dramatic reversal has taken place in American politics. It used to be that the elite, cosmopolitan segments of society scorned the reassuring tales provided by religion and the comforting mythology of American life, regarding them as fictions that the masses needed to live by. Urban cosmopolitans believe that they don’t need stories with which to console themselves. But now it is those very people, the heartland people, the masses beyond the cities so hungry for inspiring stories, who have dispensed altogether with the gripping American narratives that have, through all their fluctuations, kept the country together for so long.
Of course, narratives can limit and oppress—for example, the pernicious narratives that led us into wars in Vietnam and Iraq. A powerful lie can have the alluring shape of a beautiful story. But such tales sow the seeds of their own destruction. A story needs to hang together. Its various parts all have to add up. A journalist can pull on the weakened component of a story, on a contradiction or inconsistency or fabricated fact, and the story, no matter how powerful, starts to come apart.
By contrast, Trump’s wild unpredictability deconstructs itself. That is one reason why it is, in the eyes of Trump’s followers, immune to being exposed and condemned by the media. When the very nature of the man is contradictory and self-undermining, it is difficult to contradict or undermine him. The media cannot use a narrative woven out of the truth—e.g., the integrity of the country depends on the integrity of its elected officials—in order to expose lies that are composed of fragments. It is like trying to use water to remove an oil stain.
IS TRUMP DELIBERATELY CREATING, or causing to be created, one contradictory narrative after another in order to keep the media and everyone else off balance? It hardly matters. A press without a story to begin with is like a sculptor with clay but no idea what to do with it. Anything seems possible, and the result is paralysis.
Trump will start one or more wars in order to distract the country from his plunderings and depredations.depredations.
Trump is surrounded by rational people who will restrain his most dangerous impulses.
Trump is surrounded by rational people dependent on Trump for power and wealth who will justify and rationalize their self-interest even as Trump becomes dangerously irrational.
Trump’s children and his son-in-law, mindful of their futures, will restrain Trump’s worst impulses. Trump’s children and his son-in-law, intoxicated by a level of power and privilege they have never experienced, will afflict the country with one scandal after another.
Trump will rise to the occasion, act like a statesman, and after four years retire and write his most sensational bestseller yet, The Art of Personal Growth.
No one has any idea of what will happen, and when it does, it will both be something that no one had even conceived of, and, finally, for better or for worse, a story that journalists can set to work on.
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Jane Jakeman, "Ancestral Ties" [review of Robert Irwin's Wonders will never Cease], The Times Literary Supplement (December 23&30, 2016), p. 22In his new novel, a complex page-turner of intertwined narratives, Irvin's attention has moved to fifteenth century England ...
On might conclude ... that Robert Irwin believes history and fiction to be essentially indistinguisable. But this rather pedestrian interpretation fades away beside the enthralling delights of narrative ...
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Henry H. Willis, "The Wrong Terrorism Narrative," rand.org (January 15, 2017)
Much attention has been focused on Islamic extremism and Islamic State group recruiting online as an inspiration for violent radicalization. Yet it is legitimate to ask whether homegrown terrorists are being radicalized by jihadi narratives, or attracted to these narratives after radicalizing and merely using jihadism as the cloak they place over their grievances.
In fact, neither answer is complete. Equating violent extremism exclusively with Islamist terrorism misses opportunities to solve the problem. ...***
Edward-Isaac Dovere [Believe him! :) JB] "Biden accuses Trump of playing 'into the Russian narrative': The vice president calls the claims of compromising information on Trump 'unsubstantiated,' but he blasts the president-elect for disparaging the intelligence community," politico.com
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It’s easy to get snooty about all this unenlightened paleoanthropology of the past. But all sciences operate by trying to fit new data into existing theories. And this particular science, for which the “data” has always consisted of scant and somewhat inscrutable bits of rock and fossil, often has to lean on those metanarratives even more heavily. “Assumptions, theories, expectations,” the University of Barcelona archaeologist João Zilhão says, “all must come into play a lot, because you are interpreting data that do not speak for themselves.
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Narrative Coordinator, Malmö, Sweden, smartrecruiters.com (n.d):Full-time Job Description We’re looking for a Narrative Coordinator to support our ambitious narrative team in crafting a deeply immersive, tangible, and believable virtual world. As a Narrative Coordinator, you will collaborate with directors, designers, and writers to support the team in the development of our worlds. Together with the team, you will organize, archive, maintain, and communicate our in-world lore and history, combining research, story continuity, and other tasks to support the team in building memorable worlds and unforgettable story experiences. ... Sorry, this job has expired.
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Caroline Cao, "Review: Jackie Succeeds With Poise, Despite Shudders in Narrative Control," themarysue.com:
“Oh, let me be a part of the narrative,” sings Eliza Hamilton, wife of a Founding Father, of the powerhouse stage musical Hamilton. ...
Staged as an apolitical tale, Jackie is a fascinating endeavor, as First Ladies in cinema, like in the real-life field of their husband’s politics, are the supporting players of the nation’s welfare. But in Pablo Larrain’s portrait, the wife—now widow—commands the spotlight, the foreground, of the narrative even as her power wanes in the aftermath of her husband’s death. ...
There are two narratives at war in Jackie: One is a decent but disposable showcase of dialogue, the other a masterpiece streaming through sentiments. ...
The Hamilton lyrics “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story” rings in my head as Jackie has the burden of orchestrating her husband’s grand legacy, and her undertaking ends up defining her own legacy for better or worse. ...
I appreciate Larrain’s need to keep Jackie’s retrospective musings as if he wanted to preserve clarifications for some of Jackie’s inconsistent actions. But if only the film was audacious enough to lift that anchor and freely show Jackie trembling through her numbered White House days, because I could mute those sequences and still be immersed in the torrent of Jackie uncertainties on facial expressions alone and believe in her sudden emotional swerves—she is in shock, and trauma does muddle memories, after all. If only Larrain devised this approach: convert the perceived “necessities” of the dialogue-driven explanations into the visual meat of the narrative and entrust Portman’s performance to tell it without words. ...
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Editor needed for surreal narrative film (Lower East Side), newyork.craigslist.org (January 5, 2017) [JB note: at last a real job offer!]Hi all, We are looking for someone to edit our film. All footage has been shot, and now we are looking for an editor who is interested in dreamscapes, surrealism, the absurd, and well, beauty, to help us complete the project.
The film itself is a feature-length centered on the undertones of particular gender dynamics and power structures as represented by media culture. The story is based on a dream and is thus explored through a surreal landscape, distorting reality but clearly delivering the plot--think A Clockwork Orange or many of the Wes Anderson films. The tempo of the film is slow, featuring still shots focussed on the sets and the beauty of the actors amongst their landscapes.
The basic plot of the film surrounds a bachelor hidden and isolated in a luxurious but ever-changing house, living with hundreds of beautiful women. Abstractly, their relations are structured after a sinister interpretation of the reality show 'The Bachelor' though this is not made explicit in the film.
We would love it if you could help us with this project. If you are interested we can send you some rough cuts alongside snippets of the script and talk further. We can offer compensation, more likely a stipend rather than hourly pay as we are relying on grants to fund the project. We can discuss the right amount for you.
Please send us your reel and/or website if you are interested!!
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Jennifer R. Wolgemuth, University of South Florida, "Analyzing for Critical Resistance in Narrative Research," scholarcommons.usf.edu (publication date: 2014) [JB note: academe at its intellectual worst]Abstract This paper details a narrative analysis strategy called critical resistance analysis (CRA). The aim of a CRA is to bring forward the kinds of subjects participants draw on when talking about themselves in narrative interviews and to make explicit how those subjects are resisted and desired. The CRA is distinguished from other narrative analyses of self in that it focuses on resistance in both its structural, anti-hegemonic and ‘poststructural’, self-refusal forms. The latter kind of resistance is what Hoy (2005) refers to as ‘critical’ resistance; the desire to undo oneself. A CRA looks for participant resistance in narrative and antenarrative (Boje, 2001) data. Antenarratives are incomplete stories that are often too fragmented to analyze using traditional narrative methods and can be seen as powerful examples of meaning-making in progress. A CRA newly brings an antenarrative understanding to the study of self in four analytic foci: deconstruction trace, discourse-argument, resistance and intersubjectivity analysis. Together these analytic foci reveal the subjects [sic] narrative participants seek (not) to be and afford a more complex understanding of how participants struggle with and against themselves.
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"Surreal echo chamber: RT debate challenges 'Russia hacked US' narrative," RT (January 6, 2027)
Media analyst Lionel, political opinion writer and columnist for The Hill ...joined RT host Neil Harvey to discuss the hearing in Congress over the alleged "Russian hacking" claims. ...
The whole hacking narrative not only lacks proof, but actually lacks any sense, being just a propaganda cliché, Lionel believes.
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Mike DeBonis.,"Cops didn’t like a student painting hanging in the U.S. Capitol. So a congressman took it down," washingtonpost.com
[T]he painting’s subject matter generated protests from several law enforcement groups, who called the painting “reprehensible and repugnant” and representative of growing anti-police sentiment. More attention was drawn to the painting after a Fox News personality called for its removal Friday.
Image from article, with caption: An acrylic painting, right, by David Pulphus that is reported to depict a chaotic scene from Ferguson, Mo., with police officers that appear to be horned animals, is on display on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. (Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency)
“This latest indignation, sponsored by an elected official intent on pandering to professional protesters, unfortunately adds credence to a demonstrably false narrative about law enforcement that undermines the safety of law enforcement officers and those we protect,” said a letter sent Tuesday to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “This false narrative portrays law enforcement professionals as posing a danger to the very communities we serve. That is untrue and this ‘art’ reinforces this false narrative and is disrespectful on so many levels.”
The letter was signed by the presidents of police unions in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, Calif.
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Allan Appel, "City Gallery Gets Kaleidoscopic," New Haven Independent, January 6, 2017[The show] features the acrylic-on-canvas paintings of Judy Atlas, Meg Bloom‘s mixed-media sculptural hangings and constructions, the large-format photographs of Phyllis Crowley, and the acrylic-on-mylar canvases and other tactile mixed-media creations of Nancy Eisenfeld. ...
Crowley spoke with the Independent as finishing touches were being put on the show’s installation. Although she’s often worked in multiple images, she said this is the first time that she’s arranged the photographs, some tangent to each others and others overlapping, in an effort to create a kind of narrative.
What that narrative is, of course, she wasn’t about to tell. “I feel there’s a relationship. You have to find it,” she said. ...
In short, there’s a kaleidoscopic effect achieved — the feeling that the images can be moved around like squares of letters on a Scrabble board. What they “spell,” their narrative or story, is up to what the viewer brings. ...
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Tami Abdollah, "Associated Press Cyber experts report 'chasing ghosts' after US warning," mcclatchydc.com (January 6, 2017)The first page of the Joint Analysis Report narrative by the Department of Homeland Security and federal Bureau of Investigation and released on Dec. 29, 2016, is photographed in Washington, Jan. 6, 2017. Computer security specialists say the technical details in the narrative that the U.S. said would show whether computers had been infiltrated by Russian intelligence services were poorly done and potentially dangerous. Cybersecurity firms ended up counseling their customers to proceed with extreme caution after a slew of false positives led back to sites such as Amazon and Yahoo Inc. Companies and organizations were following the government’s advice Dec. 29 and comparing digital logs recording incoming network traffic to their computers and finding matches to a list of hundreds of internet addresses the Homeland Security Department had identified as indicators of malicious Russian intelligence services cyber activity.
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Tim Hains, "House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes: Russia Hack Report Looks Like A "Political Rollout" From Obama Admin To Undermine Trump," realclearpolitics.com
"The Democrats are blowing this up because they're trying to change the narrative of what happened in this election. I am not happy that this report — which we were briefed on, just the Gang of Eight, briefed on Friday morning — yet many news media outlets already had the information that was briefed to the Gang of Eight," Rep. Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on this week's edition of 'Fox News Sunday.'
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icahdq.orgPRECONFERENCE #3 **Preconference is off-site**
Title: Narrative Persuasion: From Research to Practice Division
Affiliation: Mass Communication Division
Time: Wed, May 24; 9:00 – 17:00
Location: Wallis Annenberg Hall (ANN), Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles California
Transportation: Optional: Bus immediately following conference to San Diego Hilton ($25). *Prior registration with smurphy@usc.edu required, limited seats are available for the bus and will be assigned on a first come first serve basis.
Limit: 20 min, 50 max Cost: $50.00 USD (lunch is included) *Registration is by invitation only.
Optional: Tuesday May 23rd evening dinner with opening address ($25)
Organizer(s): Sheila Murphy and Nathan Walter, Annenberg/USC, Jonathan Cohen, Haifa U, Hollywood, Health & Society (Director Kate Folb and Erica Rosenthal)
Sponsor(s): Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California and Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S)
Keynote Speakers: Melanie Green (U. Buffalo) & Michael Slater (OSU)
For this preconference we are seeking original contributions from senior and junior researchers that explore theories, methods, and applications of narrative persuasion in diverse contexts. ...
Description: Narrative persuasion has become a burgeoning area of research offering new theoretical and empirical discoveries regarding the underlying processes that enhance or attenuate the persuasive efficacy of stories. But while interest in and use of narratives has grown exponentially, there seems to be a substantial divide between the study of narrative persuasion and the practical use of stories to sway knowledge, attitudes and behavior in health, social and other contexts. The goal of this preconference is to bridge this gap by bringing together scholars who study narrative persuasion with entertainment industry representatives who produce narrative content, as well as practitioners who increasing apply narrative interventions to health and social problems. ...We strongly encourage practitioners from the world of film, television and Entertainment-Education to participate in the preconference and take part in activities designed to bridge the gap between academic research on narrative and art the storytelling.
Preconference format: The morning and early afternoon of the preconference will include two keynote addresses from experts in narrative persuasion Melanie Green and Michael Slater. In addition there will be three sessions that explore topics relevant to narrative persuasion and its practice including (but not limited to):
- narratives in the new media environment;
- psychological mechanisms of narrative persuasion (e.g., identification, transportation, PSI);
- new methods to explore the interplay between stories and audiences;
- the textual features that improve the effectiveness of stories;
- and research-informed practice of entertainment education.
- The final two hours (3 to 5) will be devoted to an interactive storytelling workshop led by Hollywood, Health & Society, faculty of the School of Cinematic Arts and a top Hollywood TV writer. Whether your focus is creating narratives for research, presenting data, advocating policy or promoting health guidelines and recommendations, the art and science of storytelling can enhance the effectiveness of your communication. Learn how a good story can help convey useful information while keeping the audience engaged.
- HH&S will facilitate a workshop that allows participants to:
- Hone their storytelling skills to make narratives more compelling
- Learn how to select the important aspects of your subject matter for meaningful & dramatic effect.
- Gain experience by generating stories in the workshop and receiving feedback from professionals.
For those who wish to present their narrative persuasion-related work, abstracts of 400 words (maximum) and a short bio should be submitted no later than 30 January 2017. Proposals for full panels are also welcome: these should include a 200-word abstract for each individual presentation, and a 200-word rationale for the panel. Send abstracts in Word to: smurphy@usc.edu; nathanw@usc.edu and jcohen@com.haifa.ac.il. Presenters will be informed of acceptance/rejection for the preconference no later than 1 March 2017.
For questions please feel free to contact the organizers.
Optional: Tuesday May 23rd evening dinner with opening address ($25)
Ever wonder whether the stories you see on those medical dramas are accurate? Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S) works with hundreds of top television content creators to inform and inspire accurate health and scientific storylines. From Disney Jr.’s Doc McStuffins to CBS’ Madam Secretary, HH&S consults with all genres of entertainment. Learn how and why this work is important to public health domestically and internationally in this hour-long presentation. Clips of current shows and impact research will be used to underscore the value of this approach and connect it to theoretical mechanisms such as transportation, identification with characters, etc.
Optional: Bus immediately following conference to San Diego Hilton ($25).
Prior registration with smurphy@usc.edu required, limited seats are available for the bus and will be assigned on a first come first serve basis.
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Robert KraychFik, "Herridge: 'Absolutely No Backup Data' For Russian Hacking Narrative," dailywire.com (Janaury 8, 2017)Friday’s declassified intelligence report “has absolutely no backup data” to support its conclusions, noted Fox News Channel’s chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge . ...
Left-wing media Democrats such as CNN’s Jake Tapper - who operate on a pretense of objectivity - are pushing the Obama administration's narrative of Russian political interference benefiting Trump as prima facie.
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Andrew G. Benjamin, "The Russian Hack Narrative and the Real Reasons Behind it,"The Democrats have not been this decimated since 1928. They’ve become hysterical, unhinged, wholly ineffective as a political party, repudiated, recalled, replaced, and marginalized by a nation they had not served. Their media, their propaganda arm, has been discredited. Into this vacuum the Hacking Narratives arrived to explain away the disaster that was the Obama Presidency; to salve the wounds and medicate the collective self-inflicted anxiety experienced by the once-great party’s supporters. ...
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J. Jacob Dalen, "New Legislation Establishes Orwellian Propaganda Agency," valuewalk.com (January 9, 2017)
On December 23rd of last year, while we the people were busy making preparations for the holidays, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 into law. Deep within this vast jungle of ink, paper, and legalese, lies a brand new federal agency created to combat what Hillary Clinton has called an “epidemic of fake news and malicious false propaganda.” ...
[A] highlight of the Act includes the stipulation that the Global Engagement Center will provide support for “the development and dissemination of fact-based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States and” its partners and allies.
Unless these “fact-based narratives” are based on solid evidence from reliable sources, they will amount to whatever the Center decides is true. If the recent behavior of US intelligence agencies is any indication of what to expect, the only evidence will come in the form of anonymous sources from classified reports. ...
Since US intelligence has set the precedent of making accusations without proving them, anything not of foreign origin could easily be contrived as such.
With this provision, everything about you is fair game to be gathered, researched, and analyzed to help the Center fight news and opinions that don’t fit their narrative. ...
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Rick Sterling, "The War Against Alternative Information," consortiumnews.com (January 1, 2017)The U.S. government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut down information that doesn’t conform to U.S. propaganda narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian “regime change” war, writes Rick Sterling.
The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.
The new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center “to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The law directs the Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies and to “coordinate with allied nations.”
As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives, the law authorizes the Center to: “Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices.” (This section is an apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet sites as purveyors of “Russian propaganda” or “fake news.”) ...
Ironically, some of the supposedly “Russian propaganda” sites, such as RT, have provided first-hand on-the-ground reporting from the war zones with verifiable information that contradicts the Western narrative and thus has received almost no attention in the U.S. news media. ...
The Overall Narrative on Syria
Analysis of the Syrian conflict boils down to two competing narratives. One narrative is that the conflict is a fight for freedom and democracy against a brutal regime, a storyline promoted in the West and the Gulf states, which have been fueling the conflict from the start. This narrative is also favored by some self-styled “anti-imperialists” who want a “Syrian revolution.”
The other narrative is that the conflict is essentially a war of aggression against a sovereign state, with the aggressors including NATO countries, Gulf monarchies, Israel and Jordan. Domination of the Western media by these powerful interests is so thorough that one almost never gets access to this second narrative, which is essentially banned from not only the mainstream but also much of the liberal and progressive media.
For example, listeners and viewers of the generally progressive TV and radio program “DemocracyNow” have rarely if ever heard the second narrative described in any detail. Instead, the program frequently broadcasts the statements of Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and others associated with the U.S. position. ...
“DemocracyNow” also has done repeated interviews with proponents of the “Syrian revolution” while ignoring analysts who call the conflict a war of aggression sponsored by the West and the Gulf monarchies. This blackout of the second narrative continues despite the fact that many prominent international figures see it as such. ...
In an article titled “Controlling the Narrative on Syria”, Louis Allday describes the criticisms and attacks on journalists Rania Khalek and Max Blumenthal for straying from the “approved” Western narrative on Syria. ...
The Snopes’ investigation criticizing Bartlett ["Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett recently returned to North America after being in Syria and Aleppo, conveying a very different image and critical of the West’s biased media coverage"] was superficial and ignored the broader issues of accuracy and integrity in the Western media’s depiction of the Syrian conflict. Instead the article appeared to be an effort to discredit the eyewitness observations and analysis of a journalist who dared challenge the mainstream narrative. ...
But the U.S. government’s near total control of the message doesn’t appear to be enough. Apparently even a few voices of dissent are a few voices too many.
The enactment of HR5181, “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation,” suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate suppression of news and analyses that run counter to the official narrative. Backed by a new infusion of $160 million, the plan is to further squelch skeptical voices with operation for “countering” and “refuting” what the U.S. government deems to be propaganda and disinformation. ...Robert Leonard, "Why Rural America Voted for Trump," New York Times (January 6, 2017)
Political analysts have talked about how ignorance, racism, sexism, nationalism, Islamophobia, economic disenfranchisement and the decline of the middle class contributed to the popularity of Mr. Trump in rural America. But this misses the deeper cultural factors that shape the thinking of the conservatives who live here.
For me, it took a 2015 pre-caucus stop in Pella by J. C. Watts, a Baptist minister raised in the small town of Eufaula, Okla., who was a Republican congressman from 1995 to 2003, to begin to understand my neighbors — and most likely other rural Americans as well. ...
Hearing Mr. Watts was an epiphany for me. For the first time I had a glimpse of where many of my conservative friends and neighbors were coming from. I thought, no wonder Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on things like gun control, regulations or the value of social programs. We live in different philosophical worlds, with different foundational principles. Overlay this philosophical perspective on the American rural-urban divides of history, economy and geography, and the conservative individual responsibility narrative becomes even more powerful.
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Janet Garcia, "In 2016, Gaming Was All About Narrative," nerdmuch.com (December 16, 2016)Every year in gaming has a slight feel to it. This is to say, a certain theme or motif stands out. So what characterized 2016? Some may say the answer is obvious: virtual reality (VR). And while VR was definitely a hot topic in the industry it failed to take off in a way that’s meaningful to gamers as a whole.
When I look back at the games of 2016 what stands out most is the focus on story. From various genres incorporating RPG elements to the focus on campaign modes to popular releases known for their story: 2016 was all about narrative. ...
FIFA 17 has a story mode, a first in franchise history. In FIFA 17 you are Alex Hunter, a fictional soccer player, trying to make his way into Europe’s Premier League. From the Premier League poster in your bedroom to post-game dialogue options to choosing from teams your agent presents you with, this game is all about the details. Across the board, sports simulators are beginning to have the drama of visual novels. The FIFA franchise’s decision to finally have a story mode is a testament to how dominant narrative is becoming in the video game world. ...
Other notable moments in 2016’s gaming narratives included the continued predominance of Telltale games, from The Walking Dead to Batman.
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Posted By Pramath, "Destiny 2 May Possibly Have Consistent Small-Scale Narrative Based Updates: ‘Some good news here laced with some bad news," gamingbolt.com (January 1, 2017)
image from article
The way Bungie handled the story and lore in Destiny remains one of the saddest missed opportunities with the game. However, it seems that they may be looking at changing that with the upcoming Destiny 2. According to some job listings dug out and analyzed in depth by NeoGAF, it sounds like Bungie may be looking to do routine, consistent small scale narrative updates for Destiny 2– which is really how something like narrative should be handled for a persistently online game and world, anyway.
Apart from the job listing for the ‘live narrative direction’ (the relevant one that we have been discussing above), it also sounds like Bungie are hiring a whole lot of other people to handle the story and storytelling in the upcoming game. On one hand, this sounds like good news- it seems that the studio is eager to avoid the egregious mistakes in storytelling with the first game. On the other, this game is apparently nine months away from release- isn’t it too late to be hiring people to patch up the game’s storytelling at this stage? Shouldn’t this have been something they should have been doing before?Jason Ditz, "NBC: Putin ‘Personally’ Directed US Election Hack: Evidence Elusive as Reports Continue to Cite Anonymous Figure," news.antiwar.com (December 15, 2016)
That the word Russia appeared in the report was well short of “proof,” but was buttressed by a flurry of statements from anonymous officials claiming it was plausible that Russia was behind the plot. Many months later, NBC News continued to lean heavily on anonymous “senior officials” who claim the narrative as simply the “conclusion” of the intelligence community.
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Joseph Kishore, "New York Times’ narrative of Russian hacking: War propaganda in the guise of news," World Socialist Website (December 15, 2016)
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Joel Gehrke, "Gates: Tillerson's ties to Putin are a 'completely false narrative'," washingtonexaminer.com (December 14, 2016)Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson's reputed friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is "a completely false narrative" that shouldn't hurt his nomination, according to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
"I think it's a mistake to think that because Rex Tillerson successfully did business in Russia that he's best friends with Vladimir Putin," Gates told PBS' Charlie Rose on Thursday. "I think that's just a completely false narrative."
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"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," kobo.comNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and ex-slave, Frederick Douglass. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States.
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"Trump's pick for ambassador to Israel: 'End the 2-state narrative'," scpr.org (December 16, 2016)
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Jason Ditz, "Obama: Election Hacks Stopped in September After I Told Putin to ‘Cut It Out’,"
news.antiwar.com ((December 16, 2016)
Addressing the allegations of Russia “hacking the US election” during his year-end news conference, President Obama provided considerable new details about the official government narrative of what happened. Unsurprisingly, the new details don’t add up, nor fit into the narrative as previously offered. ...
The most curious aspect of Obama’s narrative, however, is that he claims the hacking attacks stopped entirely in early September after a single direct warning to Putin. Obama claimed to have spoken directly to Putin in early September, when both were in China, and told him to “cut it out.”
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Tom Boggioni, "Fox’s Shep Smith: Trump lies about Russian hacking because those in power want to control ‘the narrative’," rawstory.com ((December 167, 2012)Asked about people in power attempting to create distrust of the media, Smith said, “They’ve always tried to do that.”
“Every leader always says ‘Don’t believe them,’ when you tell them things that are true,” he continued. “You want a certain narrative out there and if the truth sometimes flies in the face of that, like Trump to claim that the Russians did not get involved in our election while all 17 of our intelligence agencies say that they did.”
“Unless and until there’s further information on this matter, I’m going with the intelligence agencies because [Trump] doesn’t know yet,” Smith said.
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Daniel Chaitin, "Nate Silver: 'Narrative-driven coverage' ignored election data," washingtonexaminer.com ((December 17, 2016)Polling guru Nate Silver blasted the media's campaign coverage for ignoring data in favor of "narrative-driven coverage."
"Data was clear that white noncollege voters were overrepresented in swing states, helping Trump in [the Electoral College]. Narrative-driven coverage ignored it," Silver tweeted Saturday.
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"Obama 'Prisoner to Own Baseless Narrative about Russian Meddling in US Election'," sputniknews.com (December 19, 2016)President Barack Obama held his final end-of-year press conference Friday, accusing Russia and Vladimir Putin of hacking into Democratic Party servers in order to interfere in the US election. Speaking to Radio Sputnik, political analyst Aleksandar Pavic said that he felt kind of sorry for Obama, who has been trapped by his own absurd narrative."Challenging the 'Democracy Now' Narrative'" (video), space4peace.blogspot.com (December 20, 2016)
Editorials, "Constant narrative missing the point," heraldstaronline.com (Janurary 2, 2017)
The opposition to Donald Trump has portrayed him as a master showman, capable of diverting attention away from real issues through his daily antics.
We would contend his opponents are as guilty of the same sort of tactics, evidenced of late by the near-constant narrative about how Russian e-mail hacking and leaks through WikiLeaks swayed votes away from Hillary Clinton.
It’s a different narrative than it appeared at the start, when the word “manipulated” seemed aimed to evince suspicions of actual tampering with vote counting swinging the election toward Trump. When recounts and vague notions of vote fraud didn’t send a groundswell away from the president elect, the narrative switched to that of leaking specific e-mails that changed voters minds.
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YEAR(S) IN REVIEW: Most Consequential Narrative of the Year(s)!" dailyhowler.blogspot.com (December 21, 2016)"Script," of course, is a specialized offshoot of "narrative." The mainstream press corps may adopt specialized scripts in service to some ongoing "narrative"—in service to some story line to which they will cling in the face of the facts, or even in the face of onrushing cultural death.
One such narrative dominated the coverage of the year's presidential campaign. Our judges have named it the most consequential narrative of the year(s).
We pluralize the word "year(s)" for an obvious reason. In the beginning was the end!
The potent media narrative to which we refer was hatched in 1992. From that day to this, the mainstream press corps has run with this poisonous story line, while pseudo-liberal corporate quislings have agreed to avert their gaze from this narrative and the many scripts it has spawned.
Almost surely, this combination of behaviors has now sent Donald J. Trump to the White House. This outcome has made "Candidate Clinton is corrupt" the most consequential narrative of the year(s).
"Candidate Clinton is corrupt!" Our judges have named it the most consequential narrative of the year(s). In the course of their exposition, our judges have linked this award to several others:
Their annual "Narrative Which Didn't Bark" prize goes to the absence of a controlling narrative about Candidate Donald J. Trump.
Also, the judges' annual award for "Most Favored Player Status" goes to FBI Director James B. Comey, the latest Republican figure extolled, all through the press, for his obvious moral rectitude.
Let's walk through the interplay of these narratives, including that absence-of-narrative.
The narrative about Clinton's corruption was hatched on the front page of the New York Times in 1992. Through a set of bungled news reports, the Times invented the Whitewater pseudo-scandal—the pseudo-scandal which gave its name to an entire era. ...
Candidate Trump was helped along by The Narrative(s) Which Didn't Bark.
In the face of a blizzard of weird behavior, the mainstream press corps never created a controlling narrative about the former non-reality star. Concerning this overall absence of narrative, a few key points must be stated:
It isn't clear that a sprawling entity like the mainstream press corps should create a controlling narrative for a White House contender. The larger problem here was the existence of a controlling narrative concerning Clinton, not the absence of same in the case of Trump. ...
Donald J. Trump was never defined by a controlling press narrative. To the extent that cable news "defined" him in a uniform way, he was defined as the amusing former reality star at whose ridiculous statements our pundit stars never stopped chuckling.
Liberals must understand one last point about this destructive interplay. Throughout this campaign, their favorite corporate TV stars made little attempt to fight these mandated narratives.
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Robert J. Samuelson, "The new world order, 2017," Washington Post (January 1, 2017)
After World War II, the United States stumbled upon a global strategy. It would protect its allies militarily while hoping that peace would promote prosperous, stable and democratic societies. Communism’s psychological and political appeal would be rejected. Despite many setbacks, the strategy generally succeeded. Europe and Japan rebuilt; the Soviet Union failed; communism was discredited.
It is this narrative that the United States sought to project onto the post-Cold War international order. What we did not anticipate was the reaction of other countries and the complexity of history.
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ACADEMICS: NARRATIVE NONFICTION WRITING, denison.edu
Narrative nonfiction is writing that combines literary attention to storytelling with in- depth, fact-based research. The Narrative Nonfiction Writing concentration is designed for students from all majors who are seeking a structured opportunity to gain hands-on writing experience along with exposure to potential career paths.
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Tiffany Gabbay. "WaPo, Daily Beast Question Virgin Mary 'Narrative' Ahead of Christmas: Because what better time to challenge the central narrative of Christianity, than at Christmastime,"truthrevolt.org (December 13, 2016)
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Christina Capatides, "Have you been traumatized by 2016? You're not alone," cbsnews.com (December 23, 2016)If you’re feeling a bit down as 2016 draws to a close, you’re not alone and, as it turns out, there’s a reason for that. It’s called “cultural trauma,” and according to Jeffrey Alexander, a sociology professor at Yale University, it occurs “when a collectivity experiences an injury to its idealization of who it is.”
Basically, every year has a narrative. Some years simply have more memorable and, shall we say, darker narratives than others. So, when 2016 kicked off in January with the death of David Bowie — a music icon countless fans viewed as untouchable — a narrative about unthinkable and unpredictable tragic events occurring was set into motion. ...
“There were a lot of bad things that happened over the course of this year,” Alexander said. “Events like Zika, the Flint water crisis, terrorist incidents, continuous police-on-African-American violence and then, beginning to be the reverse. So, there’s been a series of frightening events, but it’s kind of the way these events are strung together. The narrative that encompasses them kind of determines how these things are experienced.”
The fact that 2016’s story line was already in place by the time Prince died in April magnified the impact of his passing, according to Alexander. Unlike past years, when their larger narratives were developed and applied in reflection after the fact, people began experiencing the tragic narrative of 2016 in real time.
“Once you have a broader narrative of tragedy — that this is a year of unusual fear and disappointment that we feel could be a fulcrum of history, which is pushing us and the values we have off to the side — then everything becomes much more significant. So, Prince’s death, for example, was I thought given a lot more affect than maybe it might have in another year. There’s a sense of precariousness now, like our sense of order is more fragile than it once was,” Alexander explained. ...
[A]ccording to Alexander, the only way out of 2016’s tragic narrative is the creation of a new, more positive narrative in 2017. ...[JB note: Aren't academics geniuses?]
In sum, the only way out of cultural trauma is cultural joy. Sounds like a New Year’s resolution for 2017.
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pdxbuckeye, "Wisconsin Exit Polls - Beware the False Narrative," dailykos.com (December 26, 2016)The existing narratives just do not apply to Wisconsin anyway. We liberals, progressives, lefties, left-wing populists, democrats, whatever we call ourselves, need to open our eyes to the realities we face and not get lost in false narratives that only serves our own bias.
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Derek Hunter "Hillary's Horribles," townhall.com (December 25, 2016)Non-stop equating Trump with some of history’s greatest despots and monsters – all leftists, by the way – can have an effect on the unstable. It is a point Democrats used to make when falsely accusing the Tea Party of “violent rhetoric,” stoking fears someone was going to get hurt. It didn’t happen, but the narrative was set and facts didn’t matter – the agenda had to be fed.
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Lambert Strether, “'The Narrative,' Neoliberalism, and Identity Politics," nakedcapitalism.com (December 26, 2016)“The Narrative”
I know I linked to this already this morning, but I’ve been turning it over in my mind as a jumping off point (and in any case, I forgot to say, as I should have said: “Please distribute widely”!) From “Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Searching,” in the Hollywood Reporter: ...
For starters, it’s important to accept that the New York Times has always — or at least for many decades — been a far more editor-driven, and self-conscious, publication than many of those with which it competes. Historically, the Los Angeles Times, where I worked twice, for instance, was a reporter-driven, bottom-up newspaper. Most editors wanted to know, every day, before the first morning meeting: “What are you hearing? What have you got?”
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.” ...
So, if you think about what narrative the Times signed onto in early 2015, it would be the inevitability of Clinton’s victory, would it not? ... News — “newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events” — puts the narrative in jeopardy. So we have another reason that the Times suppressed coverage of the Sanders campaign, beyond simple class hatred; class interest. ...
Conclusion
“A narrative” is not “the narrative.” And people are multifaceted, and select for narratives based on facets of their choosing[5]. But if one had to devise a narrative for political purposes, I think it makes sense to appeal to a facet shared by as many people as possible (and no more than possible). I’m guessing that upwards of 90% of United States voters work for wages, and hence a simple platform of universal concrete material benefits could be developed to appeal to all of them. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It’s just math.
[5] That is the strength of intersectionality, IMNSHO. As readers know, I urge people to cross out “white” in the phrase “white working class” and see how that changes their thinking. The destruction of the Rust Belt affected the “white” working class located there most directly, but the entire working class, of all identities, was surely affected as well.
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Debra Wells-Hopey, "Helping millennials make their mark," thechronicleherald.ca (December 26, 2016)Career coach Ali Breen is aware that many millennials feel stuck, overwhelmed (or both) and she has specialized her career to help with issues specific to this group.
As a certified holistic narrative career professional (HNCP), Breen has worked in both government-funded Nova Scotia Works Employment Centres and as a corporate recruiter. She is now an independent coach located in downtown Dartmouth. ...
Breen’s technique offers narrative, story-based career coaching designed for millennials. This means that the client shares their stories and experiences with her and, through that very personal lens, strengths and desires are brought to light. Clients can get clear about what they want, and the possibilities that come up are completely unique.
“In narrative coaching we are like an eco-system,” says Breen. “A comprehensive, holistic approach is so effective, as one tiny shift can be epic. The depth of clarity and the impactful exploring that come out of doing this work is amazing.” ...
“There is so much negativity around the job market and making a living in Nova Scotia,” explains Breen. “I want to showcase millennials that are living here and working in careers that light them up.” ...
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Lisa Miller, "An Experiment in Empathy: He auctioned off the pistol that killed Trayvon Martin. She watched her child die in a mass shooting. Can they change each other’s minds about guns?" nymag.com (December 27, 2016)Underwood, Tuft, and more than a dozen others on both sides of the gun debate — a hunter; two Baltimore cops; a criminal-court judge from New Orleans; a couple of high-schoolers who grew up in the ganglands of Chicago’s South Side — had agreed to meet face-to-face, tell each other their stories, and try to understand one another’s points of view, in an experiment in radical empathy organized by New York Magazine in partnership with a nonprofit group called Narrative 4.
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Suzanne Mulligan, "Shouldn’t every religious leader be decrying the slaughter in Syria? Religion, race, ethnicity become irrelevant when we see children under rubble," Irish Times (December 27, 2016)
Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of the dangers of what she calls a single story. She has in mind the way we think about our lives, our world, and the temptation of succumbing to single narratives that appear clear, comfortable or predictable.
So, we start to think of all Muslims as terrorists, or of all Africans as poor, and so on. Yet stories overlap in a myriad of ways, and identities are multilayered.
The danger of the single narrative, Adichie argues, is not that it is incorrect but that it is incomplete.
On December 13th a truce was called in Aleppo, and it was reported that civilians would be evacuated from the remaining rebel-held section of the city. Since then the evacuation has been marred by disruption, but people are being allowed to leave by degrees.
However, the war in Syria is far from over, and events in Aleppo raise serious questions for the international community.
Aleppo – indeed Syria – is a complex narrative. No single story can adequately capture the extent of what is happening there. Deep political motives fuel this conflict.
Narrative of terrorism
Assad’s rule is now strengthened by Russia. Both Syria and Russia have consistently presented the narrative of terrorism to justify their actions in Aleppo and elsewhere.
Internally, there are ethnic and religious factors to be considered, and regional interests have emerged, with Iran sending militia groups to Syria.
Islamic State remains in control of large parts of the country. The rebels themselves are comprised of several different splinter groups, including jihadi fighters.
And Syria is one of the sub-narratives in what became known as the “Arab Spring”. That is a story of dictatorships, military governments, young unemployed, disillusioned Muslim men, religious and ethnic tension.
It has evolved into a narrative about failed Arab governance, of political vacuums, and of groups such as Isis who are willing to take advantage of political uncertainty.
But what of Adichie’s warning? Although the obvious danger is to give in to “single stories”, there are some that must be told.
There is the single story of the direct and intentional killing of civilians, a clear violation of international law. Religion, race, ethnicity become irrelevant when we see dead children under mountains of rubble.
Staggering evidence
Despite the insistence of Russian and Syrian authorities that civilians are not being targeted, one cannot credibly overlook the staggering evidence to the contrary.
One cannot seriously suggest that the persistent bombing of hospitals, schools and homes was either accidental or unintentional; one cannot credibly reject the weight of evidence of civilian atrocities; one cannot claim that the “double tap” strategy of bombing is morally licit; and one cannot accept that the bombing of the last remaining areas in Aleppo was necessary or justified.
There is the single story of the West’s failure to intervene. This is partly because western governments do not want to take the politically unpopular decision to commit troops on the ground.
The UN Security Council has once more appeared impotent, thanks in no small part to an outdated veto system. We have heard UN officials passionately call for ceasefires, for the evacuation of civilians, for a cessation of the direct killing of innocents. But, however eloquent the outcry, it matters little if meaningful action cannot be effected on the ground.
Failure of hospitality
And there is the further failure of hospitality on the part of so many European governments, including Ireland. Simplistic rhetoric has emerged within some political circles that strengthens unjust stereotypes and feeds on national fears.
There is the single story of the failure of religious leadership also.
Should not every Imam, Rabbi, Christian religious leader, every Buddhist monk be crying out at the slaughter in Syria?
Here, again, multiple narratives emerge in the shape of religious difference and division, and we lose sight of our single common humanity.
But there are narratives of hope and courage too: the courage of countless people who cared for the sick and dying in horrific conditions; the hope that fighting will soon cease, and that the people of Syria will be allowed to live without fear.
That depends on what is perhaps the deepest hope of all: that we, as a global community, can somehow learn to live – flourish – in communion rather than in division. Not an easy thing, but surely human intelligence and the reasonable hopes of humanity demand that we try.
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Euclid Tsakalotos [Finance Minister of Greece],"A Europe of two narratives," opendemocracy.net (December 27, 2016):Everybody, it seems, is concerned about the rise of the radical right. In Europe this concern is tied to a recognition that the EU and the Eurozone face growing centrifugal forces. But any coherent response is crippled by the fact that there are two, almost diametrically opposed, narratives on this phenomenon.
The social narrative, which is mostly, but of course not exclusively, to be found in Southern Europe and on the Left of the political spectrum, argues that Europe is failing a large number of its citizens. Not only did they face the brunt of the crisis, but they have no confidence that they will participate in any recovery. European institutions are stuck in a pre-crisis time zone when the major problems were perceived to be inflation and fiscal irresponsibility. ...
The rules-are-rules narrative takes a very different view. It is found mostly in the North, and on the right, but again there are exceptions; notably, in this case, those on the centre-Left (does anybody remember the “Third Way”?) who are still smitten with the Blair, Schröder and Simitis framework.
The argument here is that the EU is based on rules and that changing those rules every so often can only undermine the credibility of the European Union and the Euro. Moreover citizens of the North are tired of “bailing-out” those in the South that either cannot or are unwilling to abide by the rules. There are limits to solidarity and any further weakening of the rules provides grist to the mill of the populists. ...
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"Non-Linear Narrative at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin," blouinartinfo.com (December 27, 2016)Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin, will present the exhibition titled “moving is in every direction. Environments – Installations – Narrative Spaces', from March 17 through September 9, 2017. Visitors will explore spacious walk-in environments, video and sound installations, as well as cross-media works specially made for the exhibition. The non-linear narrative structure, proposed by Gertrude Stein, to which the exhibition title relates, serves as a starting point for exploring sculptural arrangements, image sequences, or spatially staged narratives. Contained within almost 3,500 square metres of exhibition space, are installations by Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Isa Genzken/Wolfgang Tillmans, Bruce Nauman, Susan Philipsz, Pipilotti Rist, Bunny Rogers, Gregor Schneider, Thomas Schütte, and Wolf Vostell.
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Agnes Bosanquet Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, Alana Mailey, Kelly E. Matthews & Jason M. Lodge, "Redefining ‘early career’ in academia: a collective narrative approach," tandfonline.com (posted December 29, 2016)‘Early career’ in academia is typically defined in terms of research capability in the five years following PhD completion, with career progression from post-doctoral appointment to tenure, promotion and beyond. This ideal path assumes steady employment and continuous research development. With academic work increasingly casualised, experiences of ‘early career’ are changing and definitions in use by institutions and research bodies do not reflect the lived experiences of early career academics (ECAs). This paper presents five collective narratives and a thematic analysis of survey data from 522 ECAs in three Australian universities. The results offer insights into the diverse experiences of the early stages of academic careers and provide an opportunity to reconsider current definitions. We argue that the employment context in higher education makes it crucial to consider scholars’ self-definitions alongside existing objective indicators to redefine early career in academia.Blouin Artinfo, "'Narrative' at Twenty14 Contemporary, Milan," uk.blouinartinfo.com (december 27. 2016)
Twenty14 Contemporary, Milan, is currently hosting a group exhibition, titled 'Narrative'. The exhibition opened on November 25, 2016 and will run through February 4, 2017.
image from article
In this exhibition the text and images mingle and complement each other. The exhibition was put together out of curiosity for some works, belonging to a current, popular in the 70s, known as Narrative Art, which was created in response to the conceptual statements and contemporary line of body art that suggested a purely secondary and instrumental role of photography. The artists featured at the exhibition include Didier Bay, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Roger Cutforth, Jochen Gerz, Peter Hutchinson and others.
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Glenn Greenwald, "#FakeNews: The Guardian completely distorts Assange interview to spread false narrative of Russian interference in US election," The Intercept (December 29, 2016)
Clinton supporters [their] ... central narrative about the election: that Clinton lost because the Kremlin used its agents, such as Assange, to boost Trump and sink Clinton.
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Edward Jay Epstein,"The Fable of Edward Snowden: As he seeks a pardon, the NSA thief has told multiple lies about what he stole and his dealings with Russian intelligence," Wall Street Journal (updated December 30, 2016)As became clear during my investigation over the past three years, nearly every element of the narrative Mr. Snowden has provided, which reached its final iteration in Oliver Stone’s 2016 movie, “Snowden,” is demonstrably false.
This narrative began soon after Mr. Snowden arrived in Hong Kong, where he arranged to meet with Laura Poitras, a Berlin-based documentary filmmaker, and Glenn Greenwald, a Brazil-based blogger for the Guardian. Both journalists were longtime critics of NSA surveillance with whom Mr. Snowden (under the alias Citizen Four) had been in contact for four months. ...
At the heart of Mr. Snowden’s narrative was his claim that while he may have incidentally “touched” other data in his search of NSA files, he took only documents that exposed the malfeasance of the NSA and gave all of them to journalists.
Yet even as Mr. Snowden’s narrative was taking hold in the public realm, a secret damage assessment done by the NSA and Pentagon told a very different story. According to a unanimous report declassified on Dec. 22 by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the investigation showed that Mr. Snowden had “removed” (not merely touched) 1.5 million documents. ...
In his narrative, Mr. Snowden always claims that he was a conscientious “whistleblower” who turned over all the stolen NSA material to journalists in Hong Kong. He has insisted he had no intention of defecting to Russia but was on his way to Latin America when he was trapped in Russia by the U.S. government in an attempt to demonize him. ...
Mr. Snowden’s own narrative asserts that he came to Russia not only empty-handed but without access to any of the stolen material. ...
Mr. Snowden’s narrative also includes the assertion that he was neither debriefed by nor even met with any Russian government official after he arrived in Moscow. This part of the narrative runs counter to findings of U.S. intelligence. ...
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Jane Jakeman, "Ancestral lies," review of Robert Irwin's Wonders will never cease, The Times Literary Supplement (December 23&30, 2026), p. 22In this new novel, a complex page-turner of intertwined narrative, Irwin's attention has moved to fifteenth-century England, where Balian's counterpart, Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, appears to have been killed during the Wars of the Roses at the bloody Battle of Towton in 1461. ...
One might conclude ... that Robert Irwin believes history and fiction to be essentially indistinguishable. But this rathe pedestrian interpretation fades way beside the enthralling delights of narrative, life itself to Sheharadzade. ...
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Matt Taibbi, "Something About This Russia Story Stinks: Nearly a decade and a half after the Iraq-WMD faceplant, the American press is again asked to co-sign a dubious intelligence assessment" Rolling StoneRepublican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham noted the "small price" Russia paid for its "brazen attack." The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, said Thursday that taken alone, the Obama response is "insufficient" as a response to "attacks on the United States by a foreign power."
The "small price" is an eyebrow-raiser. Also, like the WMD story, there's an element of salesmanship the government is using to push the hacking narrative that should make reporters nervous.
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Jana Hajzlerova, Michael Raska, "Rethinking Trump’s policy options for North Korea," atimes.comThe ongoing impasse in resolving the North Korean nuclear conundrum stems largely from the tightening geopolitical deadlock — the confluence of growing tensions between great powers in East Asia, the varying perceptions, narratives, and historical imprints of North Korea’s “impending collapse,” all of which amplify the country’s siege mentality and encourage its political brinkmanship. ...
Concurrently, South Korea has intensified global public diplomacy efforts with a narrative that the North Korean regime is bound to collapse in the near future, with a “reliable” maximum timeframe of a few years. A new body, the Presidential Committee for Unification Preparation, was established and research teams have been dispatched to select countries of the former Eastern Bloc to extract lessons learned from their transitions to market economy and parliamentary democracy in a bid to prepare for unification at home.
Image from article, with caption: Politicians in Washington DC have been discussing new ways of
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Judah Grunstein, "The Problem With Obama’s Foreign Policy Has Been Inaction, Not Weakness," worldpoliticsreview.com (December 21. 2016)The narrative of Obama’s weakness has its roots in the early days of his presidency. His initial public diplomacy efforts to repair the damage done to America’s global standing by the Iraq War and the global war on terrorism were derided by critics as an “apology tour.” His muted response in 2009 to Iran’s crackdown on the Green Movement protests was similarly cited as evidence of a tendency to appease enemies. ...
For Obama’s critics, the walk-back from a red line in Syria has become the point of reference for his cautious approach to committing American military assets and his aversion to conflict escalation in general. Both, they argue, have allowed less risk-averse leaders to press for advantage, convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could safely annex Crimea and intervene militarily in Ukraine, and Chinese President Xi Jinping that he could pursue China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea even more assertively.
The narrative is superficially compelling, but it does not stand up to scrutiny.
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William Davies, "The Age of Post-Truth Politics," New York Times (December 28, 2016):It is possible to live in a world of data but no facts. Think of how we employ weather forecasts: We understand that it is not a fact that it will be 75 degrees on Thursday, and that figure will fluctuate all the time. Weather forecasting works in a similar way to sentiment analysis, bringing data from a wide range of sensory devices, and converting this into a constantly evolving narrative about the near future.
However, this produces some chilling possibilities for politics. Once numbers are viewed more as indicators of current sentiment, rather than as statements about reality, how are we to achieve any consensus on the nature of social, economic and environmental problems, never mind agree on the solutions?Catherine Rampell, "Trump is being handed a great economy. What happens when it goes south?" Washington Post (12/27/2016):
[E]ven if recoveries don’t die of old age, and even if Trump doesn’t spark a worldwide financial crisis by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, it seems reasonable to expect that we might face a recession at some point during his [Trump's] presidency. ...
[T]he numbers will become suspect once again, and Trump may even try to mess with the official government numbers to suit his narrative. This — and not a recession, blame-gaming or impotent policy response — would cause the most enduring damage to our democracy.
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JB - Allowing a little room for the 18th century: Kate Chisholm. "Not too much information: Samuel Johnson's stern, honest but lazy biographical writing," The Times Literary Supplement (December 9, 2016), p. 11
[Johnson was] a hack who for most of the time was writing for money, against a deadline, out of necessity. Johnson claims in a Rambler from 1750 that "there has rarely passed a Life of which a judicious and faithful Narrative would not be useful", but for the most part he writes not just about men, but men who are famous, powerful, or privileged."
image from
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Jackson Diehl, "Putin’s hope to ignite a Eurasia-style protest in the United States," Washington Post (December 26, 2016)Putin is trying to deliver to the American political elite what he believes is a dose of its own medicine. He is attempting to ignite — with the help, unwitting or otherwise, of Donald Trump — a U.S. color revolution. ...
Trump meanwhile plays his part; he could not be doing more to aid the Kremlin’s narrative if he were reading from a script.
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Suzanne Fields, "Putin and Trump, a very odd couple," Washington Times (December 26, 2016)“Being friendly doesn’t make you friends,” Mr. Gates said, and called the criticism of Mr. Tillerson’s business connections a “false narrative.” His experience and deep knowledge of many countries and the men and women who run them could help America restore its leadership in the world.
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Sergei Guriev, "In Russia, It’s Not the Economy, Stupid," New York Times (December 26, 2016)Thanks partly to its near-complete control of the press, television and the internet, the government has developed a grand narrative about Russia’s role in the world — essentially promoting the view that Russians may need to tighten their belts for the good of the nation. The story has several subplots. Russian speakers in Ukraine need to be defended against neo-Nazis. Russia supports President Bashar alAssad of Syria because he is a rampart against the Islamic State, and it has helped liberate Aleppo from terrorists. Why would the Kremlin hack the Democratic Party in the United States? And who believes what the C.I.A. says anyway?
The Russian people seem to accept much of this or not to care one way or the other. ...
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Min Zeng, "Report Gives Fed Reason to Be 'Measured' in 2017," in "November Jobs Report: Everything You Need to Know, Wall Street Journal (December 2016) [scroll down for item]:In a timely article for the Atlantic, “Russia and the Threat to Liberal Democracy,” Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, speaks of a “romance between far-right, anti-immigrant European parties” and Putin. A Trump romance with Putin fits neatly into this narrative — which is precisely why Trump should want to dispel our fears rather than aggravate them.
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Holman W. Jenkins,Jr.,"Trump’s Russian Reset Reset," The Wall Street Journal (12/15/2016)
One might also observe that Mr. Tillerson is the anti-Trump: an Eagle Scout, a lifelong respecter of protocol, a CEO who actually works for and answers to a board. He is probably the last person to substitute his former employer’s interest in Russian oil for the aims and interests of the country that appointed him, though this is the “narrative” being hastily adopted by his enemies.
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Carl Hulse, "A Rare Sight in Washington," The New York Times (first Draft), Thursday, December 15, 2016, received by email
Republicans ... say the Obama administration has for years decided against holding ceremonies for worthy bills, such as a recent measure to combat opioid addiction. The G.O.P. says that is because the image would provide political benefits for Republican backers of the legislation and would run counter to the Democratic narrative that the Republican-controlled Congress is dysfunctional and unproductive.
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Sam Kriss, "The Rise of the Alt-Center: Why did establishment liberals fall in love with a deranged Twitter thread? It’s time for some game theory," slate.com (December 16, 2026)
[Eric] Garland is not a political expert. He describes himself instead as a “futurist, strategist, author, bassist.” His personal site carries the tag line “Track the trends. Explore the scenarios. Make the strategy. Rule the world” and urges you to sign up to his mailing list and “become a trend insider.” He sells executive training courses and offers himself as a keynote speaker at prices from $10,000 to $25,000 and above per speech. These speeches have titles like “The Next Narrative: Branding in a Fast-Changing World” or “The WTF Economy.” He’s a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman, peddling sleek gibberish to people who’ve never read a book without “… and how YOU can profit” in the subtitle; in any true meritocracy he’d be putting his strategic skills to work hawking trinkets by the roadside. And it shows. ...
What the Russia obsession represents is a massive ethical failure on the part of American liberals. People really will suffer under President Trump—women, queer people, Muslims, poor people of every stripe. But so many in the centrist establishment don’t seem to care. They’re far too busy weaving themselves into intricate geopolitical power plays that don’t really exist, searching for a narrative that exonerates them from having let this happen, to do anything like real political work.
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What makes influential science? Telling a good story, phys.org (December 16, 2016)
It turns out that even in the world of scientific writing, your eighth-grade teacher was right: how you write can matter as much as what you write. In a study published Dec. 15 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the University of Washington looked at the abstracts from more than 700 scientific papers about climate change to find out what makes a paper influential in its field. But instead of focusing on content, they looked at writing style, which is normally more the province of humanities professors rather than scientists. Their idea was that papers written in a more narrative style—those that tell a story—might be more influential than those with a drier, more expository style. Psychology and literary theory have long held that if you want someone to remember something, you should communicate it in the form of a story. The UW researchers—led by Annie Hillier, a recent graduate from the UW's School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, and professors Ryan Kelly and Terrie Klinger—wondered whether this theory would hold up in the realm of peer-reviewed scientific literature. Remarkably, it did. The most highly cited papers tended to include elements like sensory language, a greater degree of language indicating cause-and-effect and a direct appeal to the reader for a particular follow-up action. "The results were especially surprising given that we often think of scientific influence as being driven by science itself, rather than the form in which it is presented," Hillier said. Perhaps even more surprising, the researchers noted, was the finding that the highest-rated journals tended to feature articles that had more narrative content. "We don't know if the really top journals pick the most readable articles, and that's why those articles are more influential, or if the more narrative papers would be influential no matter what journal they are in," Kelly said. The researchers used a crowdsourcing website to evaluate the narrative content of the journal articles. Online contributors were asked a series of questions about each abstract to measure whether papers had a narrative style, including elements like language that appeals to one's senses and emotions. The researchers hope this work might lead to advances in scientific communication, improving the odds that science might lead the way to better decisions in the policy realm.
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Alison Cooke Mintzer, "Storytelling With Numbers: Analysis of data and statistics can easily be wrong," planadviser.com (November-December 2016)
As a kid, I loved math. The answer was right or wrong, black or white. You could easily see where you went wrong if your answer wasn’t correct and could remedy that to arrive at the one expected.
In college, I decided to abandon my calculus career path and delve into statistics. Statistics, I quickly determined, is not math but data—namely the analysis and interpretation of data. While I loved the black and white nature of math, the gray nature of statistics intrigued me, because of the narrative it allows. A percentage itself is black and white—40%, for example—but how it is presented, the stories it is used to convey are gray—only two out of five, or nearly half or less than half. The positioning begins the narrative.
If it wasn’t clear already, in many ways, the presidential election showed all Americans how easily data and statistics can get the analysis wrong. Data can be very useful, but it can also provide a narrative that may not be always correct. ...
***[T] he concept of a data narrative reminds all of us that, in order to properly leverage that data, we have to look at the inputs and be mindful of how the numbers are then interpreted.
Lauren Wein, "Election Is Like a Book — The Problem Is We’ve Read It Before," forward.com (December 17, 2016)
No matter the plot, a great novel deftly walks the knife edge between the life force and the death drive — letting the reader know that the stakes in the book, as in life, are always high. A great novel doesn’t preach or set out a situation in black and white. It is capacious enough to hold contradictory ideas and opinions and, by doing so, help the reader do the same.
Of course this is true of great people too — animated by contradiction, by oppositions and tensions. We are constantly navigating between loyalties and desires, aspirations and disappointments.
America: the first country to define itself by the variety and variability of its citizens. The first country whose authors were also its characters; who would vote for its leaders rather than submit to a god-like monarch or dictator. America: a collaboration between leaders and subjects. (Well, some of them — it would take time, but in watershed moments, “of the people, by the people, for the people” would come to include those of us who are not white males.) America: an imperfect, ever-evolving narrative.
On Tuesday, November 8, I was so certain — in retrospect, suspiciously so — that at long last, we had arrived at another watershed moment in our great narrative: 96 years ago, women could not vote, were confined to the domestic sphere, had almost no control over their reproductive destinies. But, in 2016, we heard Eliza Hamilton’s plaintive “let me be a part of the narrative,” and felt that we were not only part of it, we were writing it. First a black man, now a woman. The glass ceiling would be shattered, that narrative would widen, make space for us all.
Like most of New York City, I spent much of Wednesday with a red nose and swollen eyes, shuffling through the streets, silent, in shock. If you’ve lived through one or more serious depressive episodes, you know that a good part of it has to do with resisting the demise of an illusion that has sustained you. There is great shame in recognizing your own hubris, your blind spots. And then there is a paralysis that follows, the exhaustion at the thought of realignment. Of having to integrate new information, expand your point of view, find your place in the new world order.
But I confess that there was also a moment in the course of Wednesday, that the reader in me felt a small but undeniable frisson of affirmation: the American narrative is even more capacious than I had thought. ...
No matter how long we live, how many books we read, great narratives can still surprise us.
America! Its terrain more alive, more dynamic, than I ever suspected. The narrative is fluid, contradictory and evolving.
But this new chapter of ours is none of those things. Far worse than the map turning red, far worse than the shame and sadness of realizing our own limited points of view, is the fact that this chapter might have been lifted from another book entirely — one by Bertolt Brecht or George Orwell or Gunter Grass. This hairpin turn is a reminder that we have to pay attention to the text and subtext, which are constantly threatening to overtake each other. America is not a beach read — we must always be mindful, vigilant, on alert, must read with red pen in hand.
This chapter, as written by a small-minded narcissist and his newly appointed henchmen is brutal and one-note, intent on narrowing and excluding, rejecting and suppressing. In this chapter, demagoguery threatens to subsume democracy, promising to divide rather than integrate, regress rather than evolve. To bastardize Walt Whitman, it actively, literally refuses to contain multitudes.
This chapter shows every sign of fatal imbalance — too much death drive and not enough life force. It doesn’t care what came before (slavery, internment) or what might come after (climate change).
We’ve read this one before, and we know how it ends.
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Chris Golden, "WikiLeaks Founder Speaks Out, DESTROYS Liberal Trump-Russia Narrative: ‘Our Source Is…’ "westernjournalism.com
The narrative that the Russians are Donald Trump’s secret BFFs and that their intelligence forces or sympathetic operatives were put to work against Hillary Clinton seems to be falling apart every day. Yet, it’s been uncritically reported so often that it’s taken as truth throughout the mainstream media.
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ORDER AND DISORDER: THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE IN LITERATURE AND THOUGHT, Romantic Circles: A refereed scholarly Website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture Submitted by rc-admin on Wed, 12/14/2016 - 09:59 updated: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - 11:15am Boston College English Graduate Conference deadline for submissions: Monday, February 6, 2017 “Narrative identity takes part in the story’s movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.” --Paul Ricoeur [JB comment: his heart is still laughing!]Marking the indistinct boundary between “a mere sequence of moments” and “a story” is the complex but inescapable concept of narrative. Narratives appear to order and unify events, creating a sense of coherent meaning, yet the narratives by which we order our lives—narratives of gender, race, class, nation, etc.—are always internally troubled.
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Editorial, "The coverage of Syria’s civil war," thenational.ae
A new chapter is beginning, but it is unclear what will happen next in the vicious conflict. As we struggle to understand how a tragedy of this magnitude could unfold before our eyes, it is critical to unravel the way the Syrian conflict is covered in the media. Up to this point, the coverage of the war has been largely written from a western perspective. Editors from western publications, often based in Beirut or Istanbul because Syria is far too dangerous, rely on freelance journalists and activists for on the ground reporting. Social media updates from unverified sources have been used alongside statements from a variety of human rights organisations each claiming to represent the Syrian people.
The result has been an unusual unity in western coverage of Syria in which publications of different political persuasion embrace the same narrative. While this type of coverage might suit the needs of readers in Berlin or New York, those in the region require a broader form of reportage. We can’t rely on one single narrative of the Syria conflict or any conflict for that matter. This is not to say that the western narrative is wrong. Rather, the question is whether it is a complete narrative.
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How to Make Your Corporate Narrative Far More Powerful. cebglobal.com Only 51% of employees use the corporate narrative in their communications; these three steps will boost that number significantly 13 Dec 2016 | CEB Marketing & CommunicationsShare Most firms would benefit from a better corporate narrative. At base, it is a way of giving everyone who works with or for the company a shared sense of purpose, and for customers and others to understand what the company is trying to achieve. The problem is that, at a time when near constant change makes this kind of message so important for discouraged and unsure employees, companies find it harder than ever to create a single, compelling story that cuts through the noise. And this isn’t good because inconsistent messaging about a company’s identity and direction can make the company appear at best disorganized and at worst disingenuous. Why It’s Hard to Create a Company Story Corporate communications teams – who are normally charged with coming up with a corporate narrative – tend to focus their energy on making the story itself perfect. And for good reason: they need a narrative that defines the company vision, inspires employees and others, but that doesn’t become irrelevant at the first shift in strategy, new acquisition, or change of senior executive. The problem, however, is that the crucial part to making a success of the corporate narrative is what happens after you’ve written it: embedding it into the company culture. There are three reasons why companies struggle with this. Lack of consensus: Communications team face an uphill battle to unify different perspectives and work around group dynamics to build a single narrative. At most companies, the corporate narrative is conceptualized, constructed, and approved by just a few individuals who often express conflicting or differing ideas. Lack of understanding: Just having a corporate narrative does not guarantee its use; employees need to embrace the story and put it into action. Among those employees who are aware of the corporate narrative, 51% choose not to use it in their messages, according to CEB analysis. The problem is a lack of understanding about the context for the narrative. Business leaders should help employees understand the shared behaviors, mindset, and language that defines the company’s vision. Lack of widespread use: Contrary to expectations, the majority of employees who use the corporate narrative are not within communications or marketing. Employees in virtually all functions have the potential to communicate using the corporate narrative but this only works if the narrative reflects what they believe and do. Three Steps to Get the Corporate Narrative Working There are three ways for companies to get everyone to speak the same corporate language. Incorporate user understanding: Business leaders cannot create corporate narratives by the usual market landscape, customer interviews and brainstorming sessions. The narrative must explain the company’s story, its vision for the future and how it wants to get there. As such, leaders must build a consensus about the narrative and ensure it reflects the everyday jobs and beliefs of the people who use it, not just the executives who developed it. Supplement the narrative: An essential part of corporate narrative is supporting materials (e.g. FAQs) that offer opportunities for continued improvement. Workshops, conferences, and training are all parts of companies’ efforts to create a corporate narrative that employees can use and understand.
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Rod Dreher,"Chastisement As The Gift It Was," theamericanconservative.comA reader e-mailed the response below to the “Story Of Your Life” post. If you didn’t read that one, the thing you need to know is that it talks about people who construe bad or otherwise unwelcome events in their lives as part of a redemption story, and those who construe them as a contamination story. Sit down for this one:
This post of yours touched a nerve with me. It is interesting how these “contamination stories” and “redemption stories” will often tend to cycle back and forth over the course of a lifetime, depending upon our spiritual state. I have found in my own life that the redemption narrative, if not planted firmly in a dependency on God’s grace, often leads one into a false sense of prideful security and personal control–ripe pastures for the snares of the evil one. I considered posting this to your site anonymously, but it’s a bit long and perhaps veers a bit off topic. If you find it interesting, feel free to use it as you see fit. I think it illustrates how, depending on the narrative we choose to accept, what might look “good” on some level can cause things to turn “sour”, and things that are objectively “bad” (or at least, caused by our own sinfulness) might be the very catalyst which allow us to recognize God’s redemptive grace whereby we again participate in the redemption story. To illustrate my point:
My story begins more than 10 years ago in college. It was a few weeks before the commencement of my sophomore year when my younger brother passed away unexpectedly (long story short, he was born with a heart defect, but his end was very abrupt and unexpected both by his doctors). It’s always hard to lose a sibling, as you well know, but to lose one who is only 14 was devastating to myself personally, to my family, and to our church. My family was very devout and I was raised in a very active Southern Baptist Church. While I now have a deep and abiding respect for many aspects of that faith tradition, I had already begun to drift away due to the (at least perceived) paucity of that denomination’s intellectual tradition. I had a lot of questions and was generally told to just have faith in scripture and all my questions would go away. As you can imagine, my brother’s death intensified my need for answers. The two years after his death marked a period of deep spiritual longing and experimentation with various modes of the Christian tradition, but was also something of a spiritual wilderness and dislocation. I didn’t reject my faith at the time, though in retrospect I would describe this time period as falling within a “contamination narrative” in that I had burrowed so far into my own head so as to avoid my emotions and grief that it was hard to experience anything save a sense of longing and my own hardening cynicism.
This is the period in which I first became acquainted with the Orthodox Church. A dear college friend was in the process of converting and asked if I would like to attend a liturgy one Christmas Eve. It was beautiful, and I was intrigued, but I wasn’t really that interested at the time. Still, I was engaged enough that when it came time for a fall Orthodox college retreat I agreed to go, if for no other reason than that they needed drivers and I had a car. It was there that I got to know (not meet, we’d known each other casually for some time) the young woman who in short order would become my wife. She was from a similarly evangelical background and was a deeply committed Christian, but she was very smart and sophisticated and (like me) uneasy with the answers presented her by her faith tradition. On top of that, she had recently lost a sibling to cancer. We formed an immediate bond, and I think that we both felt as though we were finally able to grieve and to make sense of what had happened to us. Thus what had been a “contamination narrative” I came to see as a “redemption narrative”; God drawing two souls together who desperately needed someone who they could trust enough to work through the pain together.
We also began attending the local Orthodox Church. Very soon (too soon) thereafter I had asked her to marry me. We both agreed that we wanted our faith to play a central role in our lives. It was the end of my senior year and not wanting to be away from her (nor, believing as we did, wanting to cohabit unmarried) we married that summer and soon thereafter began the process of joining the Orthodox Church and were then Chrismated. Talk about a redemption narrative, I found myself on something of a spiritual plateau, and had nothing but optimism for the future! But all was not well.
I have thought long over the course of these 8 years since I separated from and later divorced my first wife what happened. Certainly my own sinfulness and naivete played a role. My continued struggle with pride and intellectualism at the expense of the heart also contributed. We had jumped into marriage before we knew enough about one another, and I neglected to take seriously the mental and emotional scars left on her by her own sad life, nor with my own capacity to handle their effects. In my pride, I thought that I was so much stronger than I was. Within six months of joining the Orthodox Church, a conversion to which she was integral, she decided not only that she no longer wished to be an Orthodox Christian, but also that she no longer believed in God. You can imagine how crushed and confused this left me, who just being at the beginning of my journey into the church was bereft of my partner. We struggled on for another year and a half. Perhaps if we had stayed put, surrounded by our church and familiar surroundings things would have been alright, but we made the decision to go back to school, and the marriage did not survive the first year.
And so, what I had perceived as a “redemption narrative” became to my hurting soul yet another even deeper and bleaker “contamination narrative” to which I slowly, but eventually succumbed. It’s amazing how relatively small decisions, made with the best of intentions, seal our fate within our own sinful narrative. While I remained attached to the church for some time after we separated, my eventual decision to divorce her and not to seek absolution (because, I poorly reasoned, if I don’t confess it, in some sense I haven’t lost her) sealed my fate. Intentionally cutting myself off from the sacramental life of the Orthodox Church, while I yet remained on the outskirts of her orbit, I became more spiritually dead (with the resulting symptoms of increased anxiety, depression, and despondency) as the years wore on.
Obviously, I have no idea where this story is going to end, but I am pleased to report that I am very much living in the midst of what I perceive as a “redemption narrative”, and one that, had I chosen to perceive it with different eyes, could just as easily have resulted in a “contamination narrative” propelled as it is by my own sinfulness. After years spent keeping my head down in my own self-pity, drifting ever further away from God, my family, and most of my true friends, I began to engage in, shall we say, a sinful social relationship with a member of the opposite sex. What had begun as a physical affair blossomed into affection and even love. I didn’t quite know what to do with this, committed as I had been to staying as far away from anyone as I possibly could (at this point less for reasons of morality than because of a desire to retain control of my life). How could I marry again? Our affair produced a pregnancy, and I faced a decision: live up to the full consequences of my actions, stop feeling sorry for myself, and seek redemption, or give in to logic of the despair that I had let myself fall into.
By the grace of God, I could not conceive of any other action than to see this chastisement as the gift that it was. I had been given the chance I had desperately prayed for. That’s when the amazing “redemption narrative” within which I now find myself began. I took this good woman, who being raised in an only nominally Christian household knew little of God but had a hunger in her heart far stronger than any that I have ever known, as my wife. We both wished (for somewhat different reasons) to find a church where we could be involved as a family. After visiting many churches and rejecting them for a variety of reasons, we attended one of the local Orthodox Churches and both discovered (again for different reasons) that we had found our church home. After 8 years, I am once again in full communion with the Orthodox Church and through regular prayer, confession, and partaking in the liturgy and the Eucharist have found the burden of the sins of these years slipping away.
Obviously we have many challenges ahead as a family, and I am not so naive now as to not believe that the fruits of my past sinfulness may continue to sprout bitter fruit which will require watchfulness. I know, more than ever, that prayer and vigilance is ever needed lest we sink into spiritual complacency. But for now, I am pleased to report that our son is to be Baptized and Chrismated in the Antiochian Orthodox Church this Sunday. [And you may be interested to know that his baptismal name is to be Benedict; while I am a fan of Alasdair MacIntyre and have been reading you for awhile, this is primarily a result of the time I spent working at a Benedictine Monastery and College a few years ago.]
I know your post was more about the stories we tell ourselves in general, and this email has taken a distinctively religious angle–pondering on the interaction between the story we tell ourselves about what is happening and the grace that we receive which seems (to my mind at any rate) to frame the edges of the narrative in which we may choose to participate either negatively or positively. As I said, if you think any of it is relevant, feel free to use it with any edits that seem appropriate. All Blessings of the upcoming Feast of the Nativity! ...
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Jennifer Harper, "Team Clinton fights to revise the election narrative," Washington Times, December 22, 2016
Things are not as they seem. After losing the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton gave a single speech, then made a few strategic appearances as a private citizen on nature walks or browsing in local bookstores. But her campaign is still percolating with vigor, now recalibrated to revise the election narrative.
Clinton allies are already “bending the storyline in their favor through a concerted media offensive” to undermine President-elect Donald Trump says U.S. News and World Report senior political analyst David Cantanese.
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Tom Rosenstiel, "What the post-Trump debate over journalism gets wrong: We don’t need journalists to hold fast or change everything, but a little of both," brookings.edu (December 20, 2016)
No matter how reporting is gathered, the presentation of reportorial news also must change. The atomic unit of news in the past was the “news story,” the lovely narrative, beautifully written. The reporter’s work was completed with the phrase, “I’ve filed,” meaning they had written their narrative and filed it to an editor. Today that is insufficient. That lovely narrative a reporter produces will be curated, truncated and summarized. That can be a valuable echo that spreads what they have discovered, but it also means the narrative itself is only one form of their reporting and not necessarily its most essential component. The new atomic unit of news must actually be the reporting—what the story learned—and the proof that establishes it. News people must now adopt forms, templates, and structures that make that proof–the evidence–become more explicit.
News people are just beginning to experiment with these forms, and may still chafe because there is no simple answer. But it is useful to imagine some possible templates. Consider a written new story that is accompanied by a box, for instance, with five questions: What is new about this story? What is the evidence? Who are the sources? What proof do they offer? What is still missing or unknown?
***These are the hidden questions that editors ask reporters and reporters ask themselves as they work. If these “editor questions” were made explicit to the public, rather than embedded only in the narrative, there would be two important effects. First, having to answer these questions explicitly would raise the bar for reporters and force them to flesh out their evidence. If their sourcing isn’t strong enough, that will be exposed in their answers. Second, and just as important, these new templates will begin to guide readers toward becoming more discriminating news consumers. Rather than teaching “news literacy” in a classroom, it will become something that is living in the stories we encounter.
Gary Pollack, head of fixed-income trading at Deutsche Bank's private-wealth-management unit, is surprised at November's pullback in average hourly earnings. ...
Meanwhile, he calls the bond-price gains since the report hit a selling opportunity since the market's narrative has been shifting toward higher yields.
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Mark Teeter on Facebook:
"To stop paying attention to [Russia's narrative] as many seem to have done is the road to ignorance and mistakes." -- D. Johnson, JRL 01 Dec 2016--> To suppose that "Russia's narrative" consists of reflexively Orwellian updates issued by the state media of the country's current regime, plus various state-supported tributary institutions/organizations and a regular contingent of apparently unaffiliated but agreeably acquiescent individuals with access to laptops and Facebook -- as one media dissemination resource seems to have resolved to do in selecting perhaps 3/4 of its material -- might be called extraordinarily naive, to put the best face on it. A more sober view would be that such an approach is not simply a "road to ignorance and mistakes," but indeed its fast lane.
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War and Turpentine By Stefan Hertmans. Translated by David McKay, cited in "The 10 Best Books of 2016," New York Times (December 2, 2016)
Inspired by the notebooks and reminiscences of his grandfather, a painter who served in the Belgian Army in World War I, Hertmans writes with an eloquence reminiscent of W.G. Sebald as he explores the places where narrative authority, invention and speculation flow together.
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Mary Pilon, "American football could fall like the gladiators of ancient Rome," nypost.com (December 3, 2016)
For viewers at home, replays and commercials have overwhelmed what game play actually happens. The league lacks a powerful narrative right now, like the Chicago Cubs reversing their 108-year-long hex.
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Jonathan Sperber, "Time for a change," The Times Literary Supplement (November 18, 2016), 26-27.
In discussing previous eras it is possible to treat economic, social or demographic structures as a relatively static background and focus the historical narrative, the story of change, on relations between the powers or cultural and intellectual trends. ...
The book [Richard Evans, the Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914] concludes with a discussion of the "Eastern Question", that is, the fate of the Ottoman Empire, and the rivalries between the Great Powers, leading up to the First World War.
This abandonment of a strict linear narrative and a refusal to create a periodization based on developments in any one area of human endeavour might make the text less suitable for undergraduates, as students continue to crave linearity, even when their professors have abandoned it. ... Looking more broadly, Evans' narrative does seem to highlight the decades `840-50 and 1880-90 ...
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Molly Osberg, "Welcome to Yellowbrick, a ‘rehab’ for stuck millennials that attempts to turn them into adults," fusion.net (Decmber 5. 2016)It manifested as a series of slow and muddy setbacks—nothing as straightforward as, say, a psychotic break—but Sean’s* Problem followed him for most of his life, flaring up in quiet moments, barely perceptible behind his affable Midwestern boyishness. These days, he’s starting to think the Problem began around the third grade. He lays it all out plainly. After all, Sean is used to telling his life story. He’s been doing it constantly for more than a year.
At Yellowbrick Treatment Center in Evanston, Illinois, the country’s preeminent facility dedicated to addressing the various demons that prevent “emerging adults” from growing up, they call this the Narrative. Upon arrival at Yellowbrick, where Sean had been living, you recount your Narrative for a group of psychologists, from start to finish. A few times a week, you share your Narrative or listen to the Narratives of others. And once discharged from Yellowbrick, according to one former patient, you may listen to a robotic recording of your Narrative, transcribed into a computer program in the third person, with heart-rate monitors affixed to your body. So it’s no surprise that Sean’s got the Narrative thing down pat.
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Emily Bowman, "When Public Diplomacy Is a Bad Joke: The importance of in-groups and out-groups to the successful use of humor by diplomats," takefiveblog.org (December , 2016)Everyone has a story in their head that tells them who they are. That’s our identity narrative. We have stories about our place in that world. We call those system narratives. In every narrative, there is a protagonist (the in-group) and an antagonist (the out-group). Generally, people like to be the protagonists of their own stories. We make this happen by aligning our identity narratives and system narratives in such a way that we belong to the in-group throughout. So, if we hear a different narrative, perhaps in the form of a joke, that recasts us as members of the out-group, we will reject that narrative. Not only that, we’ll likely cast whoever shared that narrative as a member of the out-group in our own narratives.
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Glen Ford, "Obama’s musings on false narratives and fake stories," flcourier.com (December 2, 2016) Filed under COLUMNISTS, COMMENTARIES; posted by FCEditorPresident Obama traveled to Berlin last week to browbeat Europeans on why they should continue to play junior partners in Washington’s quest for global domination, but kept returning to his post-election obsession: the existential threat posed by “fake news” on social media.
It was as if the realization had just dawned on the lame duck president that his own powers to create “facts” and manufacture “news” out of thin air would soon be gone. Without the Clintons in the White House, history might conclude that the First Black President’s only enduring legacy was…that he was the first Black president.
Fake news is a grave danger “in an age where there’s so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television,” according to Obama. “If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” he told the Germans.
A magic moment
The legendarily cool and collected Obama had just let out the secret: the ruling class, which he so faithfully serves, has lost control of the social and political narrative, without which it cannot “protect” its wealth, privilege and power.
Was the world’s most powerful individual (until January 20) in despair over Facebook’s failure to erase three or four fictitious, yet ultimately inconsequential, stories from its pages? Of course not.
Obama’s problem – and capitalism’s crisis – is that people no longer believe the fake “news” and bogus narratives issued by the ruling class and its corporate and military misinformation specialists.
This is the man that told the nation’s assembled bankers, a year after the Greet Meltdown of 2008, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” When the people come to believe that the president and the corporate media’s narrative – that the system can be fixed with a little tinkering – is a bunch of “propaganda,” rather than “serious argument,” then future Obamas will no longer be able to protect the Lords of Capital from the pitchforkers.
Lost control
Losing control of the narrative is what happened after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Mo., when Black youth stopped listening to Obama’s fictitious sermon that racism is not endemic in America, a fake history that candidate Obama had successfully dispensed in his 2008 “A More Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia.
Obama’s targeted handful of phony social media articles generally favored Donald Trump. But the biggest “fake news” of the recent campaign, promulgated by Hillary Clinton’s Supersized Tent, was that the Russians were scheming to despoil and disrupt the U.S. elections – crimes Americans commit all by themselves every cycle through massive voter purges and other racist conspiracies.
The Big Tent – Wall Street, the national security establishment, and their media – have lost all credibility with the public, and Obama was still shaken by the realization when he traveled to Berlin. Donald Trump and his crowd’s credibility – their ability to weave a believable narrative – was nonexistent from the start among half the country, and will shrink even more over time.
Systemic crisis
The root of the crisis of credibility, which is really a systemic crisis of legitimacy, lies in the inability of late-stage capitalism to offer anything that will stem the steady decline in the mass of people’s living standards and economic security. So deep is the decay, every amelioration of public pain would require the dismantling of capitalist structures of power, which is unacceptable to the rulers.
The U.S. does not have universal health care because capital has entrenched itself in all aspects of health care delivery. The rulers cannot provide affordable housing because Wall Street has financialized the nation’s land and dwellings. Good jobs at living wages are impossible, as long as corporations are empowered to maintain their carefully crafted international supply chain for manufactured goods – the foundation of corporate globalization.
Breaking the status quo
Black America cannot break free of the Mass Black Incarceration State until Black people eject the police, as presently constituted, from their communities, which will also require ejecting the corporate collaborators of the Black Misleadership Class from positions of power. There can be no peace while predatory corporations and cartels dictate U.S. foreign policy. The cycle of decline and repression will continue until corporate power is broken and the banks are nationalized.
The rulers offer nothing, because the system is no longer capable of providing relief to the working and “superfluous” classes (that means most Black folks). They can only spin tales of fantasy and distraction – fake stories and phony narratives.
American “Exceptionalism” is “Manifest Destiny” with Native American genocide and Black slavery blotted out. It is the falsest narrative of all, tailored for imperial conquest and an “end of history” – meaning the end of everyone’s narrative except the imperialist.
Glen Ford is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Lea Speyer, "‘Indigenous People Unite’ Event on Campus to ‘Reclaim Narrative’ About Jewish Right to Native Land," algemeiner.com (December 4, 2016)
Image from article, with caption: ‘Indigenous People Unite’ event poster. Photo: SSI Columbia.
The head of a group at New York City’s Columbia University that is spearheading a campus initiative to refute the claim that Jews have no right to the land of Israel told The Algemeiner that the impetus behind its upcoming event is to “reclaim the narrative.”
Rudy Rochman, president of the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI), which is sponsoring “Indigenous People Unite,” said, “The Palestinians frame Israel and Jews as a movement that came to take away someone else’s and whose mere existence impedes on the Palestinian right of self-determination.”
According to Rochman, anti-Israel Columbia faculty and student groups — like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — “target the average student on campus by playing up and riding on the shoulders of other minority struggles,” while maintaining that the Jewish-Israel tie lies outside of that group. “It’s no coincidence they use phrases like ‘boycott’ and ‘apartheid’ when it comes to Israel.”
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What is Narrative Theory? projectnarrative.osu.edu [JB note: too many silly academic statements on so-called narrative "scholarly" discussions" to highlight! :)]Narrative theory is currently enjoying a major burgeoning of interest in North America and throughout the world, with especially strong activity in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium, Israel, and China. Narrative theory starts from the assumption that narrative is a basic human strategy for coming to terms with fundamental elements of our experience, such as time, process, and change, and it proceeds from this assumption to study the distinctive nature of narrative and its various structures, elements, uses, and effects.
More specifically, narrative theorists study what is distinctive about narrative (how it is different from other kinds of discourse, such as lyric poems, arguments, lists, descriptions, statistical analyses, and so on), and how accounts of what happened to particular people in particular circumstances with particular consequences can be at once so common and so powerful. Thus a key concern is whether narrative as a way of thinking about or explaining human experience contrasts with scientific modes of explanation that characterize phenomena as instances of general covering laws. Narrative theorists, in short, study how stories help people make sense of the world, while also studying how people make sense of stories.
To this end, narrative theorists draw not only on literary studies but also on ideas from such fields as rhetoric, (socio)linguistics, philosophical ethics, cognitive science (including cognitive and social psychology), folklore, and gender theory to explore how narratives work both as kinds of texts and as strategies for navigating experience. Narratives of all kinds are relevant to the field: literary fictions and nonfictions, film narratives, comics and graphic novels, hypertexts and other computer-mediated narratives, oral narratives occurring during the give and take of everyday conversation, as well as narratives told in courtrooms, doctors' offices, business conference rooms—indeed, anywhere. Because of the pervasiveness of narrative in our culture and the diversity of the texts, media, and communicative situations narrative theory examines, narrative theory constitutes an exciting new frontier of English Studies, one that promises to bring English Department faculty and students into closer contact with their counterparts in a variety of social-scientific, humanistic, and other disciplines.
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Narrative Persuasion: From Research to Practice, icahdq.org [JB - too many silly academic statements on narrative so-called "scholarly" discussions to highlight :)]Date & Time: 9 am to 5 pm Wednesday, 24th May 2017 with onsite lunch ($50) Optional: Tuesday May 23rd evening dinner with opening address ($25) Optional: Bus immediately following conference to San Diego Hilton ($25) Venue: Wallis Annenberg Hall (ANN), Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles California Sponsor: ICA Mass Communication Division Co-Sponsors: Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California and Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S) Organizers: Sheila Murphy and Nathan Walter, Annenberg/USC, Jonathan Cohen, Haifa University, Hollywood, Health & Society (Director Kate Folb and Erica Rosenthal) Keynote Speakers: Melanie Green (U. Buffalo) & Michael Slater (OSU)
Description & Objective:
Narrative persuasion has become a burgeoning area of research offering new theoretical and empirical discoveries regarding the underlying processes that enhance or attenuate the persuasive efficacy of stories. But while interest in and use of narratives has grown exponentially, there seems to be a substantial divide between the study of narrative persuasion and the practical use of stories to sway knowledge, attitudes and behavior in health, social and other contexts. The goal of this preconference is to bridge this gap by bringing together scholars who study narrative persuasion with entertainment industry representatives who produce narrative content, as well as practitioners who increasing apply narrative interventions to health and social problems.
For this preconference we are seeking original contributions from senior and junior researchers that explore theories, methods, and applications of narrative persuasion in diverse contexts. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary contributions that speak to the barriers to and implications of applying theoretical concepts from narrative persuasion research to real world problems. We strongly encourage practitioners from the world of film, television and Entertainment-Education to participate in the preconference and take part in activities designed to bridge the gap between academic research on narrative and art the storytelling.
Preconference format: The morning and early afternoon of the preconference will include two keynote addresses from experts in narrative persuasion Melanie Green and Michael Slater. In addition there will be three sessions that explore topics relevant to narrative persuasion and its practice including (but not limited to):
narratives in the new media environment;
psychological mechanisms of narrative persuasion (e.g., identification, transportation, PSI);
new methods to explore the interplay between stories and audiences;
the textual features that improve the effectiveness of stories;
Each session will be introduced by an expert in that area, followed by related 15 minute presentations of relevant research from participants and invited guests. The final two hours (3 to 5) will be devoted to an interactive storytelling workshop led by Hollywood, Health & Society, faculty of the School of Cinematic Arts and a top Hollywood TV writer. Whether your focus is creating narratives for research, presenting data, advocating policy or promoting health guidelines and recommendations, the art and science of storytelling can enhance the effectiveness of your communication. Learn how a good story can help convey useful information while keeping the audience engaged. HH&S will facilitate a workshop that allows participants to: Hone their storytelling skills to make narratives more compelling.and research-informed practice of entertainment education.
Learn how to select the important aspects of your subject matter for meaningful & dramatic effect.
Gain experience by generating stories in the workshop and receiving feedback from professionals.
How to participate:
A participation fee of $50 US will cover coffee breaks and an onsite lunch on Wednesday the 24th. You may register for this preconference online at www.icahdq.org beginning January 17, 2017, as part of your main ICA conference registration, or separately through smurphy@usc.edu. Attendees need not present to participate and are not required to submit an abstract.
For those who wish to present their narrative persuasion-related work, abstracts of 400 words (maximum) and a short bio should be submitted no later than 30 January 2017. Proposals for full panels are also welcome: these should include a 200-word abstract for each individual presentation, and a 200-word rationale for the panel. Send abstracts in Word to: smurphy@usc.edu; nathanw@usc.edu and jcohen@com.haifa.ac.il. Presenters will be informed of acceptance/rejection for the preconference no later than March 1, 2017.
For questions please feel free to contact the organizers.
Optional: Tuesday May 23rd evening dinner with opening address ($25) Ever wonder whether the stories you see on those medical dramas are accurate? Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S) works with hundreds of top television content creators to inform and inspire accurate health and scientific storylines. From Disney Jr.’s Doc McStuffins to CBS’ Madam Secretary, HH&S consults with all genres of entertainment. Learn how and why this work is important to public health domestically and internationally in this hour-long presentation. Clips of current shows and impact research will be used to underscore the value of this approach and connect it to theoretical mechanisms such as transportation, identification with characters, etc.
Optional: Bus immediately following conference to San Diego Hilton ($25). Prior registration with smurphy@usc.edu required, limited seats are available for the bus and will be assigned on a first come first serve basis.
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