Narrative
In communication, the story a message is part of: who the actors are, what the conflict is, how it will end. Strategists speak of "controlling the narrative" because facts are remembered through the story they are fitted into, and a fact that fits no story is soon forgotten.
The word moved from literary criticism into politics and marketing in the 1990s and 2000s, and its spread marks a real shift in how persuasion is thought about. The older model treated a message as a claim to be accepted or rejected. The narrative model treats it as an episode in a story the audience already knows, with heroes, villains, and a direction of travel. A claim that fits the story is accepted with little scrutiny; one that does not is resisted however well it is evidenced.
Propagandists have always worked this way, whether or not they had the word. The Dolchstoss, the "stab in the back" story that explained Germany's defeat in 1918 as betrayal at home, was a narrative before it was any particular claim, and the facts it needed were supplied afterwards. The Cold War's "domino theory" was a narrative about the direction of travel. The techniques that build and maintain narratives on this site are Frame Control, Agenda Setting, Historical Revisionism, Common Enemy, and Scapegoating.
"Narrative" is now also used as a dismissal, as in "that's just a narrative", which is itself a Thought Terminating Cliche: it implies that a story's being a story settles whether it is true.
Sources
- Lakoff, George. Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction: Chelsea Green, 2004. ISBN 978-1931498715
- Fisher, Walter R. "Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument." Communication Monographs 51, no. 1 (1984): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758409390180