Understanding Narratives for National Security Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 Narrative Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
2 Narrative Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Pages 5-12
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From page 5... ...
A pioneer in quantitative narrative analysis, Franzosi explained that he first became interested in narrative structure while using statistical models to study time series data on the labor strikes of post–World War I Italy. At the conclusion of his research, however, he concluded that these models were limited in their ability to identify the social actors that were at the heart of these strikes.
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From page 6... ...
Therefore, he developed software that would allow him to identify the SVO structure in narratives quickly and accurately using a method he terms "quantitative narrative analysis." With this software, Program for the Computer-Assisted Coding of Events, he was able to examine approximately 50,000 newspaper articles from 1919 to 1922, which resulted in the identification of 250,000 SVO sequence sets related to the rise of Italian fascism in postwar Italy. Returning to the five W's structure, Franzosi observed that while the SVO structure addresses the questions who and what, geographic information system (GIS)
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From page 7... ...
He had observed large laboratories in the genomic and other biological sciences working together to build large online databases to store and share data collectively, and said he hoped to provide a similar resource for studying different modes of communication. In 2010, he and a colleague developed Red Hen Lab, a global consortium for communication research.4 According to Turner, the repository currently stores approximately 4 billion words and 360,000 recorded hours of audiovisual (AV)
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From page 8... ...
In one study, he analyzed stories created by students after they had participated in a thematic apperception test.7 The study revealed, he reported, that graphs showing the number of function words used in a story typically reveal a particular pattern: they are used at a high 6 Pennebaker explained that function words are social words that are processed differently in the brain than are content words, which include nouns, regular verbs, most adjectives, and most adverbs. 7 A thematic apperception test is a psychological test used to reveal thoughts and attitude patterns by examining the stories people devise when presented with a picture involving people unfamiliar to them.
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From page 9... ...
THE SMALL-STORY APPROACH TO NARRATIVE RESEARCH Michael Bamberg, Clark University, divides narrative analysis into two categories: big-story and small-story approaches. Big stories, he said, help people make sense of the world through the narratives told by nations, organizations, institutions, and individuals, citing the example of the story of how the allies sought to contain the spread of communism after World War II.
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From page 10... ...
He noted that he and his colleagues at the consortium have been collecting and tagging a variety of visual data to store in the Red Hen Lab repository, adding that even subtle facial expressions and gestures can be detected and tagged so that researchers have access to all forms of communication. The remainder of the discussion focused on comparing methodological approaches and considering how narrative research might help analysts determine whether a narrative is true or false and whether it is changing at the societal level.
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From page 11... ...
Only after the United States entered Iraq, he added, did Bush return to using the word "I." Pennebaker also noted that the Boston Marathon bomber stopped using the word "I" in his social media communications before the bombing.
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