Another Way to Tell the News, Another Way to Read the News: Immersion and Information in Narrative Journalism

Poetics Today ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-423
Author(s):  
Marie Vanoost

Abstract While Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative (1990) was only concerned with fictional and historical narratives, its influence on narrative theory has been much broader. Ricoeur's reflections expanded into the field of journalism, among other areas, notably through the notion of media narrative (or récit médiatique) as defined by Marc Lits (1997a). Following Lits, Ricoeur's legacy—and, more specifically, the distinction it inspired between immersive and informative narratives (Baroni 2018)—has been used to shed light on a specific kind of journalism often referred to as narrative journalism, that is, journalism that uses the writing techniques of fiction to tell news stories. This article further examines the dialectic between immersion and information in narrative journalism by exploring both journalists’ goals when writing their texts and receivers’ experiences when reading them. First, interviews with journalists show that they are largely aware of this dialectic and purposefully use an immersive form to help readers better understand information. Then, an exploratory study with readers reveals that they claim to look mostly for information yet seem to favor immersive narratives.

Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095792652110232
Author(s):  
Helton Levy ◽  
Dan Mercea

This article explores the use of narrative theory as an analytical framework to investigate the extent to which popular hashtags and the news can develop into intersecting stories. It juxtaposes the case of hashtag-based reports seen during the Arab Spring to understand the coverage of notorious political episodes in Brazil. Namely, the 2016 impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro. Here, narrative linearity emerges as a tool to observe the borrowing of Twitter hashtags in several journalistic pieces. It is contended that the linearity of authorship, narration and representation of time appears as a satisfactory pathway to trace the development of hashtags into popular news stories. Results suggested that hashtags can significantly follow narratives and agendas in journalism but differing from their original social media context.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-951
Author(s):  
Emma Teng

Engseng Ho proposes that “the study of Asia, thought of as an Inter-Asian space, and smaller than the whole globe, can provide tractable concepts for a new round of research to shed light on the social shapes of societies that are mobile, spatially expansive, and interactive with one other.” Moving us away from more static models of China studies, Japan studies, etc., the concept of “inter-Asian”—where I take the “inter” to stand for inter-national, inter-regional, inter-faith, inter-racial, and inter-ethnic—offers a productive framework for examining histories that have been previously marginalized in dominant historical narratives: for example, the history of colonial Hong Kong's Eurasian community. In such a case, where the scope of inquiry is neither fully global in scale nor strictly local, the inter-Asian framework provides a middle ground and intermediate scale that brings this history into focus.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Gondwe ◽  
Evan Rowe ◽  
Evariste Some

This exploratory study contributes to the literature on numeracy in digital journalism studies by theoretically incorporating the audience/news consumers. While most studies have focused on journalists’ perception and role in the use of numeracy, this study examines how audience perceive stories with numerical values. Through an experimental design, and by comparing the United States, Zambia, and Tanzania, the study was able to demonstrate that news stories with numerical values diminished audience/readers’ affective consumption. In other words, news stories with numerical values were negatively associated with audience appeal. However, individuals with a lower understanding of probabilistic and numerical concepts seemed to trust news stories with numbers more than those with a higher level of numeracy. This was especially true in Zambia and Tanzania where most participants recorded lower numeracy levels. The overall sample in all the three countries seemed to favor news stories with less or no numeracy.


Author(s):  
Andre Nicholson

Consumers of news should expect to consume reports, which are an accurate and unbiased reflection of local, national, and world events. However, due to limitations that affect the packaging and presentation of many news stories today, consumers may not be experiencing a true reflection of those issues. This exploratory study examined three genres of news for objectivity and bias in the reporting of news stores: local news, national news, and satire news. The study found that although local news reporters attempt to report news stories with an objective narrative, it is often the news story's subject that impedes the process of objectivity. National and satire news programs also lose their objectivity based on the narrative presented by the hosts of the program.


2019 ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Andre Nicholson

Consumers of news should expect to consume reports, which are an accurate and unbiased reflection of local, national, and world events. However, due to limitations that affect the packaging and presentation of many news stories today, consumers may not be experiencing a true reflection of those issues. This exploratory study examined three genres of news for objectivity and bias in the reporting of news stores: local news, national news, and satire news. The study found that although local news reporters attempt to report news stories with an objective narrative, it is often the news story's subject that impedes the process of objectivity. National and satire news programs also lose their objectivity based on the narrative presented by the hosts of the program.


1995 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Park Turner

Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method has never enjoyed the same reputation as his major books, in part because the book is uncongenial to standard interpretations of Durkheim. In particular, its attacks on teleology do not fit his reputation as a functionalist The papers in this special issue address the work historically. Both Porter and Stedman Jones deal with aspects of the context in which Durkheim worked and transformed. Schmaus and Nemedi deal with problems of interpreting Durkheim's development, and Platt discusses the reception of The Rules. The papers shed light on such important questions as the meaning of Durkheim's slogan “society is made of representations.” Durkheim, it appears, was not only what would now be called a constructionist, he went on to ask whether the fact that constructions are real in their consequences did not imply the reality causal reality of constructions and, therefore, a specific kind of “social realism.” The problem The Rules poses, of what is the fundamental stuff of society, is “classic” in significance, and Durkheim's answer is classically radical


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Míriam Flores-Bascuñana ◽  
Pascual D. Diago ◽  
Rafael Villena-Taranilla ◽  
Dionisio F. Yáñez

Nowadays, Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the emerging technologies with a greater impact in the Education field. Research has proved that AR-based activities improve the teaching and learning processes. Also, the use of this type of technology in classroom facilitates the understanding of contents from different areas as Arts, Mathematics or Science. In this work we propose an AR-based instruction in order to explore the benefits in a 6th-grade Primary course related to 3D-geometry shapes. This first experiment, designed from an exploratory approach, will shed light on new study variables to perform new implementations whose conclusions become more consistent. The results obtained allow us to envisage that AR-based proposals slightly improve the classical didactic methods.


CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-337
Author(s):  
Dan Irving

In light of the oft-cited critique of a ‘mimetic bias’ in narrative theory, and especially in cognitive narratology, I propose that insights from embodied (or ‘second-generation’) cognitive science, particularly those dealing with kinesic and proprioceptive intelligence – that is, experience-derived knowledge of how movement and body position affect perception – can help shed light on a range of ‘weak’ narratives ( McHale 2001 ). Taking as a case study two short pieces by the contemporary American author Lydia Davis, I extend arguments made by Abbott (2013) and Pettersson (2012) regarding hermeneutical and experiential modes of thinking about reading. The presence-based mode of reading I outline here embraces the inherently embodied, multisensory aspects of both multimodal (The Cows) and ostensibly monomodal (or text-only) narratives (‘Oral History [With Hiccups]’). In what follows, I discuss the possibility of kinesic and proprioceptive description – sentences that describe and subsequently tap into innate knowledge of bodily movement and position as it relates to perception – being understood as affordances for feeling ‘present’ in a storyworld.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thuy-vy Thi Nguyen

This exploratory study investigated the effect of social media use on emerging adults’ experiences with leisure solitude – periods of free time spent alone. First, one 14-day diary study (n = 109) was conducted to explore the effects of leisure solitude on daily affects and self-experiences and whether social media added any additional benefits or detriments. Then, two experimental studies (Study 2: n = 146; Study 3: n = 249) were conducted to home in on the effects of social media on lab-facilitated leisure solitude. Results across 3 studies revealed little evidence that social media interfered with the regulatory benefits of leisure solitude. Specifically, spending time in leisure solitude lowered arousal levels and increased calmness and relaxation at the end of the day and after just 15 minutes of it in the lab, and this effect was found despite whether participants engaged in social media or not. One interesting finding emerged: browsing on social media created feelings of inauthenticity in solitude. This finding was discussed in connection with the theory of emerging adulthood, which shed light on how emerging adults make sense of the uncertainty experienced in online space.


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