Causal Narratives Research Articles

Modular narratives and visual digital culture in contemporary cinema. The case of Open Windows (Nacho Vigalondo, 2014)

In the present day, digital visual and convergence culture permeate the modes of production, circulation, and consumption of audiovisual representations, following the postulates of authors such as A. Darley or H. Jenkins. In this context, A. Cameron defines modular narratives as those in which classical narrative causality is replaced by a database aesthetic, dividing the narrative into discrete elements subject to manipulations of order, frequency, and duration. Focusing on the case of Open Windows (Nacho Vigalondo, 2014), this study aims to explore the imprints of digital visual culture on contemporary Spanish cinema incorporating modular narratives. The methodology employs an analysis model adapted to this narrative and aesthetic specificity within the framework of Computational Media Aesthetics. The film's mechanisms of representation are scrutinized through a multi-screen interface, where simultaneous events are juxtaposed within the same visual field. Finally, the discussion encompasses the necessity of applying such models to the analysis of audiovisual content associated with digital visual culture, as well as their potential utility for future research.

Narratives in exposomics: A reversed heuristic determinism?

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), biomedical sciences have moved away from a gene-centred view and towards a multi-factorial one in which environment, broadly speaking, plays a central role in the determination of human health and disease. Environmental exposures have been shown to be highly prevalent in disease causation. They are considered as complementary to genetic factors in the etiology of diseases, hence the introduction of the concept of the "exposome" as encompassing the totality of human environmental exposures, from conception onwards (Wild in Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prev 14:1847-1850, 2005), and the launch of the Human Exposome Project (HEP) which aims to complement the HGP. At first sight, and seen as complementary to the genome, the exposome could thus appear as contributing to the rise of novel postgenomic deterministic narratives which place the environment at their core. Is this really the case? If so, what sort of determinism is at work in exposomics research? Is it a case of environmental determinism, and if so, in what sense? Or is it a new sort of deterministic view? In this paper, we first show that causal narratives in exposomics are still very similar to gene-centred deterministic narratives. They correspond to a form of Laplacian determinism and, above all, to what Claude Bernard called the "determinism of a phenomenon". Second, we introduce the notion of "reversed heuristic determinism" to characterize the specific deterministic narratives present in exposomics. Indeed, the accepted sorts of external environmental exposures conceived as being at the origins of diseases are determined, methodologically speaking, by their identifiable internal and biological markers. We conclude by highlighting the most relevant implications of the presence of this heuristic determinism in exposomics research.

Identifying critical assumptions and risks in air quality management planning using Theory of Change approach

Governments across the world have been developing legislation and policy implementation instruments to address air pollution issues. Air Quality Management Plans (AQMPs) have emerged as a key instrument, with most developed countries having established effective AQMPs. These take a variety of forms depending on the overarching national framework for environmental regulations. The uptake of AQMPs in low and middle-income countries, however, has been less broad and, even in those that have adopted AQMPs, their effectiveness and efficiency have been limited, especially in urban areas. South Africa has adopted AQMPs and is recognised as having one of the most mature and complex air quality management legal frameworks in the world. Yet South Africa is still facing serious air quality challenges, especially in those areas that have been declared as priority areas. This paper, therefore, aims to identify critical assumptions and risks as a basis to evaluate the effectiveness of AQMPs as a policy instrument through the application of Theory of Change (ToC) approach. This study has resulted in the development of the ToC map, identification of 15 critical assumptions and associated causal narrative framework. In addition, this paper identified key risks underpinning the AQMP development and implementation process in South Africa. The identified critical assumptions embedded within different components of the ToC framework are not the only assumptions relating to this policy instrument, however, they are the fundamentally important ones that may significantly impact the success or failure of the AQMP system in South Africa if not managed. This study suggests that in order to further understand the challenges relating to the effective development and implementation of AQMPs, it is important that further research be conducted to test the validity of these critical assumptions which will provide solutions towards avoiding or mitigating risks associated with them.

The complementary relationship between illegal fishing and maritime piracy: A case study of the Gulf of Guinea

This research paper investigates the interrelationship between maritime crime, specifically sea piracy, and illegal fishing. Existing studies primarily focus on the link between piracy and illegal fishing activities carried out by foreign trawlers, drawing evidence from Somali piracy cases. A causal narrative in past works highlights the detrimental effects of foreign trawlers on local marine resources, ecosystems, and livelihoods, thereby driving local fishers to turn toward piracy and prompting coastal states to address the key issue of illegal fishing by foreign vessels.However, this emphasis on external perpetrators can lead states to pay less attention to local actors involved in illegal fishing and maritime piracy. Therefore, this study redirects our attention to local perpetrators who engage in illegal fishing and maritime piracy. It explores the complementary relationship between these two types of crimes. Our findings indicate that reducing illegal fishing activities in a local area enhances the likelihood of maritime piracy occurrence. By shedding light on the complementarity between illegal fishing and maritime piracy, this research provides valuable insights for policymakers and law enforcement agencies involved in combating maritime crime. It underscores the importance of locally addressing illegal fishing and piracy using a more holistic approach.

Exploring the Interplay of Intergenerational Transmission, Structural Inequalities, and Relative Resources in Domestic Violence: Evidence From a Nationally Representative Dataset.

Domestic violence persists as a significant social challenge affecting a considerable number of women globally. Some scholars have ascribed the inclination toward domestic violence to a "cycle of violence" spanning generations, while others have pointed out structural inequalities. Feminist researchers contend that a comprehensive understanding necessitates exploration within the social and institutional realms of gender inequality. While each of these perspectives contributes significantly to comprehending domestic violence, individually, they might not unveil the complete causal narrative. This study endeavors to address this gap by proposing an integrated model to elucidate domestic violence in the context of Türkiye, examining (a) the correlation between growing up in a violent household and the susceptibility to domestic violence, (b) the interrelation between structural factors and the vulnerability to domestic violence, and (c) the connection between a woman's advantageous position in terms of the couple's relative resources and the likelihood of experiencing domestic violence. To achieve this objective, multivariate micro-level analyses were conducted using nationally representative data from the 2014 Research on Domestic Violence Against Women in Türkiye. The outcomes affirm the significance of all three approaches, highlighting the value of integrated methodologies for a more profound comprehension of the etiology of domestic violence. This insight is crucial for the development of effective prevention programs. Furthermore, the findings highlight intra-parental violence exposure as the most robust risk factor or predictor for subsequent involvement in violent intimate relationships. As the initial study in Türkiye encompasses early-life experiences, structural inequalities, and the relative resources of couples, this research is poised to contribute significantly to the existing body of literature on domestic violence.

The complex interplay of causal narratives in public policy and political discourse

The study builds on Deborah Stone’s foundational work exploring the mechanics of causal narratives and their implications for framing problems, assigning responsibility, and guiding policy solutions. The purpose of this research is to unravel the complexities of causal narratives in contemporary politics and understand their profound influence on public policy and society at large. In the digital age, where information is abundant and the traditional gatekeeping role of media has diminished, causal narratives have become increasingly multifaceted. The study aims to explore how these narratives, influenced by the intersections of natural phenomena, human actions, politics, risk, and media, shape public understanding and policy directions. The study employs an extensive review of existing literature, covering works from political science, media studies, and public policy. This includes analyzing seminal texts like Deborah Stone’s “Policy Paradox” and recent studies on media’s evolving role in political discourse. Today’s causal narratives are multifaceted, influenced by a myriad of factors including political agendas, scientific findings, and media portrayals. In conclusion, the research highlights the dynamic nature of causal narratives in the digital age and their significant impact on public policy and societal outcomes. It underscores the need for nuanced understanding and strategic approaches in crafting and interpreting these narratives.

Fracking Twitter: Utilizing machine learning and natural language processing tools for identifying coalition and causal narratives

AbstractThe Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has provided policy scholars with a valuable method to gain empirical insight into the power of narratives in the policy process. However, a significant limitation of the NPF has been its ability to deploy this framework on large N datasets due to the labor‐intensive nature of collecting narrative data. In recent years, NPF scholars have turned to computational social science tools to address this challenge. This study builds upon this emerging body of literature and our previous work, which uses sentiment analysis, a natural language processing technique, to evaluate the use of the angel/devil shift across coalitions before and after a major policy change. We examined Tweets that included the terms “fracking” and “New York” before and after the introduction of a moratorium. While sentiment analysis allowed us to gain insight into the narrative structure of the fracking policy discourse space, the labor involved in hand‐coding Twitter users into neutral‐, pro‐, or anti‐fracking groups was onerous. This project aims to supplement our natural language processing method by employing supervised machine learning techniques to increase the universe of respondents. We hand‐coded 500 Twitter users into neutral‐, pro‐, or anti‐fracking groups and trained a much larger dataset using an extreme gradient boost algorithm to classify a broader corpus of Tweets. This enabled us to expand the number of Tweets used in the analyses. We then applied sentiment analysis on this newly classified larger dataset to reveal differences in the pro‐fracking and anti‐fracking advocacy coalitions. By using machine learning to classify pro and con Tweets, we gained the ability to achieve significantly greater insight into how these two subgroups employed different narrative and linguistic devices in their Twitter discussions about fracking.Related ArticlesMerry, Melissa K. 2022. “Trump's Tweets as Policy Narratives: Constructing the Immigration Issue via Social Media.” Politics & Policy 50(4): 752–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12487.Robles, Pedro, and Daniel J. Mallinson. 2023. “Catching Up with AI: Pushing toward a Cohesive Governance Framework.” Politics & Policy 51(3): 355–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12529.Shanahan, Elizabeth A., Mark K. McBeth, and Paul L. Hathaway. 2011. “Narrative Policy Framework: The Influence of Media Policy Narratives on Public Opinion.” Politics & Policy 39(3): 373–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00295.x.

Non-singular Logics of Intellectual Property in Biomedical Innovation

Abstract The role of intellectual property in biomedical innovation is often construed by the source of its funding viz. public or private. While privately funded innovations are assumed to rely on intellectual property for monopolistic expansions and profit gains, publicly funded research is expected to serve the broader social good without proprietary constraints. In the light of the accumulating evidence over the last few decades, it is now understood that this causal narrative, appears simplistic. To gain a deeper understanding of innovation, whether profit-driven or socially oriented, it is crucial to examine the broader context of basic and translational research. This article investigates the management of intellectual property within two significant biomedical research funding organizations: the publicly funded United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the public-private-philanthropic partnership, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). The findings reveal that despite different claims about intellectual property strategies, these institutions exhibit similar practices influenced by the spectre of larger privatisation processes intrinsic to global market forces. This analysis suggests that a singular logic of one-size-fits-all approach to intellectual property is inadequate in promoting biomedical innovation for the greater public good.

Changing Causal Narratives and Risk Perceptions on Foreign Investment: the Riskification of Chinese Investments in the Nordic Region

This article surveys recent legislative and policy changes on foreign investments in four Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway). Until recently, only Finland had national legislation on foreign investments, although historically the Nordic countries were forerunners in introducing foreign investment controls. A general rethink in the USA and the European Union on the links between liberal economies, investment policies and security has occurred in recent years. This has cast investments by enterprises from major authoritarian countries, foremost China, in a different light. Rather than investment numbers as such, or realised risks related to Chinese investments, a ‘causal narrative’ has emerged in the Nordic countries that draws attention to the nature of the Chinese party-state and its’ unclear relationship to Chinese companies, underlining potential strategic motivations and security risks behind Chinese investments. Rapidly changing risk perceptions have driven legislative and policy changes on foreign direct investment (FDI), e.g. investment screening. Chinese investments have thus become riskified, to use a term coined by Olaf Corry. Shifting risk perceptions have similarly preceded previous ‘formative epochs’ in Nordic FDI legislation in the early twentieth century, after the Second World War and at the end of the Cold War. Each formative epoch has been characterised by a distinctive ‘risk profile’. We postulate that these shifting risk perceptions significantly shape the reception of FDI as a key channel of cross-border connectivity.

Causal Narratives

Causal Narratives

Causal Narrative Comprehension: A New Perspective for Emotion Cause Extraction

Emotion Cause Extraction (ECE) aims to reveal the cause clauses behind a given emotion expressed in a text, which has become an emerging topic in broad research communities, such as affective computing and natural language processing. Despite the fact that current methods about the ECE task have made great progress in text semantic understanding from lexicon- and sentence-level, they always ignore the certain causal narratives of emotion text. Significantly, these causal narratives are presented in the form of semantic structure and highly helpful for structure-level emotion cause understanding. Nevertheless, causal narrative is just an abstract narratological concept and its involving semantics is quite different from the common sequential information. Thus, how to properly model and utilize such particular narrative information to boost the ECE performance still remains an unresolved challenge. To this end, in this paper, we propose a novel Causal Narrative Comprehension Model (CNCM) for emotion cause extraction, which learns and leverages causal narrative information smartly to address the above problem. Specifically, we develop a Narrative-aware Causal Association (NCA) unit, which mines the narrative cue about emotional results and uses the semantic correlation between causes and results to model causal narratives of documents. Besides, we design a Result-aware Emotion Attention (REA) unit to make full use of the known result of causal narrative for multiple understanding about emotional causal associations. Through the ingenious combination and collaborative utilization of these two units, we could better identify the emotion cause in the text with causal narrative comprehension. Extensive experiments on the public English and Chinese benchmark datasets of ECE task have validated the effectiveness of CNCM with significant margin by comparing with the state-of-the-art baselines, which demonstrates the potential of narrative information in long text understanding.

Attributions for extreme weather events: science and the people

Both climate scientists and non-scientists (laypeople) attribute extreme weather events to various influences. Laypeople’s attributions for these events are important as these attributions likely influence their views and actions about climate change and extreme events. Research has examined laypeople’s attribution scepticism about climate change in general; however, few climate scientists are familiar with the processes underpinning laypeople’s attributions for individual extreme events. Understanding these lay attributions is important for scientists to communicate their findings to the public. Following a brief summary of the way climate scientists calculate attributions for extreme weather events, we focus on cognitive and motivational processes that underlie laypeople’s attributions for specific events. These include a tendency to prefer single-cause rather than multiple-cause explanations, a discounting of whether possible causes covary with extreme events, a preference for sufficient causes over probabilities, applying prevailing causal narratives, and the influence of motivational factors. For climate scientists and communicators who wish to inform the public about the role of climate change in extreme weather events, these patterns suggest several strategies to explain scientists’ attributions for these events and enhance public engagement with climate change. These strategies include showing more explicitly that extreme weather events reflect multiple causal influences, that climate change is a mechanism that covaries with these events and increases the probability and intensity of many of these events, that human emissions contributing to climate change are controllable, and that misleading communications about weather attributions reflect motivated interests rather than good evidence.

A causal approach to test empirical capital structure regularities

Capital structure theories are often formulated as causal narratives to explain which factors drive financing choices. These narratives are usually examined by estimating cross–sectional relations between leverage and its determinants. However, the limitations of causal inference from observational data are often overlooked. To address this issue, we use structural causal modeling to identify how classic determinants of leverage are causally linked to capital structure and how this causal structure influences the effect-estimation process. The results provide support for the causal role of variables that measure the potential for information asymmetry concerning firms’ market values. Overall, our work provide a crucial step to connect capital structure theories with their empirical tests beyond simple correlations.

Framing the housing crisis: How think-tanks frame politics and science to advance policy agendas

In England, think-tanks have played a crucial role in framing the causes of unaffordable housing. Yet the logics of think-tanks, the reasons why they intervene publicly in the way that they do, remain unclear. Drawing on the social field theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper seeks to understand the framing strategies of think-tanks. Based on quantitative and qualitative textual analysis of five years’ worth of public interventions from three think-tanks, this paper demonstrates how the framing strategy adopted by a think-tank – that is the causal narrative and policy agenda it promotes, and the means it uses to promote it- can be partly explained by the amount and types of capital it possesses as an organisation, and its respective ties to the fields of science, politics and the media. In doing so, the paper illuminates some of the key structural logics which explain why some framings of the affordable housing crisis dominate others in the public and political domains.

Policing Exhibit B in St Denis and Paris

This article will consider the protests against Brett Bailey’s 2014 performance installation Exhibit B at the Théâtre Gérard Philippe (TGP) in the Paris suburb of St Denis and at the Espace Centquatre within Paris itself. Rather than focusing on the ethical and political questions raised by the piece, I will analyse how in the first instance the deployment of police highlighted the specific importance given to the theatre within French state cultural policy. Following this, I will analyse how this incident exemplified a distinct manifestation of an imperial ‘afterlife’ of the French state. Building on Kristin Ross’ work as well as Laura-Ann Stoler’s elaborations on French colonial aphasia (active forgetting), I aim to tease out how the heavy-handed deployment of the police at the specific location of the TGP and the softer strategy deploying an ‘exclusion zone’ around the Espace Centquatre exemplified the persistent continuation of France’s imperial policies as they are applied to racialised populations within its own ‘metropolitan’ territory. This will lead me to question some of the spatial and temporal assumptions underpinning some of the causal narratives regarding contemporary racism in France, grounded in assumptions that the brutal facts of colonialism happened on far away continents, or to use Anne McClintock’s formulation, ‘over there’.

Integrated Information Theory as Testing Ground for Causation: Why Nested Hylomorphism Overcomes Physicalism and Panpsychism

Integrated information theory (IIT) stands out as one of the most promising approaches to scientifically understand the emergence of consciousness. Even if it borrows from the phenomenology of consciousness to derive its axiomatic formulation, IIT does not initially adhere to any particular ontological position. However, its founder leans towards panpsychism. More recently, Owen has studied the pros and cons of different ontologies as a metaphysical basis for IIT, defending a hylomorphic stance where en-grounding, en-forming relations gain the upper hand in the causal narrative. This paper aims at (1) complementing Owen's work by invoking additional arguments against physicalist IIT, both reductive and non-reductive; and (2) improving Owen's characterization of non-physicalist causality through a 'nested' version of hylomorphism that avoids the combination problem of panpsychism.

Causal Narratives

Causal Narratives

From Spectatorship to “Survivorship” in Five Critical Propositions

Often theorized through the negative framework of addiction or passivity, binge-watching has been transformed into a civic duty and a mode of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring this recent plot-twist in bingeing scholarship, this article proposes five new ways to study the most dominant spectatorial mode under corona-capitalism. These propositions include studying how the pandemic turned bingeing into an antidote to “languishing,” a feeling of sadness and exhortation that, if unrecognized, might lead to depression; exploring co-watching apps in order to move away from the cliché of bingeing as an individual activity; unpacking the importance of narrative causality during the pandemic’s prolonged structure and temporal limbo; paying close attention to interface design decisions, such as the addition of a “playback speed” feature to Netflix in August 2020; and, finally, demonstrating how binge-watching trains viewers to ignore their basic biological needs while turning them into unpaid laborers.

The method of comparative-historical analysis: a tailor-made approach to public diplomacy research

In view of the major methodological challenges which confront researchers in public diplomacy (PD), the paper recognizes the method of comparative-historical analysis (CHA) as an eminently suitable approach for robust empirical studies. The paper starts by exploring different conceptualizations and operationalizations of public diplomacy. Subsequently, four defining characteristics of CHA are identified: (1) CHA starts from a positivist epistemological perspective; (2) CHA-based research usually is concerned with “big questions;” (3) comparative methods are applied in CHA, either across different cases or within cases across time, allowing for in-depth analyses; (4) by considering respective starting points, specific historical developments, and cultural particulars, CHA is committed to methods drawn from historical research, including process tracing and causal narrative. The paper demonstrates that CHA, in view of these characteristics and with its highly interdisciplinary pedigree and methodological eclecticism, is eminently suited for studies exploring PD practices and outcomes. To provide a tailor-made approach for such endeavors, CHA is innovatively combined with the method of structured, focused comparison. Finally, drawing on both the different operationalizations of PD and the requirements of CHA, a comprehensive matrix for CHA-based PD research is presented, offering a tangible framework for future empirical analyses.

Obese societies: Reconceptualising the challenge for public health.

The prevalence of obesity and related health problems has increased sharply in recent decades. Dominant medical, economic, psychological, and especially epidemiological accounts conceptualise these trends as outcomes of individuals' lifestyles - whether freely chosen or determined by an array of obesogenic factors. As such, they rest on forms of methodological individualism, causal narratives, and a logic of substitution in which people are encouraged to set currently unhealthy ways of life aside. This article takes a different approach, viewing trends in obesity as consequences of the dynamic organisation of social practices across space and time. By combining theories of practice with emerging accounts of epigenetics, we explain how changing constellations of practices leave their marks on the body. We extend the concept of biohabitus to show how differences in health, well-being, and body shape are passed on as relations between practices are reproduced and transformed over time. In the final section, we take stock of the practical implications of these ideas and conclude by making the case for extended forms of enquiry and policy intervention that put the organisation of practices front and centre.