Creation Of Narratives Research Articles

Linear tourism, multiculturalism, creative district: The case of Charoenkrung creative district in Thailand

The paper examines the relationship between tourism and the creative district, a connection often assumed but undertheorized. While conventional wisdom appears to be that creative districts promote tourism, this paper shows that the reverse can also be true. In the case of the Charoenkrung Creative District in Bangkok, tourism has been deployed as a top-down initiative to popularize and publicize the district. This paper examines how walking tours—a particular kind of linear tourism—are used to weave disparate sites into a singular narrative that frames Charoenkrung as a multicultural district with much creative potential. In particular, it sheds light on the role of the tour guide in charting this entangled narrative of multiculturalism and creativity.

The Baader-Schelling controversy in Schelling’s Das System der Weltalter: Elohim as divine proxies

ABSTRACT This paper examines the controversy between Franz von Baader and Schelling as it takes place in Schelling’s lecture course Das System der Weltalter. This particular instance of their disagreement involves Schelling criticising Baader for his notion of the biblical Elohim as divine proxies. The paper first provides a background to Baader-Schelling philosophical feud before examining Schelling’s remarks against Baader in the System der Weltalter. Then, Baader’s writings on Elohim are looked into in the light of their connection to Baader’s conception of creation as falling-away and Baader’s source for interpreting Elohim as proxies, including Saint Martin and Kabbalah. Thereafter, Schelling’s criticism of Baader is analysed and interpreted in the context of the System der Weltalter. The paper aims to achieve several things: to show the presence of distorted kabbalistic influence in Baader and its discussion in Schelling; to revise Koslowski’s view on Baader’s creation narrative by pointing out how Baader’s Elohim/divine proxies function to form a rather dualistic relation between God and creation; and to interpret Schelling’s convoluted and difficult reply to Baader displaying that at stake between the two thinkers were questions of God’s ineffability and freedom as well as God’s involvement into creation.

Refuge or retreat: resilience and the mediatization of Scotland’s island space

ABSTRACT Islands are significantly on the agenda in Scotland. Media accounts – news, features, and other creative narratives – textually frame the representational terrains of island policy, agency and community. Such mediatization informs and responds to certain ideas and discourses of our island geographies. It typically includes what could be considered good islandness: that is, islands as good lifestyle havens, sites of social resilience and adaptive social renewal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, certain spaces and geographies were notably re-evaluated. Sites of ‘isolation’, ‘remoteness’ and places considered ‘far from’ occupied a heightened position of desirability and potential refuge. A purposive sample of stories and features is presented here to capture case exemplars of how Scotland’s island space and place geographies were variously textually framed by media news across the initial lockdown and subsequent significant travel restriction phases (March 2020 to October 2020). The discussion explores how a short-view media framing of Scotland’s island spaces specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic spoke to aspects of islandness as refuge and as resilience. The paper offers a longer-view perspective whereby the complexities and complicities of media framing of Scottish rural and island spaces as resilient is considered more broadly.

Narrative creativity training: A new method for increasing resilience in elementary students

Narrative creativity training has recently shown promise as a tool for increasing self-efficacy and resilience in adult learners. The training employs dramatic and literary techniques such as perspective-shifting, counterfactual (i.e., what-if) thinking, and causal (i.e., why) thinking to improve real-world problem solving. To explore whether narrative creativity training could have similar benefits for younger populations, this study piloted a test on elementary students. A five-minute randomized controlled trial conducted with 32 third, fourth, and fifth grade students yielded increased self-efficacy and creative problem-solving, and a five-day longitudinal trial conducted with 28 students from the same population was associated with increased resilience. The results suggest the potential practical benefits of incorporating theater, literature, comics, and other story-based art into elementary school curricula.

Threaded Edition 21: Exploring Māori creation narratives with augmented reality-animated sonic experiences in publication design

In this article, we present the creative strategies implemented on the practice-based research project Threaded Edition 21, an international design magazine published in Aotearoa New Zealand. The editorial model draws from a cultural and collaborative framework situated in Tikanga (customary practices of the Indigenous people of New Zealand), Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and kawa (protocols). In this Special Edition, the structural format was inspired by Māori Maramataka (lunar cycles) and whakapapa (genealogy), and incorporated queues to communicate the multi-layered Māori creation narrative of Te Kore (nothingness), Te Pō (night realms and darkness), Te Whē Ao (coming in to being) and Te Ao Mārama (light realms). These narratives resided primarily in the virtual realm of augmented reality (AR) (as a spiritual encounter), while the printed matter functioned as an enigmatic vessel, creating an ontological reversal where the ‘virtual’ (AR) answered to the ambiguities of ‘real’ (publication). AR-animated vignettes and sonic artistry were activated through printed motifs to incorporate hau (breath of life) into the pages. The AR-animated sonic experience expanded the connection with the audience that when synthesized, provided a sense of immersion into the domain of the unseen which is felt aurally and visually. Structurally, the AR pages open with a chanted karakia (a welcoming prayer) and end with a mihi (closing speech), creating a balance that acknowledges aspects of Māori cultural significance and dualities. When scanned, the AR-animated sonic experiences direct the audience to the accessibility of the Instagram platform, expanding the materiality of printed matter. This approach afforded distinct modes of cognitive processing that combined the visual and the linguistic, the spatial and the temporal, sound and virtual reality to graphically symbolize the many layers and dimensions of things unseen: the realm between being and non-being.

‘What do you do with a Mummy like that?’ Using symbolic play to disempower a persecutory sadistic maternal object

This paper looks at the creation of narrative in the treatment of a 10‐year‐old girl. It will explore how psychodynamic, psychoanalytically informed work can help a child whose internalized narrative structure seemed built to harbour violent, unpredictable and psychopathic objects. It will examine how close and vigilant observation of a child's internalized storyline and choice of figurines/symbols can lead to more compassion and thoughtful personification in play, and how this in turn can lead not only to the facilitation of creativity around a more coherent storyline, but also the opportunity for the therapist to ‘co‐author’ a different trajectory for the figurines, and outcome. Whilst the analysis will concentrate on the patient's internal world, it will extend to a discussion about the blurred lines between truth and play. The paper will present the examination and participation of symbolic play as a highly useful device for a therapist in shifting a child's interiority, in this case enough for the patient to be self‐determining in their external world.

Design for Narrative Change. A Pedagogical Model for Interactive Digital Narratives

AbstractNarratives mirror shared interpretations of the world. Still, dominant narratives prevail, pushing non‐hegemonic narratives in the corner. A change in the creation, interaction and distribution of narratives can support the design of counter‐narratives able to feed social change. Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) can be considered an emerging experimental context in which designers, researchers and practitioners from various domains operate to develop story‐based content addressing relevant social or societal issues. The IDN social constructivist role in encouraging or influencing individuals and collectivities towards social change is a relevant design issue especially from an educational perspective. Specifically, it features methodologies and praxis not yet systematised, in need of exploration and formalisation. Recognising the contribution of an approach combining transdisciplinary methods and tools, the article presents a pedagogical model for designing IDNs as complex interactive systems able to impact culture and society based on empirical study from a design course in the higher education context. Composed of theoretical and operational frameworks, the pedagogical model orients the multilayered design process for building engaging, interactive narrative artefacts systematising and operationalising knowledge from the domains of Communication for Social Change, storytelling and IDN in an iterative design process.

Designing and sharing travelogues on Chinese WeChat Moments: a social semiotic analysis of Nine Picture Limit

Sharing travel experiences through words, pictures and videos on social media has become a popular activity and means of presenting the self. In China, WeChat is the most widely used social media platform. It offers the Moments (朋友圈pinyin: péng yǒu quān, literally ‘Circle of Friends’) feature which provides a tool for users to post photos, short videos and accompanying texts. This study investigates how digital travelogues are technologically afforded and multimodally constructed on WeChat while exploring users’ self-presentation in their travelogues as presented on Moments. To this end, a total of 115 WeChat Moments screenshots are examined. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, this study examines these travelogues’ multimodal design, how social life is presented in them and how users display their identity. Specifically, the authors examine how the practice of the Nine Picture Limit (九宫格, pinyin: jiǔ gōng gé) of WeChat Moments is multimodally constructive for producing travelogues. They found that the multimodal strategies adopted in the Nine Picture Limit are not only a matter of designed aesthetics or style for narrating travel experiences, but also a purposeful process of working with images for self-presentation in the spatial narrative. Furthermore, the possibilities that a digital travelogue is viewed as a creative narrative genre in Moments is addressed. Finally, related exploratory research interests such as digital identities, authenticity of travel and mobility are also discussed.

“Everyone freaks out when the leaks are made”: data leaks, investigative journalism and intelligence practice

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the history of data leaks and investigative journalism, the techniques and technology that enable them and their influence in Australia and abroad. It explores the ethical and professional considerations of investigative journalists, how they approach privacy and information-sharing and how this differs from intelligence practice in government and industry. The paper assesses the strengths and limitations of Collaborative Investigative Reporting based on Information Leaks (CIRIL) as a kind of public-facing intelligence practice.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on academic literature, source material from investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and a survey of financial crime compliance professionals conducted in 2022.FindingsThe paper identifies three key causal factors that have enabled the rise of CIRIL even as traditional journalism has declined: the digital storage of information; increasing public interest in offshore finance and tax evasion; and “virtual newsrooms” enabled by internet communications. It concludes that the primary strength of CIRIL is its creation of complex global narratives to inform the public about corruption and tax evasion, while its key weakness is that the scale and breadth of the data released makes it difficult to focus on likely criminal activity. Results of a survey of industry and government professionals indicate that CIRIL is generally more effective as public information than as an investigative resource, owing to the volume, age and quality of information released. However, the trends enabling CIRIL are likely to continue, and this means that governments and financial institutions need to become more effective at using leaked information.Originality/valueOver the past decade, large-scale, data-driven investigative journalism projects such as the Pandora Papers and the Russian Laundromat have had a significant public impact by exposing money laundering, financial crime and corruption. These projects share certain hallmarks: the use of human intelligence, often sourced from anonymous leaks; inventive fusion of this intelligence with data from open sources; and collaboration among a global collective of investigative journalists to build a narrative. These projects prioritise informing the public. They are also an important information source for government and private sector organisations working to investigate and disrupt financial crime.

Understanding digital comics for creation: From conception to reception

Digital comics are a ‘bastard’ medium, a hybrid of comics, animated film and video game, which is not subject to a fixed form or format. Authors design and develop their own writing methodology and format, exploiting the narrative and aesthetic opportunities of a digital environment characterised by diversity and constant technical evolution. However, tackling this task without having ever worked with sound, movement or interactivity is arduous. Based on my doctoral research, which analyses a diversified corpus of works and coupled with the development of an artistic project, this article will introduce the major concepts of my global portrait of digital comics, exploring the dynamics concerted between textual elements belonging to classic comics – such as text and images – additional textual elements available in the digital environment – such as movement and sound – and interactivity to tell a story. These concepts and dynamics will be presented following the main questions that I formulated from a creator perspective to conduct my research: what are the formal and methodological criteria for the creation of digital comics narratives and the design of their media devices? How can I use multimodality and interactivity in storytelling in a meaningful way? Why does the reception of digital comics appear to be an essential issue and what are its characteristics?

Making sense of (un)sustainable food: creation of sharable narratives in citizen-participating farming

There has been broad recognition that current food systems need to go through a process of transformation and transition. In the similar way that other areas have transitioned to be more sustainable, the transition process for food systems has some issues related to justice in terms of achieving more sustainable and inclusive food production, distribution and consumption. Acknowledging the importance of these issues, this article aims to understand how knowledge about desired changes is produced and shared among people engaged in activities to transform food production and consumption. To this end, it analyses the short narratives of urban citizens in Japan engaged in participatory farming, adopting the concepts focusing on the contrasts embedded in the short stories, learning from risk studies. The farmer, volunteer staff members and urban citizens collaborate to grow rice using traditional techniques. Their narratives reveal some contrasts in how they used to engage with food, farms and the local environment, and their engagement now. Furthermore, it was observed that these citizens reconfirm the importance of knowledge learned through actual work on the farm and the different roles played by the farmer, volunteers and local participants in creating and passing on knowledge. In such ways, people’s interaction leads to the creation of shared meanings of “appropriateness” in terms of existing and emerging food-related practices. This matter of meaning-making for “appropriateness” is often overlooked in the discussion of the justice in food systems’ transitions.

Paradoxes of Patrimony: Family Planning, Youth Volunteering, and Becoming "Big" in Uganda

Abstract: This article examines the experiences and motivations of young volunteers engaged in the development domain of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Uganda. While promoting various family-planning projects, volunteers deftly navigated human-rights discourses of international donors, norms of religious leaders, and development narratives of national policymakers as they attempted to advance their own life projects. Through the creation of new narratives and their agency, the volunteers translated, reformed, and re-presented Global North development discourse as part of a situated theorization on development problems. Simultaneously these educated, middle-class youth embraced the discursively vague field of family planning as the likeliest avenue for social mobility by becoming "big" within national and local patrimonial and patriarchal systems. Although such family-planning programs do seem to allow some volunteers to achieve their goals, they paradoxically reproduce the patriarchal systems that gender-equality NGOs aim to dismantle.

Fictional and fictionalised religions as heritage? Reflections on the object of critical heritage studies

ABSTRACT This article attempts to make a connection between two fields, that usually operate in separate intellectual contexts: critical research on heritage as a social practice and the study of historical and fantasy fiction, concentrating on renditions of the Middle Ages. Both the construction of heritage and the creation of a fictional narrative are ways of processing of the past, although, at first sight, opposites. Claiming a site as heritage and therefore as determining a community’s identity elides the distance between past and present, whereas the authors of historical and fantasy fiction are keen to stress the exotic nature of the Middle Ages. Yet, the article argues that these practices operate on a sliding scale and asks the question whether the telling of a fictional tale about the Middle Ages might be a heritage practice in itself.

An Understanding of Christians’ Roles in Human Migration through the Biblical Theme of Shamar: From Genesis to the Good Samaritan

The complex and urgent migration crisis demands a proper framework to formulate and drive the appropriate solutions. In this study, the author attempts to present a theological framework on the roles of Christians to migrants grounded in the theme of “shamar” (שָׁמַר; keep), tracing it through the Bible, from the Old Testament to the New. We argue that welcoming (keeping) strangers originated from man’s first mission by exegeting Genesis 2:15 and 4:9 (the primordial assignment in the creation narrative and the denial in the first murder). After the Fall, the task is passed to all descendants and is then explicitly included in the Law. In the New Testament, “shamar” and its meanings are further revealed through three characters: the Samaritan leper, the Samaritan woman, and the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans show us that one should see a migrant as not only a brother or sister but also as oneself and as a part of one’s mission. One should see with an open heart and be ready to be converted. A Samaritan may not be just one who comes from Samaria; instead, one who practices “shamar”—welcomes strangers unconditionally.

The Art of Acting Up: Johann Friedrich Löwen and the Genesis of German Theatre Historiography

Johann Friedrich Löwen is generally considered to have written the first history of the German theatre, though scholars rarely discuss his role as a historian and are typically drawn instead to his program for establishing a national theatre. This article will examine his contributions to the historiography of the German theatre in the eighteenth century. His Geschichte des deutschen Theaters represents a substantial break in how German theatre historiography was written and conceptualized, as he favoured an actor-centred narrative instead of a catalogue of plays and playwrights, setting genre trends that would be felt for decades. In a move unexpected for a dedicated reformer of the theatre, however, Löwen depicts the history of German actors in a resoundingly negative light. Such an approach reveals that Löwen views the creation of historical narratives not only as a means for recording the past, but also for attesting to the urgency of theatre reform.

ChoiceScript and developer-mediated self-curation

This article looks at how games created with the ChoiceScript authoring tool create a situation in which players construct a sense of self using the developer’s assumptions hidden within the code. Some interactive narratives use statistics (also called ‘alignment systems’) to keep track of player choices, saving them in the form of character descriptions such as ‘Good’, ‘Humanity’ or ‘Booksmarts’. ChoiceScript is an authoring tool designed to encourage the creation of text-based interactive narratives that heavily revolve around such stats and the prominent display of a ‘Show Stats’ page. This article explores how many ChoiceScript games use the procedural enthymeme to embed the developer’s assumptions into their stats. Many ChoiceScript games also have a structure that is evocative of pop culture personality tests. These two elements – the procedural enthymeme and a pop culture personality test structure – combine to generate an experience of developer-mediated self-curation.

Biblical Concept of Stewardship as Portrayed in the Creation Narrative

This paper explores the concept of stewardship as portrayed in the biblical creation narrative and its relevance to the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of stewardship. The study aims to analyze key perspectives of the creation narrative and examines the actions, attitudes and outcomes based on these narratives. The paper adopts a qualitative approach by identifying and analyzing relevant passages from the creation narrative, comparing them with the traditional Adventist teaching on stewardship. The study finds that the concept of stewardship in the creation narrative encompasses not only the responsible management of resources but also the development and sustainable utilization of those resources. It highlights the importance of productivity, protectivity, community involvement and sustainability. Moreover, it emphasizes the dual aspects of growth and increase and the need for a balanced approach that considers both quantitative and qualitative changes over time. Based on these findings, the study concludes that stewardship is a fundamental concept in the biblical narrative, providing a framework for humans to understand their purpose and responsibility in relation to the Creator and the natural world. The study recommends the emphasis of the holistic approach to stewardship that encompasses not only the mobilization of financial resources but also the protection of the environment and the promotion of sustainable practices. This approach aligns with the mission of the church to make disciples and proclaim the gospel while ensuring the well-being of both present and future generations.

The Anthropologist as Audience: Engaged Listening among Khmer Rouge Survivors and Ukrainian War Refugees

Although the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of roughly 2.2 million Cambodians—and the persecution and abuse of millions more—only a handful of survivors have been able to testify at the tribunal established to prosecute former leaders of the regime. Partly to address this gap, an NGO affiliated with the tribunal has been offering ‘Testimonial Therapy’ for the past decade as a form of reparation for survivors with symptoms of psychological distress. For 16 months, I followed survivors undergoing this therapy, during which they developed a testimonial narrative of their life story in collaboration with a local mental health worker. In this Position Piece, I consider Myers’ conception of ‘moral agency’ (2015) in relation to this process of personal narrative creation, and the critical importance of audience engagement. I then reflect on my own positionality as both ethnographer and active listener, tracing how this affective posture has been formed not only through fieldwork, but also through engagement with family narratives of loss in the context of war-torn Ukraine.

Creative Narratives of Contemporary Ukrainian Composers as a Subject of Musicological Analysis

The purpose of the article is to determine the creative narratives of contemporary Ukrainian composers from the point of view of musicological analysis taking into account structuralist and poststructuralist intentions in music as a postmodern attitude. The article also aims to investigate the existing compositional structures (at their various levels) in close interrelation of intellectual and hermeneutic reading of the composer's artistic intention with the physical parameters of the work. The research methodology is related to the analysis of the sphere of expression of human thinking and the communicative process, with the consideration of the narrative as a certain discursive structure formed on the basis of a person's own experience, presented by the analytical mechanisms of musicology, in particular, systemic and comparative approaches that help determine the specificity of certain compositional structures in music in comparison with others, to trace the change of approaches of different composers to systems of symbolism in musical art, communication with the listener or appeal to closeness at the level of inner feelings and mystical suggestions. The scientific novelty consists in revealing the specifics of forming narratives in music as a process that combines an appeal to the social component or the inner feelings of the composer, his/her isolation from society, a negative and ironic attitude towards modernity, the search for virtual mystical «worlds» as a sign-sound space. Conclusions. The rigidity of authoritarian thinking in the field of culture leads to the appearance among composers and musicians of supporters of the idea of «art for art's sake», fascination with avant-garde technology, and orthodox maxims of lovers of «pure» classics. It is obvious that the new way of thinking about musical art should consist in the restoration of sincere, true creativity and the understanding of beauty as the basis of art, what it should serve, in particular, the musicological analysis of works from the standpoint of narrative technologies as a system of complex interdisciplinary research.
 Key words: musicological analysis, poststructuralist intentions, mystical suggestions, social component, narrative technologies.

“Courage to cobble something new”: Women's queer and creative narratives of bisexuality and ageing

Critical gerontologists have called for more diverse and inclusive visions of a good old age, and especially for imaginings that do not depend on health, wealth and heterosexuality. They have suggested that LGBTQ people, alongside other marginalized groups, may have particular contributions to make to the project of reimagining ageing. In this paper, we bring together this work with Jose Muñoz's concept of ‘cruising utopia’ to examine possibilities for imagining a more utopian, queer life course. We present findings from a narrative analysis of Bi Women Quarterly, a grassroots online bi community newsletter with an international readership, analyzing three issues published between 2014 and 2019 that focused on the intersection of ageing and bisexuality. We found several ways in which the authors told counter-narratives that queered normative visions of successful ageing. They queered norms around the stability and reification of sexual and gender identities. They challenged current forms of LGBTQ activism. They embraced and celebrated ageing, through such activities as croning ceremonies, and directly addressed and contemplated death. Finally, they queered the narrative form, by giving accounts of personal experience that were dreamlike, poetic or inconclusive. We conclude that counter-normative spaces, such as activist newsletters, offer valuable resources to progress the wider project of reimagining successful ageing more inclusively.