Crisis Narratives Research Articles

Humorous Approaches to Environmental Issues

This article highlights the civic role of humour as revealed by the analysis of two Romanian online satirical publications (Times New Roman and Cațavencii). The analysis will emphasise different humorous strategies and the crisis narratives deployed by the journalists, in accordance with the profile of the publication. While a ludic frame is preferred for the Times New Roman authors, the authors from Cațavencii use aggressive humour or articles with humorous insertion in order to make accusations against public or private power structures. Satirical publications are not only meant to entertain the public, but also to raise awareness to critical issues such as the environmental aspects (for example, climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc.). The analysis will also tackle the appraisal of humorous articles by the public and the risk entailed by the lens of humour on the public’s perception of the topic: illegal logging in Romania.

“On the ruins of seriality”: The scientific journal and the nature of the scientific life

Twenty-first-century discourse on science has been marked by narratives of crisis. Science is said to be experiencing crises of public trust, of peer review and publishing, of reproducibility and replicability, and of recognition and reward. The dominant response has been to “repair” the scientific literature and the system of scientific publishing through open science. This paper places the current predicament of scholarly communication in historical perspective by exploring the evolution of the scientific journal in the second half of the twentieth century. I focus on a new genre of scientific journal invented by Dutch commercial publishers shortly after World War II, and on its effects on the nature of the scientific life. I show that profit-oriented publishers and discipline-building scientists worked together to make postwar science more open, while also arguing that formats of scientific publication have their own agency.

Media Representations and Farmer Perceptions: A Case Study of Reporting on Ocean Acidification and the Shellfish Farming Sector in British Columbia, Canada

ABSTRACT Ocean Acidification (OA) creates corrosive conditions that impact organisms that produce calcium carbonate shells, such as clams and oysters. The Salish Sea, a body of water where much of British Columbia's shellfish farming sector operates, has been growing more corrosive. We present a case study of reporting on OA and the shellfish farming sector in British Columbia, Canada. We convey results from a survey with shellfish farmers and a thematic analysis that sought to understand how the science and local implications of OA were presented in a sample of media articles. All articles employed narratives of crisis, and slightly over 75% conveyed scientific uncertainty. Just over 55% incorporated interviews with one or more of scientists, shellfish sector representatives, and shellfish farmers. Survey findings reveal that respondents saw OA as a threat but often deprioritized it relative to a wider range of operational challenges. We introduce “situatedness” and draw in ideas from “solutions journalism” to expand. While telling stories about people and places is important, we conclude that new opportunities for locally salient climate change reporting stand to be unlocked by looking beyond boundaries typically drawn around “the local” and the sorts of credentials typically ascribed to “environmental experts”.

The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social-ecological transformations.

Anthropogenic planetary disruptions, from climate change to biodiversity loss, are unprecedented challenges for human societies. Some societies, social groups, cultural practices, technologies and institutions are already disintegrating or disappearing as a result. However, this coupling of socially produced environmental challenges with disruptive social changes-the Anthropocene condition-is not new. From food-producing hunter-gatherers, to farmers, to urban industrial food systems, the current planetary entanglement has its roots in millennia of evolving and accumulating sociocultural capabilities for shaping the cultured environments that our societies have always lived in (sociocultural niche construction). When these transformative capabilities to shape environments are coupled with sociocultural adaptations enabling societies to more effectively shape and live in transformed environments, the social-ecological scales and intensities of these transformations can accelerate through a positive feedback loop of 'runaway sociocultural niche construction'. Efforts to achieve a better future for both people and planet will depend on guiding this runaway evolutionary process towards better outcomes by redirecting Earth's most disruptive force of nature: the power of human aspirations. To guide this unprecedented planetary force, cultural narratives that appeal to human aspirations for a better future will be more effective than narratives of environmental crisis and overstepping natural boundaries. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.

SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL RESOURCE IN A CRISIS SITUATION

The problem of finding a psychological resource is extremely urgent in the crisis conditions of wartime. The social media are a possible source of psychological resources. The purpose of the work is to analyze the role of social media as a psychological resource in a crisis situation. Facebook and Instagram posts in the form of a "crisis narrative" served as empirical material. The concept of "crisis narrative" is used for narratives containing a description of the author's experiences in connection with problems caused by crisis changes in his life. More than 40 crisis posts (text, visual, and hybrid) were analyzed using content analysis methods. Reducing the traumatic effect of the crisis environment is impossible without a person overcoming internal uncertainty, accepting the realities of war, and constructive adaptation. Social media posts in the form of a crisis narrative are considered an available form for expression in words or other semiotic form of a person's experience of a crisis situation. One of the constructive forms of experiencing a crisis in the form of creativity is the publication of experiences embodied in a narrative in social media, which helps to reduce the anxiety and uncertainty of the person by connecting the reactions of like-minded people. Characteristic features of the posts are increased emotionality, sincerity, categoricalness, sometimes even aggressiveness, dialogicity and focus on finding a congruent addressee, counting on the psychological support of the circle of social media "friends". The peculiarity of social media posts is a combination of resource and creative possibilities: the need for a resource activates creativity, the possibilities for which are embedded in the very essence of social media. The resource potential of crisis posts is based on such a feature of social media as the ability to rally like-minded people around the thoughts or emotions expressed in the post, which provides the function of psychological support.

Rescuing the liberal international order: crisis, resilience and EU security policy

Abstract This article reflects on how European Union (EU) narratives of the crisis of the liberal international order (LIO) have reshaped its resilience approach and its foreign and security policy more broadly. Drawing on qualitative textual analysis, we trace the evolution of the EU's resilience approach over time and the way it has been shaped by crisis narratives. While the idea of resilience was introduced in EU foreign policy to foster the resilience of crisis-affected societies from the bottom up, the perception of an increasingly contested world first led to a reinterpretation of resilience in pragmatic ways, with values and interests combined selectively to protect the rules-based international order. More recently, on the grounds of a worsening crisis of the LIO, resilience has taken a defensive turn, adopting a more geopolitical stance to strengthen the EU's own resilience and that of the LIO. We argue that EU crisis narratives about the LIO thus serve to sustain and to rescue it. Furthermore, we conclude that the defensive reinterpretation of resilience is eroding the normative character of EU foreign and security policy. It also challenges the persistence of the LIO in the long term.

‘Our Society Works’: Disaster Solidarity and Models of Social Life in the Elbe River Valley

ABSTRACT Disasters have often been analysed as periods of exception that shine light on otherwise opaque circumstances of social life. However, less focus has been placed on the different forms that such revelatory experiences take in the wake of disasters and crises. This article examines how flood-affected residents of the Elbe River Valley region in Saxony, Germany, interpreted widespread activities of solidarity during a major flood event in 2013 as being radically different from everyday social life. I present two ways that residents experienced these emergent practices of disaster solidarity as revelatory: a prescriptive model, showing a wishful glimpse of what society could be, and a descriptive model, revealing a perceived hidden truth about what society already is. By exploring this interpretative duality of the experience of the floods, I discuss how crisis narratives exhibit a spectrum of responses that are not contradictory but made meaningful retrospectively.

Education in perennial crisis: Have we been asking the right questions?

When a crisis is talked about for six decades, it begs the questions: How is the educational crisis being defined? If a crisis continues for sixty years, is it still a crisis; or are some inherent characteristics of the education system and process being misrepresented? In other words, are we asking the right questions? The writer, from five decades of involvement in efforts to enhance the relevance of education to fighting poverty, inequality and exclusion, suggests some likely missteps in conceptualizing and defining education system problems. The experience of Yidan education prize aim of ‘creating a better world through education’ is brought up to illustrate the complexities of navigating through some of the missteps raised in the article. The discussion of the challenges and efforts to address them lead to a two-fold conclusion -- that the narrative of persistent crisis arises from a mismatch of expectations from education and the system’s capacity to deliver in the larger socio-political context; and that political settlement determines chosen activities and priorities, what is implemented or not implemented – not necessarily the technical merits of a solution. Influencing the political dynamics of decision-making is critical for educational transformation, which education scholars and advocates of reform tend to neglect. The pragmatic way ahead lies in major stakeholders in education uniting to build a supportive social compact that changes the political dynamics for realizing the expectations from education.

‘Something Better than a Cure’ in Times of Mental Health Crisis

In this paper, I turn to Adam Phillips’ recent discussion of the vexed nature of cure in psychoanalysis to consider the structural differences between mental and physical health. I examine how psychoanalytic thinking raises questions for naturalistic ways of thinking about mental health and for broader crisis narratives that are becoming prevalent in Western modernity. In the latter half of this paper, I draw a comparison between thinking about matters of health and ways of thinking in the philosophy of education. I suggest that the lure of cure can be detected in statements of universalist aims and ends for education (which themselves have come to invoke conceptions of wellbeing and mental health in modern times). I also explore Phillps’ account of psychoanalysis as ‘something better than a cure’ and consider its implications for future thinking in the philosophy of education.

Testing the link between conspiracy theories and violent extremism: a linguistic coding approach to far-right shooter manifestos

ABSTRACT Conspiracy theories have been linked to violent extremist attacks, creating a view that holding one may be a motivating factor for engaging in violence. The perpetrators of the 2019 Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso shootings each cited the ‘Great Replacement’ white genocide conspiracy theory in manifestos distributed online prior to the attacks. This research conducts a close reading of these manifestos and the original conspiracy theory to test the link between holding a conspiracy theory and engaging in outgroup-oriented violence. It compares Renaud Camus’ Great Replacement text (You Will Not Replace Us) and the manifestos of the three violent extremists that cite this theory (The Great Replacement, The Inconvenient Truth, An Open Letter). Three theoretical frameworks provide the basis for the analysis: (1) The presence of conspiracy theory elements (agency, coalition, threat, secrecy), (2) radical narrative constructs (crisis, solution, justification), and (3) mobilising emotions (anger, contempt, disgust – ANCODI). All four sources contained the elements of a conspiracy theory, crisis narratives, and mobilising ANCODI emotions as the dominant emotions. This suggests that the original conspiracy theory may have influenced the perpetrators. This research furthers academic debate, both conceptually and empirically, about the nature of connectivity between conspiracy theories and violent extremism.

Stanley Kubrick, the 1974 Finance Act, and the crisis of the British film industry: a case study of access, power and privilege in British media and politics

Between 1975 and 1977, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick secretly campaigned to overturn the new tax provisions of the Labour government’s 1974 Finance Act. His aim was to develop a crisis narrative in which the legislation that affected the amount of earnings foreign residents would pay tax on in the UK was deemed directly responsible for the imminent and absolute collapse of the British film industry. Drawing on archival sources from the Stanley Kubrick Archive, the Harold Wilson papers, and The National Archives, the article reconstructs Kubrick’s actions during this period to reveal how he planted stories in the press, lobbied MPs, ministers, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the prime minister, manipulated trade union officials, and secretly wrote press releases and campaign letters under the name of the general secretary of the ACTT, Alan Sapper. The archival case study widens understanding of the narrative of crisis pertaining to the British film industry in the 1970s and how this was exacerbated and exploited by powerful and wealthy individuals like Kubrick for personal gain. The article also contributes to the broader topics of access, power, and privilege in British society and how the rich subvert and undermine democracy, thereby aggravating structural inequalities, inequalities that have only deepened since Kubrick’s political interventions and machinations.

Crisis narratives and institutional resilience: a framework for analysis

Crisis narratives and institutional resilience: a framework for analysis

All He Needed Was a Hull: Slow Criticism in Cancel Culture Times

Abstract: The essaytraces an arc from atrue story of shipwreck involving the ships Patience and Deliverance in the seventeenth century to a twenty-first-century conversation between the artificial intelligence system ChatGPT and the author on the subjects of patience and narrative crisis. It is suggested that deliverance from crises isintegral to the conceptual structure of both patience and narrative. Features of patience as a "postcrisis virtue" are then sought to be captured within a triangulation of concepts: urgent patience (paradoxical and action-oriented), narrative patience (methodological and linguistic), and fake patience (mechanical and emotionless), leading on to a tentative listing of some features of a "slow criticism" attentive to the fractious anxieties of our times.

A conditional process analysis of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in outpatient parents: Examining the Narrative Crisis Model by parenthood status.

No study to date has examined the moderating effect of parenthood on suicidal states and outcomes using a conditional process model. The Narrative Crisis Model, a multi-stage model from interpersonal distress to suicidal outcomes mediated by Suicide Crisis Syndrome severity, was assessed (H1). The present study tested whether (H2) parenthood moderates the indirect association between interpersonal distress and suicidality to reduce suicide risk. Psychiatric outpatients (N = 466) completed measures assessing the severity of interpersonal distress and Suicide Crisis Syndrome, as well as a clinical interview of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The sample was predominantly female (65.7%), with ages ranging from 18 to 84 years. Mediation was conducted on the total sample (H1) and a conditional process analysis compared parents (n = 170) and non-parents (H2). Suicide Crisis Syndrome severity mediated the relationship between interpersonal distress and suicidal outcomes. Parenthood moderated the indirect relationship between interpersonal distress and suicidal outcomes through Suicide Crisis Syndrome such that parents had a significantly higher suicide risk than non-parents (index = 0.058; 95% CI [0.005, 0.139]). In the context of an outpatient population, parents appear to be more at risk for developing a suicidal crisis and engaging in suicidal thoughts and behaviors than non-parents. Parenthood may act as a pile-up stressor for this population, outweighing the protective effects of having children. In this way, the Narrative Crisis Model is a theoretical model suitable for the examination of complex factors impacting risk for near-term suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Вопросы диагностики суицидального риска: где, когда и как проводить оценку?

<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Background.</strong> Diagnostics of suicide risk is an important, but only developing domain in suicidology. <strong>Objective.</strong> This study aims to clarify the problems and perspectives in this scientific field. The main issues related to measuring this construct are posed and analyzed: the setting, the object of measurement, and the specifics of the available tools. <strong>Results</strong>. The inference is made about the importance of these variables when choosing a method for measuring suicide risk, as well as the need to combine diagnostics and therapy<strong>. Conclusion</strong>.The typology for choosing the methods of intervention based on the Narrative Crisis Model of Suicide by I. Galynker is provided. The limitations of the modern diagnostic methods are indicated, the call to rely not so much on various diagnostic tools as on the structured clinical judgment, and also be guided not so much by the presence or absence of suicidal ideation in a respondent, but by understanding their current frustrated needs.</p>

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Crisis Narratives and Social Construction of Risk: Comparative Case Studies of China and India

COVID-19 is the greatest challenge the world has faced since World War II. By investigating two case countries—China and India, this study explains the variance based on the theory of the ‘social construction of risk’ concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Does an individual country’s culture, style of governance, construction of risk, and communication affect the management of COVID-19? Findings reveal that the variations of risk construction and communication of narratives play a pivotal role in building the public perception of crisis. Cultural homogeneity and collectivism, the constitutional setting for policymaking risk narratives and communication, are crucial determinants of effective crisis management, and many states lacking these factors suffer profound difficulties. Regarding these, China is more successful than India in creating the social construction of the risk of COVID-19 crisis narratives. The policy implication of this study helps the government find a better approach to persuade its citizens to comply with the public health policy in case of an emergency.

Migration as Crisis

Over the past decades, and across different contexts worldwide, migration has become inseparable from a narrative of crisis. This article analyses the connection between migration and crisis. It proposes a migration as crisis framework, designed to understand and analyze the emergence of this specific perception of migration, on the basis of an interplay between social “subjective” constructions of reality and “objective” migration dynamics. Migration as crisis rests upon a fragmented, changing, and contested assemblage of events, representations, and practices, which in turn call for specific ways of governing migration. The link between migration and crisis can be activated or not, and may or may not be correlated with empirical realities. By engaging with migration as crisis (rather than migration crisis), the article denaturalizes and historicizes the relationship between migration and crisis, and unpacks the processes through which key actors (including media, policymakers, civil society, and academics) frame migration as such.

Managed urban retreat: the trouble with crisis narratives

ABSTRACT In response to narratives of the mass movement of people triggered by climate change, a number of “managed retreat” models have been proposed as policy options, especially for densely populated urban areas in the Global South. Reviewing a case study from Mongla, a secondary city in southwestern Bangladesh, we argue that a “crisis narrative” unhelpfully informs current discourses of “climate migration”, and oversimplify complex realities, creating the risk that urban policy makers design managed retreat interventions that are poorly informed and maladaptive in that they may be accepted too uncritically, take overly technical forms, and may exacerbate rather than reduce the risk faced by those they are purportedly intended to assist.

ON FUTURES AND ENDINGS: NARRATOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CRISES*

ABSTRACTThe article examines the changing relationship of the present to the future from a narratological perspective. It argues that three dominant narrative schemas structure the contemporary experiences of temporality in the Western social imaginary: the modern crisis narrative, the apocalyptic narrative, and the chronic crisis narrative. In its first part, the article shows how the modern sense of crisis, which emerged in the late eighteenth century, sedimented into a powerful narrative template by knitting together the past, the present, and the future into a unified plot. The second part focuses on the resurgence of apocalyptic stories in the Western social imaginary and humanities discourse. The final part highlights the special contribution of aesthetics of precariousness to the Western imaginary of time and temporality. It argues that the “chronic crisis narrative” deflates the teleological narrative arc of the modern crisis paradigm while also shunning the end‐time discourse of the apocalyptic narrative.

Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State ed. by Sebastian Maslow and Christian Wirth (review)

Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State ed. by Sebastian Maslow and Christian Wirth (review)