International Narratives Research Articles

Up in the air: A strategic narrative contest in the U.S.–China Balloon Incident 2023

Emerging crises such as the 2023 US–China balloon incident present opportunities for states to leverage murky events to justify their behaviors, rally political support, and promote favorable worldviews through projecting strategic narratives. This study examines narratives deployed by the US and China and evaluates their diffusion in the international media environment. International news coverage of the balloon incident ( N = 776) was analyzed by a human-in-the-loop machine-learning narrative analysis. Results show the US set the tone by framing the incident as a matter of surveillance, linking the issue to identity narratives, and forcing China to engage in narrative contests on spying. The US remained dominant in the international narrative sphere although China attempted to project alternative storylines. Implications for other countries are discussed. Findings illuminate the utility of strategic narratives in unpacking strategic interactions in the flow of international political communication, in an absence of major escalations.

Research on the Narrative Strategies and Effects of International Communication of New Mainstream Films

The new mainstream film is a new form of the current film, which plays an important role in the international narrative communication. According to the YouTube film transmission data in the platform, a comprehensive analysis of the current new mainstream film in the international narrative strategy, including increasing the film transmission themes, improve the film design imagination, add continuity characters and change spread thinking, according to the relevant movie data, confirm the film international narrative communication effect, for the spread of sustainable proposals.

Mothers of Russia: portrayals of Russian women soldiers between 2008 and 2021

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the gendered representations of Russian women soldiers in the official newspaper of the Russian Armed Forces, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), and how these narratives benefit the Russian military. I approach this topic in the context of International Women’s Day, a revealing showcase of representations. The narrative approach and discourse analysis focus on articles published in Krasnaya Zvezda between 2008, when the military reform began, and 2021 to gain a broad understanding of the representations of women in the modern Russian army. Women are not conscripted in Russia, but they can serve as contract soldiers. Despite celebratory speeches mirroring international narratives on gender equality, on closer reading, stereotypical narratives and discourses still put women in auxiliary positions in the Russian military because of their assumed motherhood. Portrayals of modern women soldiers are based on the traditional archetype of Rodina-mat’ (“the Motherland”/“Mother Russia”), the sacred symbol of Russia, which is itself a feminized subject of protection that ties women to this position. This makes the integration of women soldiers into the armed forces culturally specific in Russia. By attaching different meanings to Rodina-mat’, the Russian military authorities regulate women’s positions and roles in the military and war work.

Games and narrative practice

In this presentation to the International Narrative Therapy and Community Work Conference in Rwanda, Noor Kulow introduces a range of narrative practices that have been used with children in Somalia who have lost their biological parents early in life. Externalising conversations, the Team of Life approach and traditional children’s games are used to respond to stigma, reconnect children with their hopes and dreams, and respond to trauma and hardship. Movement-based activities like leapfrog and jumping, and traditional games like girir and jar, provide entry points to therapeutic conversations.

Hesitancy Over the COVID-19 Vaccine Among Various Healthcare Workers: An International Narrative Review.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) are role models in their communities. If they receive the COVID-19 vaccine, many people are likely to follow and have the vaccine. If HCWs are hesitant or resistant to taking the vaccine, this may impede the efforts to implement the vaccine, reach herd immunity, and eliminate the pandemic. In this narrative review, we reviewed previous studies on hesitancy over COVID-19 vaccination among different healthcare professions and people in the medical field, such as primary HCWs, dentists, nurses, and medical students. We reviewed the common reasons and associated factors for hesitancy toward the COVID-19 vaccine among different healthcare professions. The following keywords were used in the database search: COVID-19 AND vaccine AND hesitancy AND healthcare workers. We searched for articles using the PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. We found HCW professions with various rates of hesitancy, including primary healthcare center (PHC) workers (50%), medical students (45%), nurses (21%), and dentists (18%). Hesitancy toward booster doses was also found in HCWs who had taken primary doses (2.8% to 26%). Race and ethnicity also influenced hesitancy rates, with Black individuals being the most hesitant group. The most common reasons were concerns about the safety and adverse effects of the vaccine, insufficient information, and a lack of confidence in healthcare policies. Despite varying rates of HCW hesitancy after the vaccine's release, this hesitancy is expected to negatively affect efforts to achieve widespread vaccination. The recommendations to policymakers to address these concerns are raising the awareness of PHC doctors because they are the easiest to reach and are the first line for patient information, improving communication with the HCWs through all channels (e.g., webinars, e-mails, and social media), and inviting HCWs to online meetings or workshops with the healthcare policymakers so the policymakers can listen to their concerns and recommendations. Correctly addressing the issue of HCWs' vaccination hesitancy can support efforts to contain the pandemic.

Broadening perspectives on inclusive peacemaking: the case of the UN mediation in Syria

Civil society inclusion has become a widely accepted norm in international peacemaking. Scholars have analysed the impact of inclusion on mediation effectiveness, mediators’ rationales for broadening participation, and the different modalities to include civil society actors. Drawing on the concept of the ‘agency of the governed’ in norms research, this article examines the inclusion norm from the perspective of civil society actors. It conducts a case study of the United Nations (UN) mediation in Syria based on 41 interviews gathered between 2018 and 2020. The article shows how Syrian civil society actors perceived inclusion and compares these views to the dominant international narratives on inclusion. It demonstrates that the link between inclusion and effectiveness is conditional, and that inclusion risks – under certain conditions – to lower legitimacy, disempower civil society, and entrench conflict lines. The article thereby nuances arguments about how inclusion leads to effectiveness by broadening the perspectives on inclusive peacemaking. It has crucial practical implications because mediators may decide on whether and how to design inclusive processes, but civil society actors ultimately determine the effectiveness of such inclusion attempts.

On Strategies and Effects of Cross-cultural Communication of Chinese Mythological Animated Films—With Nezha and White Snake as Examples

Animated films with Chinese mythology are endowed with the most distinctive ethnic features. With Nezha and White Snake as examples, this paper analyzes their successes in cross-cultural communication strategies in the context of globalization from the perspectives of native cultural elements, narrations on affections, integration of Western cultures, and so forth, accompanied by their predicaments explained in many aspects including cultural differences between China and the West. It has been found that based on the native myths with less global popularity, the key to the effective communication of such film types lies in the cultural similarities, as witnessed by international narrative styles and mainstream emotional values.

The mundane politics of war in Taiwan: Psychological preparedness, civil defense, and permanent war

The concept of war has always been taken for granted in the study of Taiwan vis-a-vis the People’s Republic of China. Under the dominant international narrative, Taiwan is often framed as a contested territory, where its land and sovereignty are up for competition. While recent escalating geopolitical tension has brought increasing international attention to Taiwan, international discourse on Taiwanese sovereignty has been largely limited to a traditional conception of war that views Taiwan as a geopolitical pawn in a ‘new Cold War’ between the United States and the People’s Republic of China or, under the banner of ‘geopolitical realism’, treats the rise of Taiwanese national identity as war-making. Both approaches minimize the significance of Taiwanese sovereignty and subjectivity in the struggle between superpowers. This article intervenes in both of these views by applying the framework of martial empiricism with an analysis of the subjectivity of war preparedness in Taiwanese civil society to demonstrate that war has become a normative and liberal mode of politics in Taiwan. From my ethnographic fieldwork on the grass-roots mobilization of civil defense in the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I illustrate how civil defense rearticulates war not as a distant, spectacular event but as a mundane scenario that can be prepared for through daily practices and communal planning in Taiwan.

Perils, promises and perspectives: nuclear weapons, atomic energy and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the early Cold War

ABSTRACT In the 1950s and 1960s, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) protested nuclear weapons testing, called for nuclear and conventional disarmament, and simultaneously embraced the promises of atomic energy. The ICFTU also, particularly through its atomic energy committee, pressed the United Nations (UN), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for stronger worker protections and union input at atomic energy sites. Such efforts revealed how a non-governmental organization (NGO) attempted to shape international narratives and standards regarding nuclear weapons and atomic energy, revealing a complex approach to the use of the atom.

Memory dialogics: Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary renegotiation of Rwandan Genocide narratives

Many scholars have recently observed how the Rwandan State, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, relies on public memory after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide to categorize individuals based on gender and ethnicity. But the scholarship predominately constructs individual narratives in opposition to the State narrative, either supporting or resisting it. This article approaches the political memorialization in Rwanda through literature in order to explore how individuals simultaneously support and renegotiate State narrative tropes by fictionalizing a diverse set of emotions. Through a case study of Scholastique Mukasonga’s novels and memoires, the article examines how literary form and language allow an individual writer to dialogically situate their own memories within prescriptive State and international narratives, allowing readers to simultaneously relate to a multitude of contradictory narratives through their attendant emotions. The article reveals that the degree to which a writer can nuance these narratives from above depends on the writer’s identity, their geographical location, the languages they write in, literary form, and which aspects of the State narrative they choose to critique. The study concludes that literature might be crucial to encourage deeper reconciliation in Rwanda.

The Right-Wing Perspective: Populist Frames and Agenda on Facebook in Central and Eastern Europe

Political and public debates unfolding online provide various spaces for interaction between political actors, citizens and media outlets. This environment can be employed for diverse agendas, frames and biases, especially within populist narratives. This work examines the discourse of Central and Eastern European right-wing populists from Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland (2015-2021). To identify discursive patterns within public Facebook posts (n=192,057) by 31 party, movement and partisan news media pages, created by API interrogation, right-wing discourse is analyzed through semi-automated quantitative content analysis based on text mining, in conjunction with qualitative content analysis of messages that generated the highest engagement-rates (n=80). Key findings indicate both national and international narrative patterns with a focus on political, social and ethnic opponents, by incorporating Engesser et al.’s (2017) core elements of right-wing populist discourse within Master Populist Frame building (Heinisch & Mazzoleni, 2017), thus marking the contemporary agenda of European right-wing discourse.

China’s Experiments with Social Media: Singing Along with Xi Jinping About the Belt and Road Initiative

As the Chinese state ramps up its efforts in international narrative competitions, Chinese media master new genres and test different visual languages on global social media platforms. The diverse content they produce provides a new source of information about China’s self-representations intended for foreigners and thus provides a condensed answer to one of the key questions of China’s foreign policy: Who is China? It also responds to the question that many observers outside of China pose: What does China’s rise mean for the rest of the world? To explain how Chinese state media use new mediums to (re)imagine China and narrate its relations with the world, this study focuses on the entertainment visual content they posted on YouTube between 2013 and 2019 to introduce and endorse Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Using a critical discursive methodology, it decodes text-visual frames created by Chinese media to bring to the fore components of BRI’s discursive politics that are imperceptible in formal diplomatic communications.

Research on the cultural representation and international narrative process of Chinese rural images

Research on the cultural representation and international narrative process of Chinese rural images

The Aurat March (2018-2022) in the Context of Gendered-Islamophobia: A Case of Muslim Women’s Identity in Pakistan

The role and identity of Muslim women around the world is one of the crucial issues in the current era. Women rights’ activists and other contributors seek to highlight women issues through their work and marches. The present research explores that how these marches are contributing hugely in presenting the image of women in any country to the world. The researcher addresses the cultural and religious differences in terms of gendered Islamophobia and the impact of Aurat March while constructing or contesting the women identity in Pakistani society. Through an analysis of Aurat March, researcher highlights the ways in which the biased representation of Muslim women lives can be either limiting or encouraging. The impact of these events can be reason of rise in negative attitudes and scattered stereotypes, or it might initiate peaceful dialogues and affective measures. The research also analyzes that how a minor negligence can be an additional certificate in the world of Islamophobia and an increase in international narratives against Muslims, Islam, and Pakistani society. The research paper seeks to argue how Aurat March, influenced by secular modern trends transmit Islamophobic stereotypes towards Islam: Muslim women, in general, and Pakistan in specific context. The paper will conclude by analyzing the important insights to counter the gendered Islamophobia in the lives of Muslim women while limiting themselves into gender, culture, and religion. Keywords: Aurat March, gender discourses, Islamophobia, Muslim women, Pakistan

Assessment Tools of Biopsychosocial Frailty Dimensions in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Narrative Review

Frailty is a complex interplay between several factors, including physiological changes in ageing, multimorbidities, malnutrition, living environment, genetics, and lifestyle. Early screening for frailty risk factors in community-dwelling older people allows for preventive interventions on the clinical and social determinants of frailty, which allows adverse events to be avoided. By conducting a narrative review of the literature employing the International Narrative Systematic Assessment tool, the authors aimed to develop an updated framework for the main measurement tools to assess frailty risks in older adults, paying attention to use in the community and primary care settings. This search focused on the biopsychosocial domains of frailty that are covered in the SUNFRAIL tool. The study selected 178 reviews (polypharmacy: 20; nutrition: 13; physical activity: 74; medical visits: 0; falls: 39; cognitive decline: 12; loneliness: 15; social support: 5; economic constraints: 0) published between January 2010 and December 2021. Within the selected reviews, 123 assessment tools were identified (polypharmacy: 15; nutrition: 15; physical activity: 25; medical visits: 0; falls: 26; cognitive decline: 18; loneliness: 9; social support: 15; economic constraints: 0). The narrative review allowed us to evaluate assessment tools of frailty domains to be adopted for multidimensional health promotion and prevention interventions in community and primary care.

Economic Prospects and Challenges for Sudan after the Juba Peace Agreement: The Role of Development in Peacebuilding and Stabilization in Darfur

The peacebuilding-development nexus has progressively captivated scholars and practitioners who have thoroughly questioned their correlation and causality. Sudan’s persistent unrest and development efforts embodied an ideal testing ground for the theorists of the nexus, whose driving paradigms evolved parallel to the unfolding of the conflicts and the progressive affirmation of the peacebuilding-development nexus in international narratives. This article reviews development endeavors in sustaining peacebuilding in Sudan by exploring the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) vis-à-vis the economic reforms advanced by the transitional government of Sudan and the ever-growing international development assistance. The article argues that economic reforms and revitalization represent a fil-rouge throughout the JPA. By asserting that addressing inequalities, marginality, and injustice constitutes the litmus test of the agreement’s efficacy in terms of peacebuilding, it will be appraised whether this inclusive approach has been adopted in national development policies and what has been its effectiveness in sustaining the pathway for peace and democratization.

Identifying barriers and facilitators of translating research evidence into clinical practice: A systematic review of reviews.

Translating research into clinical practice is a global priority because of its potential impact on health services delivery and outcomes. Despite the ever-increasing depth and breadth of health research, most areas across the globe seem to be slow to translate relevant research evidence into clinical practice. Thus, this review sought to synthesise existing literature to elucidate the barriers and facilitators to the translation of health research into clinical practice. A systematic review of reviews approach was utilised. Review studies were identified across PubMed, Scopus, Embase, CINAHL and Web of Science databases, from their inception to 15 March 2021. Searching was updated on 30 March 2022. All retrieved articles were screened by two authors; reviews meeting the inclusion criteria were retained. Based on the review type, two validated tools were employed to ascertain their quality: A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews-2 and International Narrative Systematic assessment. The framework synthesis method was adopted to guide the analysis and narrative synthesis of data from selected articles. Ten reviews met the inclusion criteria. The study revealed that the translation of new evidence was limited predominantly by individual-level issues and less frequently by organisational factors. Inadequate knowledge and skills of individuals to conduct, organise, utilise and appraise research literature were the primary individual-level barriers. Limited access to research evidence and lack of equipment were the key organisational challenges. To circumvent these barriers, it is critical to establish collaborations and partnerships between policy makers and health professionals at all levels and stages of the research process. The study concluded that recognising barriers and facilitators could help set key priorities that aid in translating and integrating research evidence into practice. Effective stakeholder collaboration and co-operation should improve the translation of research findings into clinical practice.

Professional learning and identities in teaching: international narratives of successful teachers

Professional learning and identities in teaching: international narratives of successful teachers

New frontiers in international human rights: Actionable nonactionables and the (non)performance of perpetual becoming

This article explores the emergence of various international justice narratives that operate as legal nonperformatives, making the law and law making seem liberatory. It shows that the ratification of a treaty may not qualify as a form of state expression or a speech act advocating human rights. Instead, it can be interpreted through semiotics as sending a signal about a stance. By examining this proleptic space, we can begin to make sense of what we cannot yet see, and perhaps begin to forecast whether the core tenets of international human rights will soon be reinvented or merely perpetuated.

Coming back to a Commons approach to construct the Great Green Wall in Senegal

Since the 1970s, the Sahel region has been struck by severe droughts that has brought suffering to human populations. Scientists also observed declining rainfall leading to desertification in the zone. Against this backdrop, in 2007, several African states launched the international Great Green Wall (GGW) project that aimed to create a strip of forest from Senegal to Djibouti, crossing areas mostly devoted to pastoralism. We examined the social, land tenure and environmental implications of the GGW in Senegal, in the light of policies for pastoral intensification of the zone. The colonial heritage of the foresters from the Senegalese National Green Wall Agency who implement the project on the ground influences how reforestation is managed today. To understand how local populations relate to the space affected by the project and their resources, we organized participatory workshops in four contrasted study sites along the Senegalese portion of the GGW path. Our results show that trees are of great importance for local populations, whether agricultural or pastoral, but even more so in pastoral areas. Despite this, the national and international narrative considers Sahelian pastoralism and overgrazing as strong drivers of desertification. The paradox is that overgrazing is linked to the public policy of boreholes densification. Taking a Commons approach, we show the current and past role played by water in pasture management, and how water accessed by boreholes no longer regulates grazing practices. A Commons approach would pave the way for assisting stakeholders at different levels to favor regreening the Sahel.