Narrative Story Research Articles

The interplay of virtual reality and narrative story in disaster journalism through empathy, transportation, and identification

Although virtual reality (VR) has been shown to be an effective means of delivering news stories, there is still a lack of understanding as to how VR can complement specific narrative formats, such as textual news, in journalism. This study investigates the impact of using VR (vs. 360° videoon a 2D screen) to deliver textual news with high (vs. low) narrativity in terms of triggering issue involvement through three immersion-related psychological responses (empathy, transportation, and identification) within the realm of disaster journalism, wherein victims’ experiences are conveyed to users. The results of a between-subject experiment (N = 144) showed that VR (vs. 2D) reported higher transportation. Moreover, VR (vs. 2D) elicited greater empathy when used in conjunction with the textual disaster news with high (vs. low) narrativity, which further increased issue involvement. These findings provide insights that are expected to be helpful in harnessing the potential of VR for narrative storytelling in journalism, which can provoke an empathetic and visceral understanding of victims in disaster news.

Responding to Soul Injury: Tools for Hope and Healing.

Soul Injury is defined as a wound that separates a person from their real self, caused by unmourned loss and hurt, unforgiven guilt and shame, and fear of helplessness or loss of control. Tools and interventions have been developed to guide people impacted by Soul Injury. This study assessed the effectiveness of 12 tools and interventions provided during a 4-day Soul Injury Leadership Institute. This 2-part investigation included an online survey of participants who had attended a 4-day Institute training and a post-Institute narrative inquiry conducted as virtual structured interviews. Ninety-one professionals completed the online survey, which inquired about the impact of specific Soul Injury tools and interventions on the respondents' personal and professional life. The Anchor Your Heart tool was the most frequently used tool and had the most enduring utilization across time and settings. Qualitative data collected in virtual interviews with 15 volunteers demonstrated the power of the Write/Tell Your Story technique in which storied narratives permit an individual to integrate powerful experiences such as traumatic events, serious illness, and even death, providing further validation that Soul Injury is an important human phenomenon.

“In the end, the story of climate change was one of hope and redemption”: ChatGPT’s narrative on global warming

AI chatbots such as ChatGPT help people produce texts. According to media reporting, these texts are also used for educational purposes. Thus, AI influences people’s knowledge and perception of current issues. This paper examines the narrative of ChatGPT's stories on climate change. Our explorative analysis reveals that ChatGPT’s stories on climate change show a relatively uniform structure and similar content. Generally, the narrative is in line with scientific knowledge on climate change; the stories convey no significant misinformation. However, specific topics in current debates on global warming are conspicuously missing. According to the ChatGPT narrative, humans as a species are responsible for climate change and specific economic activities or actors associated with carbon emissions play no role. Analogously, the social structuration of vulnerability to climate impacts and issues of climate justice are hardly addressed. ChatGPT’s narrative consists of de-politicized stories that are highly optimistic about technological progress.

A study of the impact of media image on the market economy, network economy, and social business operations

The Chinese internet economy is rapidly developing while prominent bandwagon netroots have arisen on major network platforms. This paper employs textual analysis to examine the market and network economy and social merchant operations’ susceptibility to the media image of two bandwagon netroots. Following the study, the two web celebrities jump on the bandwagon and utilize the contrast between their image and gender groups, catering to their clientele and shaping their public backgrounds, beautifying their business image and narrative of personal stories, to increase the sales of their online bandwagon products.

Children’s Literature: A Contribution to the Emergence of Science in the Early Years

Children’s natural curiosity by everything around them is a premise for discovery. Natural phenomena such as the alternation between day and night, elements of nature such as the tree’s leaves and their shapes and colors, daily routines as sorting waste, raise many questions in children, stimulating them towards scientific literacy trough what is familiar to them and their personal life experiences. In the science children’s books, the concepts’ approach sometimes difficult its understanding by children, due to the used vocabulary, the lack of an appealing narrative, among other aspects. In turn, children’s literature books without any intention of promoting or developing ideas of science can, through their narrative and illustrations, in a more meaningful context for children, motivate the inquiring and the concepts’ exploration. This work results from a presentation session of the children’s book “From the outside to inside and from the inside to outside” to children of a Portuguese school of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education, by the authors which are also the researchers, having as aim create an environment based on questioning activity, supported in the story narrative, and develop children’s divergent thinking in a context involving scientific ideas.

Story Grammar Analyses Capture Discourse Improvement in the First 2 Years Following a Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

Narration within a story grammar framework requires speakers to organize characters and events logically. Despite abundant research characterizing narrative deficits following a traumatic brain injury (TBI), the evolution of narrative story grammar over the first 2 years post-TBI has rarely been explored. This study analyzed story grammar in complex narratives of adults with and without severe TBI to (a) examine between-group differences and (b) investigate longitudinal changes over the first 2 years post-TBI. Story grammar analyses of Cinderella narratives from 57 participants with TBI and 57 participants with no brain injury yielded measures of productivity (total number of episodes, total number of story grammar elements), elaboration (total number of elaborated-complete episodes, mean number of episodic elements per episode), and completeness (total number of incomplete episodes). Mann-Whitney U tests compared measures across groups; generalized estimating equation (GEE) models identified predictors of change, including recovery time (3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months post-TBI) and demographic/injury-related characteristics. Between-group differences were statistically significant for all productivity and elaboration measures at 3, 6, and 9 months post-TBI; one productivity measure and one elaboration measure at 12 months; and none of the measures at 24 months. GEE models showed significant improvements in all productivity and elaboration measures over the first 24 months post-TBI, with educational attainment and duration of posttraumatic amnesia affecting recovery. Incomplete episodes only showed between-group differences at 12 months and did not capture recovery. Productivity and elaboration are key story grammar variables that (a) differentiate complex narration in individuals with and without severe TBI and (b) capture narrative improvements over the first 2 years post-TBI. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25148999.

Social Work and Intractable Conflict: Professional Experiences and Role Perceptions

Abstract Social workers worldwide share a common framework and mission: to provide aid to those in need and promote social justice. Yet as an international profession, both global and local realities contribute to the unique ways in which the profession is understood and practised in various locations. This article considers the broad issue of how local and global realities shape social workers’ understanding of the profession using the case of Israeli-Jewish social workers as an exemplar. Narrative and life story methods were used to understand individual life stories within collective political and professional contexts. Sixteen Jewish-Israeli social workers participated in two, individual zoom interviews each in which they described becoming a social worker and practising in the context of an intractable conflict, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Three approaches to social work practice emerged, suggesting that social work in Israel has shifted away from applying ecological perspectives, limiting both how social workers understand their roles and how they practise. Recommendations for incorporating a politically aware framework to social work practice, research and education are discussed.

The Effects of Adult Separation on Children's Academic and Psychosocial Wellbeing at School: A Case Study of Senga Primary School in Gweru, Zimbabwe

This study investigated the lived experiences of children from a primary school in the Gweru region of Zimbabwe, whose parents were either separated or divorced. The study was undertaken to ascertain how these learners are psychologically and academically affected by their family situations. The data were gathered using narrative stories, personal narrative diary entries, and interviews. The study was qualitative in nature and aimed to achieve an in-depth understanding of the topic through studying 12 participants, who were purposely sampled. The data were transcribed and analysed using the open-coding technique and thematic analysis. The results revealed that even though the effects of the divorce and separation varied, the participants shared similarities with regard to their emotional states. They invariably experienced feelings of sadness, distress, abandonment, anger, helplessness, and stress. The results also indicated that divorce had a significant impact on the participants’ academic behaviour, school lives and integration at school. The researchers made recommendations which would improve the children’s plight.

The Collective Memory of the Fluvial Environment: The Loss of a Healthy Natural Environment in the City of Toledo (Spain) through Pollution

This research recovers the collective memory of elderly people who recall experiences lived alongside the Tagus River in the city of Toledo (Spain). The study develops an individual and collective narrative story to add to our understanding of the relationship between society and its environment during the years 1950–1970. A qualitative methodology is used through documentary analysis techniques and in-depth interviews. The results obtained from the testimonies reflect the influence that the Tagus River had as a natural heritage on the socialization and emotions of Toledo society. The sociological study carried out is unique, since it is the first in which, through collective memory, a contrast is made between the enjoyment of a natural fluvial environment in good condition compared to its current state of an ecosystem in deterioration.

Perception, Reason, and Intuition in the Development Of Expertise: Reflections on Zhuangzi and Contemporary Western Theory

AbstractIn this paper, Leonard Waks investigates connections between listening and expertise or mastery, contrasting approaches from Eastern and Western philosophy. The first section accounts for listening in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, a work addressing themes in Chinese philosophy through metaphor and story narratives. In one story a character named “Confucius” advises a student to fast the mind and listen recklessly. The affinity between reckless and what has been called “apophatic” listening is demonstrated by the shared feature of mental emptiness — listening without the imposition of conceptual categories. The second section demonstrates close affinities between the account of listening and expertise or mastery in the Zhuangzi and in the account of expert perception in contemporary Western philosophy and psychology, as exemplified by phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus.

Küresel Rekabette Tabii'nin Potansiyel Yeri: Hikâye Yapıları Bize Ne Söyler?

This article focuses on TRT's (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) digital platform called "Tabii," which was launched in 2023. Tabii is a platform constructed with state support during a time when it is becoming progressively challenging to individually counter global content monopolies such as Netflix and Disney. Tabii embraces a kind of eastern tradition and internalizes the values of Turkish Islamic thought under the slogan of "stories that unite us." With this approach, Tabii seeks to challenge the previously established and dominant digital platforms or create an alternative space. It is evident that such an endeavor is quite challenging.
 In this research, focusing on loglines and story structures, the themes and character depth of the series are evaluated. For the purpose of sampling, the 10 most-watched series on the Tabii platform were selected, and their story structures and themes were subjected to structural analysis. In conclusion of this analysis, while Tabii's targeted broadcasting approach and advocated human values are deemed significant, the narrative sentences and story structures employed for their conveyance have been found to be weak. Hence, this article highlights the importance of Tabii platform in the context of communication and content creation in the digital world, emphasizing the potential for conveying their messages more effectively with stronger story structures.

Flipping the Colonialist Paradigm: Grigorii Chkhartishvili’s Akunin

AbstractThis essay examines how the Erast Fandorin series by Boris Akunin (Grigorii Chkhartishvili) employs, revises, and deconstructs the Orientalist paradigm through the portrayal of Masa, the detective’s Japanese sidekick. At first glance, Masa appears to embody Orientalist clichés through allusions to a familiar ethnic stereotype. But the Fandorin series does more than activate the preconceived role of a Russian hero’s Asian valet: in reformulating the detective story narrative, Akunin introduces both Orientalist and Occidentalist perspectives and ultimately reconfigures the master‐servant structure as something similar to a Confucian, father‐son relationship. Despite the stereotypical ethnic image reproduced in the series, Masa’s representation is divorced from the colonizing agenda that is fundamental to Orientalist discourse. After appearing at first as a Colonialist sign, Masa’s depiction turns out to be a pastiche without the implied referent whose trajectory in the cycle traces choices made by Akunin (and ultimately Chkhartishvili). While the author first and foremost pursues entertainment, as the series progresses, he exhibits signs of postcolonial political awareness by flipping and deconstructing the quasi‐Orientalist mode. As a result, the initial division between the implicit perspectives of the fictional and nonfictional authors turns into an alignment of the two.

What Should Go With This Word Here: Connecting Lexical Collocations and Rhetorical Moves in Narrative Stories

Abstract An emerging body of corpus-based genre analysis studies has examined the connection between different types of formulaic language and rhetorical moves in various genres of academic writing. The current study extends this body of research into the understudied genre of narrative stories and the understudied phraseological unit of lexical collocations. Specifically, we compiled a corpus of narrative stories written by expert writers, extracted a list of frequent collocations from the corpus, developed a rhetorical move framework for narrative stories, examined the distribution of rhetorical stages and moves in the corpus, and explored the connection between collocations and rhetorical moves in the corpus. The findings of our research culminated in an online interface for searching the corpus for collocations and exploring their use in sentences realizing different rhetorical stages and moves in context. We discuss the potential pedagogical value of our findings and the resulting online interface for promoting learner awareness of the connection between linguistic features and rhetorical functions in narrative stories in genre-based pedagogy.

Discourse Task Type-Specific Linguistic Characteristics in Anomic Aphasia and Healthy Controls: Evidence From Mandarin-Chinese AphasiaBank.

This study was designed to examine the hypothesis that discourse task types influence language performance in Mandarin Chinese-speaking people and to reveal the discourse task-specific linguistic properties of persons with anomic aphasia compared to neurotypical controls. Language samples from persons with aphasia (n = 31) and age- and education-matched controls (n = 31) across four discourse tasks (sequential-picture description, single-picture description, story narrative, and procedural discourse) were collected from Mandarin AphasiaBank. Task-specific distributions of parts of speech were analyzed using mosaic plots. The main effects of tasks in each group and the between-group differences within each task for several typical linguistic variables were evaluated, including the mean length of utterance, tokens, moving-average type-token ratio, words per minute, propositional density, noun-verb ratio, noun percentage, and verb percentage. The results revealed an impact of discourse tasks on most language variables in both groups. In the healthy controls, story narratives yielded the highest total words and lowest verb percentage. In the aphasia group, procedural discourse elicited the fewest total words and densest expressions, whereas their single-picture descriptions had the highest noun-verb ratio. For all tasks, the aphasia group performed worse than the control group in the mean length of utterance, tokens, moving-average type-token ratio, and words per minute. For noun-verb ratio, noun percentage, and verb percentage, only one task (i.e., single-picture description) showed significant between-group differences. The selection of discourse tasks should be addressed in assessments and interventions for Mandarin Chinese-speaking individuals with aphasia to obtain more accurate and feasible outcomes.

“They Told me I Should Feel Sad”: Narrative and Personal Story Telling as a Sensemaking and Ownership Tool for Young People Who Have Experienced Bereavement

AbstractThis research focused on listening to the voices of children who have experienced the death of someone important to them. Through a personalized narrative methodology working with practitioners, and with regard for cultural and religious beliefs, children were given safe space to tell their own truths to sense‐make rather than prescribing how they should be feeling or what they should be experiencing as part of their grief journey. Findings suggest this impacted positively on the children's wellbeing. The recommendations are to use this approach to open up dialogue instigated by the child, which is currently missing from contemporary policy and practice, as well as adding to the limited literature. Furthermore, the engagement with the topic of death is advocated for all children rather than simply retrospectively with those who have experienced it. As this was a small‐scale study, more research is needed.

The Status of Scholar-Activism in South Korean Sport: Challenges and Implications for Advancement

In the current study, we aimed to explore the status of scholar-activism in the South Korean sport and the transnational relationship and solidarity for scholarly activism. Using narrative inquiry as a method, we interviewed scholar-activists in the South Korean sport field who have extensive experiences engaging in sport-based activism. Their experiences are presented in a format of narrated stories, chronologically describing their initial engagement with scholar-activism, constraints to their activist work, and suggestions for the future practice. Findings indicate that their educational background motivated their engagement in social activism work, but various sociocultural constraints in South Korean society posed notable challenges to advancing their activist agenda and scholarly career. Specifically, the ongoing conservatism and anti-progressive Confucian culture has stigmatized scholar-activism. Based on the findings, we suggest that transnational solidarity among scholar-activists and cross-field collaborations will help advance scholar-activism.

Life outcomes after paediatric kidney transplantation: a qualitative, biographical study in long-term survivors

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to analyse the narrative life stories of children with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and their families to determine how health professionals can effectively support...

Humour as Self-Deprecation in Born a Crime: Stories from South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Born a Crime: Stories from South African Childhood is a captivating memoir penned by a globally acclaimed South African comedian, Trevor Noah, delving into the hardships he and those around him endured during the oppressive Apartheid-era government and colonialism. This article analyzes instances where the comedian author employs a self-deprecating humour style to add depth to his narrative of stories from South African childhood. To conduct this analysis, we adopt cognitive and incongruity theoretical frameworks. Our methodology is qualitative, involving the analysis of selected texts to present thematic data. The findings reveal that the author’s transparency about his life, from the title of the book to his relationships with others, delves into painful details of his childhood experiences during the traumatic history of the nation in which there was oppression. However, he presents these experiences with self- deprecating humour that simultaneously entertains and educates readers about the socioeconomic issues prevalent in South Africa at the time. Noah's storytelling strategy can be understood within the context of comedians' freedom to explore sensitive matters about themselves to entertain their audience.

The Catholic Marianist Brothers’ Contribution to Moral and Integral Boys’ Education in Zambia (1966-1991) Part II

The article focuses on the contribution the Marianist Brothers made to moral and integral boys’ education in their education philosophy at Matero Boys Secondary School popularly known as MaBoys. Cox’s theory of phenomenology of religion was used in order to generate empirical data from religious and lived experiences of the Marianist Brothers as well as the narrated stories from both former teachers and pupils of the first twenty-five years at MaBoys, (1966 to 1991). The objective intended to be achieved was to determine aspects of morality that have been integrated with education by Marianist Brothers of MaBoys. The study was purely qualitative and specifically used a follow-up case study design to capture and understand the Marianist applied pedagogical practices in enhancing former pupils’ lives after leaving the school. The findings indicated that the Marianist education was the core of morality. The Marianist education policy: One Education Ministry integrated the pedagogical practices of the five-fold Marianist charism in their education philosophy and formed Christ in souls of young people. The charism included the virtues of educate for formation of faith, provide an integral quality education, Education in Family spirit, educate for service, justice and peace and Education for adaptation and change this can be seen as evidence in that the Marianist imprint remained in the boys’ lives long after school.

Discourse- and lesion-based aphasia quotient estimation using machine learning

Discourse is a fundamentally important aspect of communication, and discourse production provides a wealth of information about linguistic ability. Aphasia commonly affects, in multiple ways, the ability to produce discourse. Comprehensive aphasia assessments such as the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R) are time- and resource-intensive. We examined whether discourse measures can be used to estimate WAB-R Aphasia Quotient (AQ), and whether this can serve as an ecologically valid, less resource-intensive measure. We used features extracted from discourse tasks using three AphasiaBank prompts involving expositional (picture description), story narrative, and procedural discourse. These features were used to train a machine learning model to predict the WAB-R AQ. We also compared and supplemented the model with lesion location information from structural neuroimaging. We found that discourse-based models could estimate AQ well, and that they outperformed models based on lesion features. Addition of lesion features to the discourse features did not improve the performance of the discourse model substantially. Inspection of the most informative discourse features revealed that different prompt types taxed different aspects of language. These findings suggest that discourse can be used to estimate aphasia severity, and provide insight into the linguistic content elicited by different types of discourse prompts.