Narrative Video Research Articles

A Storytelling Machine: The Complexity and Revolution of Narrative Television

This article analyses how TV fiction, in the last fifteen years, has become one of the most stimulating and successful vehicles to narrate complex and daring stories. The article is divided into two parts. In the first, armed with narratological and poetic elements, we will define the serial story, stripping away the husk of its principal forms and explain why it is now the best media for telling lengthy stories. In the second part we will pause to examine specifically variations on the traditional story: alternate universes, time jumps, coincidence between diegetic time in the story and real time and other mechanisms that have made television fiction the most daring way for telling stories.

Transgender Dispossession in Transparent: Coming Out as a Euphemism for Honesty

Since the 1990s, television narratives have increased visibility for LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual) individuals and underscored the need for a deep exploration of the heterosexism (homophobia) that pervades much mainstream American programming (Lee and Meyer in Sex Cult 141:234–250, 2010; Manuel in Soc Semiot 19(3):275–291, 2009). One such serial, Transparent, has been credited by many major media outlets with transforming the way Americans think about transgender, gender expansive (Ehrensaft in Gender born gender made, The Experiment, New York, 2011), or trans*, individuals. Exploring Transparent through Butler and Athanasiou’s (Dispossession: the performative in the political, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013) framework of dispossession, this essay argues that the depiction of dispossession in Transparent may serve to hypostasize the gender binary rather than to disrupt it. By severing the rhetorical act of “coming out” from the historical pathologization of non-normative sexualities and gender expansiveness in America, Transparent risks undoing the very social progress that it has the potential to further. While the show could powerfully disrupt cisgender privilege (Brydum in The true meaning of the word cisgender, 2015), as of its second season, instead, it merely illustrates how the media produced trans* “coming out” narrative all too often reifies the gender binary and cisgender privilege. Although it is tempting to praise Transparent for its representation of gender expansiveness, its problematic use of the “coming out” rhetoric should not be ignored.

Aspiring to the Creative Class: Reality Television and the Role of the Mentor

Aspiring to the Creative Class: Reality Television and the Role of the Mentor

6-7-8 x Periodismo Para Todos: o antagonismo televisionado da Lei de Meios Audiovisuais da Argentina

Os programas televisivos argentinos 6-7-8 (TV Pública) e Periodismo Para Todos (Canal Trece) são peças fundamentais para compreender o conflito entre governo Kirchner e Grupo Clarín no contexto da Lei de Meios Audiovisuais. O artigo busca identificar o que há em comum e o que é silenciado na atuação dos agentes e na estrutura dos programas. A metodologia é a leitura crítica de narrativas televisivas audiovisuais (Becker, 2012). Compreende-se que as produções audiovisuais agem posicionadas ao lado dos campos e instituições aos quais fazem parte no conflito. Utilizam-se de linguagens televisivas inovadoras na cobertura do cotidiano político da Argentina, em igualdade de alcance e estrutura.

The voice of lived experience: mobile video narratives in the courtroom

ABSTRACTVideo is overtaking other modes of communication in new media. Whether from a smartphone, a wearable device or surveillance camera, video is being made, stored and shared in unprecedented ways. Once the exclusive territory of institutions becomes large enough to finance video production and its storytelling power, technology’s contemporary democratization is changing the landscape of visual narrative. This project explores the discursive nature of video based on a case study of a courtroom trial that was both about the legality of filming crime scenes and the evidentiary use of videos from crime scenes. This unique intersection of surveillance, counter-surveillance, word and image, body and text allows for deeper understanding of how video serves human purposes. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and textual analysis, we build upon Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm by identifying significant attributes of unedited, evidentiary video that distinguish it from other forms of visual documentation. Raw video’s hard-edged timeline presents narrative coherence in a way that resists discursive contextualization. This has important implications for public policy and citizen-generated video evidence.

Once Upon a Jungian: Reading Film and Television Narratives as Quests for HappinessOnce Upon a Jungian: Reading Film and Television Narratives as Quests for Happiness

Once Upon a Jungian: Reading Film and Television Narratives as Quests for HappinessOnce Upon a Jungian: Reading Film and Television Narratives as Quests for Happiness

“I am not living next door to no zombie”: Posthumans and Prejudice

Abstract Posthumanist film and television is both a vehicle for reflection on discrimination and prejudice and a means of gratifying in fantasy deeply imbedded human impulses towards prejudice. Discrimination lies at the heart of posthuman narratives whenever the posthuman coalesces around an identifiable group in conflict with humans. We first introduce the idea of prejudice as a form of psychological defense, contrasting it with other accounts of prejudice in the philosophical literature. We then apply this notion to number of posthumanist film and television narratives. An adequate account of prejudice tells us about posthumanism in film—the significance of posthumanist thinking, speculation and fantasy. It helps account for the proliferation of television series and films about people who—being at one time dead, still dead or partially dead, or only sometimes dead, or have powers and appetites we do not have—are borderline creatures: not fully us, but still near to us.

“I am not living next door to no zombie”: Posthumans and Prejudice

Abstract Posthumanist film and television is both a vehicle for reflection on discrimination and prejudice and a means of gratifying in fantasy deeply imbedded human impulses towards prejudice. Discrimination lies at the heart of posthuman narratives whenever the posthuman coalesces around an identifiable group in conflict with humans. We first introduce the idea of prejudice as a form of psychological defense, contrasting it with other accounts of prejudice in the philosophical literature. We then apply this notion to number of posthumanist film and television narratives. An adequate account of prejudice tells us about posthumanism in film—the significance of posthumanist thinking, speculation and fantasy. It helps account for the proliferation of television series and films about people who—being at one time dead, still dead or partially dead, or only sometimes dead, or have powers and appetites we do not have—are borderline creatures: not fully us, but still near to us.

Transportability and Presence as Predictors of Avatar Identification Within Narrative Video Games.

To understand how narratives may best be implemented in video game design, first we must understand how players respond to and experience narratives in video games, including their reactions to their player character or avatar. This study looks at the relationship that transportability, self-presence, social presence, and physical presence have with identification with one's avatar. Survey data from 302 participants (151 males, 151 females) were analyzed. Both transportability and self-presence explained a significant amount of variance in avatar identification. We discuss the implications of these findings for future narrative video game research.

Children’s at Home: Dedicated Social Media for Parents of Adolescents With Neurofibromatosis Type 1

Purpose: To evaluate Children’s at Home (C@H), a social media website created for parents of adolescents with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1.) Methods: Interventional study for parents of adolescents with NF1 aged 13-18 years including 2 phases: (1) Creating Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) visual narratives on smartphones about parenting a child with NF1; (2) Interacting on C@H, a secure, medically-moderated social media website, with phase 1 visual narratives and responses using video and text. C@H was evaluated qualitatively via semi-structured phone interviews at: enrollment (T0), after creating video narratives (T1), and after interacting with other parents on C@H (T2).

The Toxic Screen: Visions of Petrochemical America in HBO'sTrue Detective(2014)

This article argues that the use of toxic visual and narrative tropes in contemporary dramatic television can expand our capacity to envision and critique the deadly effects of industrial pollution. The HBO series True Detective is an exemplary case study in how evocative toxic images can be integrated into familiar television narratives to animate society's deadly relationship with toxic chemicals. The petrochemical mise-en-scene of True Detective enlivens the toxic image with inferential power, or visual enthymemes, that invite audiences to draw connections between traumas that unfold through narrative action and omnipresence of toxic iconography. Developing a concept of the toxic screen, this article illustrates how televisual portraits amplify the inferential power of images to convey the pain of toxic exposure.

Persuasion as Reinforcement: Strengthening the Pro-Environmental Attitude-Behavior Relationship through Ecotainment Programming

This study investigated whether the effects of viewing pro-environmental messages within a narrative context affected intention to perform ecofriendly behaviors through the accessibility of participants’ (N = 332) environmental attitudes. One week after an online pretest, participants viewed one of two television clips that either included or did not include pro-environmental messages. Participants then completed attitude accessibility latency measures and reported behavioral intent to perform several ecofriendly behaviors. Reinforcement of pro-environmental attitudes by the pro-environmental messages occurred through the accessibility of the attitudes, which, in turn, predicted intention to engage in the depicted ecofriendly behaviors. Consistent with a category activation hypothesis, accessible attitudes toward the specific behaviors depicted in the program predicted the accessibility of attitudes toward ecofriendly behaviors that were not depicted or explicitly discussed in the program, and these accessible attitudes predicted intention to engage in ecological behaviors not depicted in the program. These findings are a first demonstration that portrayals of specific behaviors in a narrative television program can increase behavioral intention for related behaviors not shown in the program and that these effects occur through the activation of existing, positive attitudes.

To Be or Not to Be? The Essentialist Paradigm in Spanish and Catalan Television’s Depiction of Sexuality

In this essay I aim to challenge the essentialist paradigm which has so far dominated the representation of sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, on television. I focus on a corpus of narrative materials comprising Spanish and Catalan television series, although I also employ a comparative approach with British and American television narratives. This is a timely exercise because television has been largely disregarded in LGBT studies in Spanish and Catalan academia, especially as far as the analysis of characters and storylines is concerned. My essay aims to be a contribution to this field in the Spanish and Catalan contexts.

The Rich Inferential World of Mad Men: Serialized Television and Character Interiority

This article addresses how television narratives create psychologically rich situations, those moments where viewers are able to make many distinctive and sophisticated inferences about the mental states of characters. Focusing on season five of Mad Men, it examines the extent to which individual episodes create rich situations through the information established within an individual episode, versus the degree to which rich situations are created by relying on information accrued over the course of previous episodes, as well as the extent to which these two kinds of information are blended together in a given situation. While it is easy to assume that serial narratives routinely call upon accumulated character knowledge in order to enrich viewer inferences, somewhat surprisingly, most episodes in Mad Men season five are actually largely enriched through episodic rather than serial information. The article also analyzes interesting patterns that emerge in these qualities across the entire season.

Visual tools and narratives: new ways to improve financial literacy

AbstractWe developed and experimentally evaluated four novel educational programs delivered online: an informational brochure, a visual interactive tool, a written narrative, and a video narrative. The programs were designed to inform people about risk diversification, an essential concept for financial decision-making. The effectiveness of these programs was evaluated using the American Life Panel. Participants were exposed to one of the programs, and then asked to answer questions measuring financial literacy – in particular, risk literacy – and self-efficacy. All of the programs were found to be effective at increasing self-efficacy, and several improved financial literacy, providing new evidence for the value of programs designed to improve financial decision-making.

Relações de Gênero na Ficção Televisiva Ibero-Americana

A resenha apresenta uma síntese dos principais pontos abordados no Anuário OBITEL 2015 - “Relações de Gênero na Ficção Televisiva”, coordenado por Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes e Guillermo Orozo-Gomez. Resultado de pesquisas de caráter colaborativo, o Anuário oferece um mapeamento da produção ficcional da televisão aberta em doze países, com análises de natureza quantitativa e qualitativa, desenhando o panorama da ficção televisiva no contexto ibero-americano. No ano de celebração dos 10 anos do Observatório Ibero-Americano de Ficção Televisiva, o anuário apresenta também uma discussão sobre as relações de gênero nas narrativas de TV.

Languages of Russian and Chinese Narrative Video Art

Languages of Russian and Chinese Narrative Video Art

Imagining New Social Legal Futures: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Pre-Law Students’ Experiences with Discourse Communities of Legal Practice

This paper considers the ways that concepts such as social justice and law were used as semiotic objects-in-tension by a group of five US undergraduates considering law school to make sense of their ideas about entering the discourse communities and communities of practice associated with being a lawyer. This group was made up of undergraduate women who had completed a summer residency program sponsored by the Law School Admissions Council to increase enrollment of students from under-represented groups. Of the five participants, two were US-born; the others immigrated to the US as teenagers; each was aware of her position as multiply marginalized, by gender as well as other factors, including refugee or immigrant status, religious affiliation, sexual identity, and/or association with “at risk” labeling. Data analyzed reflect a 3-year study of their changing perceptions of their relationships to law school discourse communities, using text, interviews, individual video narratives, and informal, face-to-face group meetings. A sociolinguistic approach to multimodal discourse analysis is used to examine the ways that the women, each in a unique way, articulated an increased investment in direct and embodied engagement, lived experience, and personal testimony—not as supplements to doing/being a lawyer, but as necessary and expected practices therein. Over time and through various modalities, they used their vantage point from outside the dominant discourse communities of law to stage social critique and to contest the binary logic and normative criteria that forge the boundaries of exclusion from and inclusion in these communities. Specifically, they resemiotized notions of being a lawyer from the margins in ways that demanded a more fluid and polysemous interpretation of what it means to do ethically rigorous social justice work—hence reworking the relationships between justice (as an abstract ideal) and the law (as an institutionalized regime) and widening the semiotic potential of their own future work. Particularly significant are the ways that semiotic trajectories progressed from an emphasis on what Halliday identifies as textual (fixed and highly abstract) functions of language to interpersonal (embodied, relational) and ideational (expressive, experiential) functions. Such a trajectory away from entextualization suggests that voices and perspectives from the margins may be using those imaginary margins tactically as sites from which to contest the boundaries that define whose voices count within the legal system and to contest normative limits on semiotic potentialities for lawyers working toward more just social futures.

Witnessing distant and proximal suffering within a zone of danger: Lay moralities of media audiences in the Philippines

Drawing on the anthropology of moralities, the phronetic turn in media ethics scholarship, and audience research in media studies, this article explores how media audiences in the global South are implicated in moral dilemmas of bearing witness. Central are the diverse audience practices of engaging with proximal suffering on one hand and distant suffering on the other, where sympathy with or denial strategies towards suffering others are shaped not only by audiences’ geographical distance to tragedy, but crucially by classed moralities that profoundly shape judgments to sufferers and the media that represent them. A synthesis of ethnographic audience research with middle-class and low-income populations in disaster-prone Philippines shows how middle-class moralities of respectability inform social denial to proximal suffering, while low-income people’s personal experiences of suffering lead to the instrumentalization of television narratives as symbolic resources to cope with their own suffering.

The Adventures of Ms. Meta: The female superhero and her cultural importance

Abstract William Moulton Marston, inspired by his wife and beliefs, created a female superhero in 1941, seeking to address how the feminine archetype in western society ‘lacks force, strength and power’, and that ‘women’s strong qualities have become despised’. Wonder Woman was the result, and the character has achieved iconic status in popular culture seven decades later. While there is a wealth of research examining the representation of the female superhero and how this speaks to perceptions of femininity across the past 70 years, its focus is the prevalence of stereotypical over authentic depictions, and the harmful effects of this on society. However, the existing cultural impact and importance of female superheroes to readers of all genders cannot be ignored; to do so is to the detriment of both fans and scholars of comics. My research combines the platform of digital media with the artistic styles and narrative themes of comics, culminating in a narrative video game that brings together original comic pages, texts and animated sequences. The game tells the story of Meta Woman, a self-created superhero, from her first appearance in the ‘we can do it!’ 1940s, her reinventions as Miss Meta in the aftermath of the Comics Code of the 1950s, Ms Meta in the liberated 1970s and beyond, concluding in the present day. By cross-references comic representations of women with fan experience and stories of women from each era, the game showcases the power of female superheroes, and makes them relevant to each user’s life and experiences.