The idea of what constitutes a narrative is widely debated. In previous blog posts, we have observed many different academics’ philosophies about what is required for an event to be considered a narrative. Once we establish what a narrative is, we can begin to determine what the characteristics of an “unnaratable” or “disnarrated” story are. These two terms are explored in Gerald Prince’s article, “The Disnarrated”. According to Prince, the unnaratable is; “…that which, according to a given narrative, cannot be narrated or is not worth narrating either because it transgresses a law (social, authorial, generic, formal) or because it defies the power of a particular narrator (or those of any narrator) or because it falls below the so called threshold of narratability (it is not sufficiently unusual or problematic).” (pg 1) Basically, something is unnarratable if it’s a taboo topic that people would rather not discuss, or if it’s a non-sensational story that is so commonplace that observing and dissecting it as a narrative would be unimportant and uninteresting.
Another related but separate concept explored by Prince is the idea of the disnarrative. Whereas something is unnarratable because of its content, something is a disnarrative generally because it simply has not happened. Disnarration is a hypothetical discourse, which allows the audience to see the explicit logic that the narrator uses to get to his/her conclusions (pg 5). Disnarratives can be an important element of narratives, not only because they lead to further discussion of a narrative, but also because they are commonly used ways of slowing down a narrative by opening up an audiences eyes to possible alternatives and how these hypothetical situations may play out.
Once a piece of work is deemed narratable, there is still the process of evaluating the news value of a story and determining whether it will get news coverage in a world of limited time and resources. In Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill’s article “What is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited”, the process of determining news value, which is normally an objective method, is instead observed as a statistical formula. Based on 12 factors[i], Gatlung and Ruge determined what aspects make a narrative newsworthy, and also which aspects are most likely to be focused on once said narrative begins begin covered. While this statistical formula is not perfect at determining news value, it does give a formula for figuring out something that would otherwise be difficult to assess objectively, and for this reason it is a valuable tool in determining the news value of a story.
Ultimately, stories need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis in order to determine if they are narratable or not. The Gatlung and Ruge model of determining news value is an important tool in agenda-setting, but if a news outlet relied only on this method without considering all stories, it is very possible that they will miss a story that should be covered. Knowledge of human interests and the statistical method should both be used in order to determine whether a story is a newsworthy narrative. Whether disnarratives have a place in narratives is also open to debate. However, it is undeniable that disnarratives create additional discourses of a narrative and keep the story it in the public spotlight for a longer period of time. Without disnarratives, a narrative is more likely to be dry and uninteresting, leading to the undesirable “so what” response from the audience that no narrative should create.
[i] : frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations/ people, reference to persons, reference to something negative (262-263)
O'Neill, Deidre, Harcup, Tony. "What Is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited." Journalism Studies 2.2 (2001): 261-80. Print.
Prince, Gerald. “The Disnarrated”. Vol. 22. 1988. 1-8. Print
No comments:
Post a Comment