What is the narrative ecosystem?
The study of narrative texts — which is most literature studies — is far from new, but the surge of interest in narrative outside literature studies has generated an ecosystem that has developed around of all kinds of narrative texts.
While the worlds of academia and communications don’t quite meet, they overlap where trainers attempt to share knowledge from academia with communicators, and also at audiences — who communicators and narratologists care a lot about.
This “broad brush” description doesn’t capture every corner, but it does give a sense of where expansion has been happening — and where it might continue next.
Academia
Research + Teaching (mostly) Narrative Theory
Communications
Narrative Production as Profession
Training
Teaching Communication Skills Related to Narrative
Audience
Consumers of Produced Narratives
Narrative Scholar
Narratologist
Storyteller
Strategic Storytelling
Messaging
Narrative Researcher
Communication
Storytelling
Ethical Storytelling
Entertainment
Media
Someone who studies narrative texts, from literary classics to modern cinema.
Someone who studies the impact narrative texts have in the world, from social media stories to illness stories told by patients to doctors.
Someone who studies narrative texts that they also collect and transcribe, such as researchers interviewing asylum seekers and analyzing the collected texts as a single whole.
Someone with expertise in the art of telling stories (for entertainment or professional public speaking).
Communications professionals who use storytelling as part of their communications strategy.
Communications professionals often use “the narrative” to reference a message or point of view that they want to communicate or persuade; it’s more useful to call this “messaging”.
Teaching communications professionals how to incorporate narrative into their communications strategy.
Teaching communications professionals or spokespeople how to tell stories that are persuasive.
Teaching communications professionals how to practice storytelling within corporate communications in an ethical way.
Anyone who consumers stories — novels, movies, podcasts — for fun.
Media — whether news or not — audiences consume narratives to learn; the critical difference from entertainment audiences is that these audiences expect the narratives to be true, whereas entertainment audiences do not.