So What?

Navigating the Net With The Narrative Paradigm: So What?

Rotating Globe Ann Rosenthal
Columbus State University

.

Walter
Fisher
the
Narrative
Paradigm. Storytelling may well be one of the earliest forms of social interaction. As our progenitors encountered members of other communities, they probably told tall tales about the slaying of the giant woolly mammoth or related pathos riddled accounts of the saber tooth tiger that got away. Narratives convey information in an understandable and familiar form. It is logical that homo sapiens sapiens would instinctively know to look for familiar forms when encountering new phenomena within new contexts. That is certainly one way of learning. Although helpful, it is also limiting. While Fisher was explicating the narrative paradigm and explaining its universal power to interpret communication, the developing Internet was producing dramatic changes in both the types of communication phenomena to be understood and the contexts wherein communication happens. "...all forms of human
communication can be
seen as stories, as
interpretations of aspects
of the world occurring
in time and shaped by
history."
(Fisher, 1989, p. 57)

Lost at sea
Human communicators were set asea in cyberspace with a paradigm to understand what they encountered as "narrative" by the explicators of rhetoric who followed the Fisher model. Unfortunately, the metaphor of communication as story could not be applied in many cases, as earlier critics had claimed was true for traditional genres. Perhaps more importantly, by the time the critic had recast the communicative episode, framing it as a structured story and developing character profiles which are implied, unraveling the rationality, and locating the value, the message/event had disappeared from its server resulting in a 404 error message.
Communication revolution
Despite the existence of ARPA and military electronic messaging since the early sixties, the public had been able to communicate electronically via linked computers for only a few years when the Fisher paradigm was published. Insightful and revelatory given the traditional modes of human interaction, the narrative model could not have foreseen the exponential growth in communicative power nor the intervention of non valuing mechanical mediators, i.e., computers. Oral stories served to carry the community's account, before written history and even before writing, and stories still help us to wax nostalgic about happier times and can be very persuasive. The Internet, however, from its own progenitor, ARPA, was necessitating a new Kuhnian revolution because it was changing the fundamental nature of communication.

Click here to
view
JavaScript
image.
The narrative paradigm is not inherently bad, but it is proving less and less capable of unraveling the whys and wherefores of increasingly technological communication. Even when such communication is narrative, technologically generated and transmitted persuasive communication can be completely misleading and may not even be generated by another human being. How can a human, richly textured template derive relevant meaning from an algorithmic based message?
First let's look at some examples of persuasive communication which are clearly not narrative. Here's an example of a highly persuasive visual image which can be found at the Whitehouse web site as part of the President's initiative on race. The two images are layered on the screen with the text being hidden beneath the first image. The narrative paradigm would change this image so that it works in reverse order to reveal that there is a story there. So what? We're computer literate, more or less. We can take the computer pointing device, move it on and off the image, and reveal the text of the story for ourselves. The values are blatantly presented. The executives aligned themselves with equal opportunity. What narrative paradigm cannot do is tell us what is in the minds of these two political figures. On the issue of setting, narrative paradigm concedes that it important but fails to provide us with the factors which make it so. The virtual Whitehouse changes occupants as often as the one in Washington, with messages changing even more frequently.
On line chat rooms, too, defy use of the narrative paradigm. Much of the talk which occurs in this new context is simply phatic in nature, reaffirming for house-bound homo sapiens sapiens their continued existence within a community of others like themselves. One could, admittedly, build stories around each of these brief encounters, but to what purpose?
"The ARPA theme is
that the promise offered by the
computer as a communication
medium between people,
dwarfs into relative
insignificance the historical
beginnings of the computer
as an arithmetic engine."
(ARPA draft, III-24)

Robert Oliver - Genius Rationality in an irrational world---
Rational communication is not always what occurs even within a relatively structured, objective world. Within the chaos of the web worlds irrationality occasionally runs rampant. The web also hosts a community of entities whose identities are not necessarily identifiable as to origin, location, culture, or even species.
Fisher holds an idealistic view of communication as based in reason, but Barnes (1998) looks at the new technologically instantaneous news media and disagrees. The narratives the electronic media have spun both on and off the web regarding the current and past presidents often defy reason. Any random search of the web can produce thousands of seemingly irrational sites and sites with no enduring value. Sites come and go while others are placed and abandoned to collect cobwebs. The worldwide community includes both serious sites and "silly links." Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Sometimes, the information propagated challenges established values and the very basis of reason such as this site for reverse speech. I could ask questions of the narrative paradigm and examine them in terms of their validity regarding some of the persuasive information found on the world wide web: (1) Does this communication imply or declare values? (2) Are the values relevant, and to whom should they be relevant? Value is, however, a cultural artifact, and the culture of the Internet is still developing.
In today's information rich society, where information itself has become a commodity, pushing hot buttons with sounds bites and tricky imagery is more likely to be the rhetorical genre which the rhetorical critic encounters. With the growth of the capabilities through the Internet, critics must take care not to constrain themselves with paradigms of any type which depend on looking for values and reason.
..the media is disgusted with us.
After spending 10 days
assaulting us with rumors,
unsubstantiated
speculations, salacious
commentary, and self-
righteous preening over
the downfall of the
President, polls
continue to show an
unprecedented support for
Bill Clinton's record.
Now the media
is beginning to question
the values and beliefs of
the American people
because, as the polls show,
the vast majority of the
electorate has not been
sucked in .
Gail Barnes, Ph.D., (1998).
Experimental Psychologist

Armand
Mattelart:
...information
has become
a commodity... The narrative paradigm is an outgrowth, too, of the Western view of two worlds: one creator and the other created. Ames (1993) subscribes erroneous interpretation of Chinese communication to the application of this perspective.
When doing research through the Internet, a human is more likely communicating with a web robotic search engine than with a another human being. Some have even argued that the technological impact of the Internet must force a redefinition of what it means to be human. Again, narrative analysis is possible, but to what purpose? Is the AltaVista search text really of enduring value? Would it be more meaningful to ask questions which the narrative paradigm fails to consider?

15 nanoseconds of fame
The real difference, a la Andy Warhol's famous prediction, is that anybody, without restriction in the current, loosely controlled Internet environment, can put up a web site and have that site indexed and located through multiple search engines. Many of these sites fit media's uses and gratifications theory better than the weighty considerations of narrative analysis.

Roger T. Ames
Sun-Tzu:
The art of warfare. David Sutton's goldfish dialogues are an excellent example. Certainly, these web posts are narratives, and the goldfish can be characterized, placed in time and context. The dialogic structure can be delineated. Again, I ask, to what purpose? Sutton's use of these apocryphal anecdotes to poke small holes in communicative events where the communicators are becoming pontifical is far more interesting and meaningful than knowing about the esoterica of their inherent structure.   The non-sense of such whimsical communication is often of more interest than searching for deeper meanings.

So what?
The narrative paradigm can tell us, in many instances, what and why some communication is persuasive. What it cannot do is tell us why something persuades when the picture is deliberately skewed or distorted. Despite Fisher's continued insistence that we must hope to find reason and value, irrationality and counterculture are more likely the products which the rhetorical critic of today will encounter. Nor is the narrative paradigm parsimonious enough to deal with the rapidly appearing and disappearing messages found via the Internet. To my understanding, moreover, it deals with communication between human beings and does not consider interactive robotics communication. Fisher, however, argues well. Perhaps he, with the most complete understanding of his own model, will clarify it further regarding this latest communication phenomenon.
For an alternative
paradigm/metaphor
of the Internet,
read physicist Kris
Lerman's view of
I nternet as brain.

Walter Fisher the Narrative Paradigm.	Storytelling may well be one of the earliest forms of social interaction. As our progenitors encountered members of other communities, they probably told tall tales about the slaying of the giant woolly mammoth or related pathos riddled accounts of the saber tooth tiger that got away. Narratives convey information in an understandable and familiar form. It is logical that homo sapiens sapiens would instinctively know to look for familiar forms when encountering new phenomena within new contexts. That is certainly one way of learning. Although helpful, it is also limiting. While Fisher was explicating the narrative paradigm and explaining its universal power to interpret communication, the developing Internet was producing dramatic changes in both the types of communication phenomena to be understood and the contexts wherein communication happens.	*"...all forms of human* *communication can be* *seen as stories, as* *interpretations of aspects* *of the world occurring* *in time and shaped by* *history."* *(Fisher, 1989, p. 57)*
	Lost at sea Human communicators were set asea in cyberspace with a paradigm to understand what they encountered as "narrative" by the explicators of rhetoric who followed the Fisher model. Unfortunately, the metaphor of communication as story could not be applied in many cases, as earlier critics had claimed was true for traditional genres. Perhaps more importantly, by the time the critic had recast the communicative episode, framing it as a structured story and developing character profiles which are implied, unraveling the rationality, and locating the value, the message/event had disappeared from its server resulting in a 404 error message. Communication revolution Despite the existence of ARPA and military electronic messaging since the early sixties, the public had been able to communicate electronically via linked computers for only a few years when the Fisher paradigm was published. Insightful and revelatory given the traditional modes of human interaction, the narrative model could not have foreseen the exponential growth in communicative power nor the intervention of non valuing mechanical mediators, i.e., computers. Oral stories served to carry the community's account, before written history and even before writing, and stories still help us to wax nostalgic about happier times and can be very persuasive. The Internet, however, from its own progenitor, ARPA, was necessitating a new Kuhnian revolution because it was changing the fundamental nature of communication.
Click here to view JavaScript image.	The narrative paradigm is not inherently bad, but it is proving less and less capable of unraveling the whys and wherefores of increasingly technological communication. Even when such communication is narrative, technologically generated and transmitted persuasive communication can be completely misleading and may not even be generated by another human being. How can a human, richly textured template derive relevant meaning from an algorithmic based message? First let's look at some examples of persuasive communication which are clearly not narrative. Here's an example of a highly persuasive visual image which can be found at the Whitehouse web site as part of the President's initiative on race. The two images are layered on the screen with the text being hidden beneath the first image. The narrative paradigm would change this image so that it works in reverse order to reveal that there is a story there. So what? We're computer literate, more or less. We can take the computer pointing device, move it on and off the image, and reveal the text of the story for ourselves. The values are blatantly presented. The executives aligned themselves with equal opportunity. What narrative paradigm cannot do is tell us what is in the minds of these two political figures. On the issue of setting, narrative paradigm concedes that it important but fails to provide us with the factors which make it so. The virtual Whitehouse changes occupants as often as the one in Washington, with messages changing even more frequently. On line chat rooms, too, defy use of the narrative paradigm. Much of the talk which occurs in this new context is simply phatic in nature, reaffirming for house-bound homo sapiens sapiens their continued existence within a community of others like themselves. One could, admittedly, build stories around each of these brief encounters, but to what purpose?	"The ARPA theme is that the promise offered by the computer as a communication medium between people, dwarfs into relative insignificance the historical beginnings of the computer as an arithmetic engine." (ARPA draft, III-24)
	Rationality in an irrational world--- Rational communication is not always what occurs even within a relatively structured, objective world. Within the chaos of the web worlds irrationality occasionally runs rampant. The web also hosts a community of entities whose identities are not necessarily identifiable as to origin, location, culture, or even species. Fisher holds an idealistic view of communication as based in reason, but Barnes (1998) looks at the new technologically instantaneous news media and disagrees. The narratives the electronic media have spun both on and off the web regarding the current and past presidents often defy reason. Any random search of the web can produce thousands of seemingly irrational sites and sites with no enduring value. Sites come and go while others are placed and abandoned to collect cobwebs. The worldwide community includes both serious sites and "silly links." Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Sometimes, the information propagated challenges established values and the very basis of reason such as this site for reverse speech. I could ask questions of the narrative paradigm and examine them in terms of their validity regarding some of the persuasive information found on the world wide web: (1) Does this communication imply or declare values? (2) Are the values relevant, and to whom should they be relevant? Value is, however, a cultural artifact, and the culture of the Internet is still developing. In today's information rich society, where information itself has become a commodity, pushing hot buttons with sounds bites and tricky imagery is more likely to be the rhetorical genre which the rhetorical critic encounters. With the growth of the capabilities through the Internet, critics must take care not to constrain themselves with paradigms of any type which depend on looking for values and reason.	..the media is disgusted with us. After spending 10 days assaulting us with rumors, unsubstantiated speculations, salacious commentary, and self- righteous preening over the downfall of the President, polls continue to show an unprecedented support for Bill Clinton's record. Now the media is beginning to question the values and beliefs of the American people because, as the polls show, the vast majority of the electorate has not been sucked in . Gail Barnes, Ph.D., (1998). Experimental Psychologist
Armand Mattelart: ...information has become a commodity...	The narrative paradigm is an outgrowth, too, of the Western view of two worlds: one creator and the other created. Ames (1993) subscribes erroneous interpretation of Chinese communication to the application of this perspective. When doing research through the Internet, a human is more likely communicating with a web robotic search engine than with a another human being. Some have even argued that the technological impact of the Internet must force a redefinition of what it means to be human. Again, narrative analysis is possible, but to what purpose? Is the AltaVista search text really of enduring value? Would it be more meaningful to ask questions which the narrative paradigm fails to consider?
	15 nanoseconds of fame The real difference, a la Andy Warhol's famous prediction, is that anybody, without restriction in the current, loosely controlled Internet environment, can put up a web site and have that site indexed and located through multiple search engines. Many of these sites fit media's uses and gratifications theory better than the weighty considerations of narrative analysis.
Roger T. Ames Sun-Tzu: The art of warfare.	David Sutton's goldfish dialogues are an excellent example. Certainly, these web posts are narratives, and the goldfish can be characterized, placed in time and context. The dialogic structure can be delineated. Again, I ask, to what purpose? Sutton's use of these apocryphal anecdotes to poke small holes in communicative events where the communicators are becoming pontifical is far more interesting and meaningful than knowing about the esoterica of their inherent structure. The non-sense of such whimsical communication is often of more interest than searching for deeper meanings.
	So what? The narrative paradigm can tell us, in many instances, what and why some communication is persuasive. What it cannot do is tell us why something persuades when the picture is deliberately skewed or distorted. Despite Fisher's continued insistence that we must hope to find reason and value, irrationality and counterculture are more likely the products which the rhetorical critic of today will encounter. Nor is the narrative paradigm parsimonious enough to deal with the rapidly appearing and disappearing messages found via the Internet. To my understanding, moreover, it deals with communication between human beings and does not consider interactive robotics communication. Fisher, however, argues well. Perhaps he, with the most complete understanding of his own model, will clarify it further regarding this latest communication phenomenon.	For an alternative paradigm/metaphor of the Internet, read physicist Kris Lerman's view of I nternet as brain.