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Media coverage often construes stories of misfortune as inspirational accounts of individuals overcoming challenges. These reports fail to address the systemic issues that have predisposed these individuals to their current situation, and may have unintended consequences when it comes to the ability to collectively address these failings as a society. The current research examines how audiences are affected by inspirational narrative framings by comparing responses to a narrative that has inspirational coverage of a social challenge to one that includes direct acknowledgement of the larger systemic failings. Participants (N = 495) were randomly assigned to 1) read an inspirational story about a boy saving up to buy a wheelchair for his friend, 2) read a version of the story that emphasized the need for increased disability funding/services, or 3) a no-story control group. Both story conditions raised readers' willingness to help people with disabilities. Importantly, emphasizing social responsibility shifted readers' perceptions: readers of the social responsibility story were less likely to believe an individual with a disability was responsible for paying for their medical devices, believed that some collective measures would have higher efficacy, and viewed the situation as less fair. Even though individuals in the social responsibility condition found the story less enjoyable, they were equally transported into it compared to the inspirational version, and were equally likely to want to share the story with others. Our results offer clear guidelines for media practitioners covering individual struggles and systemic issues within society.

eBay the firm and eBay as a set of everyday cultural practices together arise at a time of material excess combined with an intensified exteriorization of memory processes onto digital media devices. Exchange and use values on eBay are negotiated through elaborate, at times sensational, narrative histories contextualizing the object's past, ambiguous images, and fetishized practices. Individuals may pay a premium for a sense of imagined experience "exchanged" through buyers and sellers and other browsers through these narratives prior to the actual sale of any object. The indexicality of eBay—the sense that one is able somehow to experience a trace of the object or, just as important, its seller through online media—works to suggest that authenticity is transferable, an exchange value available to the highest bidder. The growing belief that Web sites such as eBay constitute the equivalent of material space contributes to this perception.

In March 1988, my late aunt Onehou Phillis (1926-2012) and I visited the National Archives (as it was called then) and the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Onehou was our Māori language teacher at Edgecumbe College in the Eastern Bay of Plenty and was accompanying our seventh-form English class to Wellington as our kaumatua. We stayed at Bruce Stewart's marae, Tapu Te Ranga, at Island Bay, and during the course of the week there was ample time to take in our capital's highlights. One afternoon, Onehou and I took the opportunity to see what information was held at the archives concerning our Ngāti Awa and Tūhourangi tipuna Maata Te Taiawātea Te Rangitūkehu (c.1849-1929). My father and Onehou were first cousins and Maata was their grandmother.

Stories have long been discussed as a tool to make science accessible to the public. The potential of stories to stimulate emotions in their audiences makes them an emotional communication strategy par excellence. While studies exist that test the effects of stories in science communication on the one hand and the effects of emotions on the other hand, there is no systematic elaboration of the mechanisms through which stories in science communication evoke emotions and how these emotions influence outcomes such as knowledge gain and attitude change. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework of the "Emotional Effects of Science Narratives" (EESN-Model), which includes a typology of emotions likely to arise from reading science communication as well as mechanisms for each of the emotions to evoke the (desired) outcomes. The model serves as a heuristic to delineate the emotional effects of narratives in science coverage and will help guide research in this domain to provide a deeper understanding of the role of emotion in science news.

This study reports a quasi-experiment ( N= 374) that examined an underlying mechanism through which narratives can facilitate personalization of risk. The participants were exposed to one of four entertainment clips depicting an at-risk character who either tested positive or negative for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). As predicted, reduction of perceived social distance to an at-risk character resulted in a convergence of perceived self- and character-risk. More importantly, the convergence of risk was driven by an increased perception of self-risk, as opposed to a reduction of character-risk. The observed pattern of risk convergence was much more pronounced in the negative rather than the positive STD test narratives. Furthermore, narrative engagement through identification, parasocial interaction, and perceived realism led to a greater degree of risk convergence, which was mediated by reduction in perceived social distance. The order in which the subjects estimated self- and character-risk did not influence the perceptual gap.

Narrative messages are increasingly popular in health and risk campaigns, yet gain/loss framing effects have never been tested with such messages. Three experiments examined framing in narrative messages. Experiment 1 found that only the character's decision, not framing, influenced judgments about characters in a narrative derived from a prospect theory context. Experiment 2 found that a framing effect that occurred when presented in a decision format did not occur when the same situation was presented as a narrative. Using a different story/decision context, Experiment 3 found no significant difference in preference for surgery over radiation therapy in a narrative presentation compared to a non‐narrative presentation. The results suggest that health and risk campaigns cannot assume that framing effects will be the same in narrative messages and non‐narrative messages. Potential reasons for these differences and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study examined the effects of short story reading on the improvement of grammar and global quality in EFL narrative writing. In addition, it also explored learners' attitudes toward short story reading on narrative writing performance. The 7-week study was carried out at a university in Mekong Delta, Vietnam, with 50 EFL learners at the pre-intermediate level. Participants were chosen and divided into an experimental group with the intervention of short story reading and a control group with course book reading. Two types of research instruments were used to collect quantitative data, including tests and survey questionnaires. Results showed that short story reading had positive effects on the improvement of grammar and global quality in EFL narrative writing. Moreover, the findings also showed the positive attitudes of EFL learners toward short story reading on narrative writing performance.

In recent years, many studies have been conducted on persuasive effects of narratives in a health context. A striking feature of this research area is the diversity of the narratives that are used in the various studies. Narratives that convey a health message differ widely on a large number of dimensions related to the content, form and context. We expect that these characteristics are potential explanatory factors in the effectiveness of the narratives. To provide an overview of the different characteristics of narratives in health effects research and of the persuasive effects that were found, we review 153 experimental studies on health-related narrative persuasion with a focus on the narrative stimuli. The results show that: a) with regard to the content, showing the healthy behavior in a narrative (as opposed to the unhealthy behavior with negative consequences) may be associated with effects on intention. Narratives that contain high emotional content are more often shown to have effects. b) With regard to the form, for print narratives, a first-person perspective is a promising characteristic in light of effectiveness. c) With regard to the context, an overtly persuasive presentation format does not seem to inhibit narrative persuasion. And d) other characteristics, like character similarity or the presentation medium of the narrative, do not seem to be promising characteristics for producing health effects. In addition, fruitful areas for further research can be found in the familiarity of the setting and the way a health message is embedded in the narrative. Because of the diversity of narrative characteristics and effects that were found, continued research effort is warranted on which characteristics lead to effects. The present review provides an overview of the evidence for persuasive narrative characteristics so far.

Abstract
Recent research explores the high proliferation of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccination, and their potential effects within digital media environments. By means of a 2 × 2 experimental design (N = 945) conducted in Romania, we explore whether exposure to media messages promoting conspiracy theories about vaccination versus media messages debunking such conspiracy narratives could influence people's intention to either support or argue against vaccination in front of their friends and family (interpersonal influence). We also analyze the moderation effects of education and critical thinking. Main results show that both conspiracy and counter-conspiracy media content about vaccination negatively affect people's willingness to discuss the topic with others, which offers support for a silencing effect. Education and critical thinking moderate the main effects, but only to some extent and in certain experimental conditions.

Building upon extant research on temporal framing effect (i.e., relative persuasiveness of present- vs. future-oriented messages), this study investigates whether temporal framing effect differs for narrative versus non-narrative messages in the context of promoting human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among young adults. Results of a controlled experiment ( N = 416) indicated that a present-oriented (vs. future-oriented) message led to more favorable attitudes and stronger intentions and perceived vaccine efficacy when the messages were presented in a narrative format, whereas a future-oriented (vs. present-oriented) message resulted in similar attitudes, intentions, and perceived vaccine efficacy when the messages were presented in a non-narrative format. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.