Theorizing Provocation Narratives as Communication Strategies

What is it about?

We found that journalists and many other communicators often refer to "provocation" in the stories that they build to persuade and influence their audience (to buy something, to support one side and/or oppose the other, to adopt a specific attitude, etc.) While provocation seems to play an important role in narrative construction and persuasion efforts, we found that very few academic works have been dedicated to the definition and the study of the concept of provocation and of provocation stories. Most of the research so far has been limited to specific fields (for instance, provocation in advertisements). We thus attempted to connect the existing studies in very different fields to propose a theory of provocation narratives: why do people refer to provocation when they tell a story? How do they construct these stories? We found that provocation narratives are often use strategically to shift blame to one side held responsible for the conflict or problem reported by the narrator. This is problematic because reference to "provocation" tends to replace more complex and subtle explanations and produces less accurate and fair stories. In the last part of the article we focus on journalistic uses of provocation narratives because journalists, perhaps more than any other communicators, are expected to produce accurate and fair reports. Thus our paper contributes to the examination of bias in news reports. We further developed this analysis in a paper specifically dedicated to the study of bias introduced by provocation narratives in international news.

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Why is it important?

Communicators often refer to "provocation" in the stories that they construct in order to assign responsibility and blame, st the expense of more complex explanations. It is important to be aware of the bias introduced by such narratives, in many different fields. Such awareness contributes to enhancing citizens and consumers' critical thinking and to better informing their decision-making.