Notes

• comprehensive narrative strategies exploit adversarial weaknesses and mitigate adversarial strengths on the level of influence
• these are multi-level narratives from maser to strategic to tactical
• master narratives convey a wide angled view and general framing
• the often utilize facts to show discongruities in rival narratives
• authors in previous chapters said that this doesn’t work; again, they contradict themselves
• strategic narratives outline the “strategy level” plot; what will happen, how it will happen, why it is going to happen, and what actors will play
• tactical narratives are components of that strategy to influence individuals and small groups
• authors compare narrative stratgies to football strategies, including both offense and defense, how to link these together, and an understanding on how that leads to victory
• claiming that Russia has been unopposed is clearly wrong; authors unable to link their maldaptive narratives to US failures and Russian successes
• claiming that Russian isn’t “playing defense” is similarly untrue
• authors show their manipulative perspective in trying to pevent audiences from “sorting out” on their own; but that creates the discongruities mentioned previously
• meaning is essential; both allies and adversaries need to clearly understand what we’re doing and why
• family of narratives is another name for combining master and strategic narratives into an ensemble
• US gutted strategic narrative offices at the end of the Cold War
• authors argue for centralized narrative control; apparently unable to see the dangers or past failures of that
• authors seem unaware that centralized narrative control destroyed the US under COVID
• authors unable to envision family of narratives without centralized control
• narrative strategies depend on narrative identity analysis
• narrative identity analysis is closer to sentiment analysis in marketing than traditional demographic analysis

Questions

1. master, strategic, and tactical narratives
2. a collection of strategic narratives supporting a master narrative, each of which focuses on a particular issue or domain; eg, Russia arguing over both immediate and cultural issues to support their master narrative in Ukraine