Research about media narratives and the future of the press

Abstract

Twenty years ago, the Observatoire du Récit sur les Médias et le Journalisme forged the concept of media narrative, using the model developed by Paul Ricoeur in Temps et récit, in order to apply it to the set of information narrative in contemporary media. Nowadays, when new technologies have changed the methods of producing the narrative and the practices in the newsroom, when users are also co-producers of the information that they read and criticize, we must re-discuss the very concept of narrative. This one became more fragmented, open to reinterpretations and to forms of polyphony, which call to found a hypernarratology. This is urgent, in order to not succumb to the dominant model of storytelling, in which a narratological criticism should be developed, and to understand the return of a narrative journalism in the United States and Europe, both in print and new formats, such as the magazine XXI or the web documentaries.