Oldal 163 [163]
OCR
162 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education elements of a pitch, and the speaker sustained eye contact with the viewer. Other students created animations and one video included dialogue recorded in an elevator (Vieira Vasconcelos & Balula, 2021). Macroeconomic processes must also be taken into account when designing new products and services. Narrative economics is a new interdisciplinary sub-discipline of economics which is concerned with the narrative structures that influence the rational decisions of economic agents. Historical and economic processes are explained and framed by narratives from each era. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert J. Shiller (2019) compiled a list of basic narratives whose mutations are reiterated in narratives reflecting the spirit of the times and the economic, political, and cultural challenges of different eras. One such narrative which is popular today is the bitcoin narrative, which involves the triumph of youthful, innovative and anarchist thinking over bureaucracy and state control. The mysterious origins and value of bitcoin also imbue bitcoin with an aura of mystery. In reality, however, cryptocurrency is not valuable in itself until people en masse believe that it is. Another popular narrative of our time, since the Luddites of the 19 century, is that the spread of technology is causing unemployment. In particular, the development of robotization and artificial intelligence reinforces pessimistic visions of the labor market and, thus, existential angst. According to Shiller, knowledge of narratives are just as helpful to economic analysts as statistical analysis. Analysts can more accurately identify relationships and predict future changes by taking into account the causal structure of events as well as the values and motivations of actors. In their analysis, researchers can draw on the research and analytical conventions of fields such as history, neurolinguistics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and literary studies. Since narratives have an impact on economic processes, Shiller believes that economic analysis should also include an analysis of narrative impacts (i.e., how they have influenced decisions in the economic world). According to Shiller, the spread of narratives should also be taken into account in research, and therefore an epidemiological research approach can also be useful for economists. Shiller draws an analogy between the spread of viruses and narratives. The economic narratives on the Internet initially attract intense interest, which dies down after a while; then, the same basic story reappears but in a different narrative (e.g., narratives explaining market booms and busts). Narratives can also take the form of different representations, ranging from songs, jokes, theories, or other narrative structures. Another interesting suggestion from Shiller is that narratives that cluster around a basic concept reinforce each other, linking their narrative elements into what he calls a narrative constellation. This means that the narrative context should always be taken into account when analyzing a narrative, as such constellations have considerable effects. According to Shiller, current economic narratives should be collected annually by policy makers through focus group interviews with people from different
