Propaganda and conspiracy theories can be disguised within other narratives, or embedded in seemingly unrelated content. Sometimes they are difficult to identify, and it is hard to understand the goal they are trying to achieve, or the techniques they are using. In these cases, narrative analysis can help break down propaganda and conspiracy theories into a more easily understood framework.
After working through large amounts of real-world content, Doublethink Lab has developed a three-step process for dealing with suspect narratives. This process helps categorize the data into distinct narrative types that make them easier to understand. So, first find a topic you want to analyze, such as content regarding vaccines or elections, and then follow these steps to more deeply understand the messages, and how they might affect you.
Categorizing and Classifying the Narrative
Step 1. Identify the Points
Identify the basic point the content is trying to make. Try to break it down as briefly as you can into a summary with a single sentence with a single point.
Step 2. Find the Objective
Determine the objective of the summary, and the conclusion that the narrative wishes to promote in the process of the discussion. After you have identified several points and their summaries and objectives, group the points with the same objective together.
Step 3. Categorizing Tactics
Once you have identified the grouped objectives, you then further distill the tactics they use. For the common narrative tactics, you can refer to the Propaganda Tactics on the previous page.
Having undertaken these three steps to identify the points, objective, and tactics, it should then be possible to determine the narrative strategy targeting a given issue, and visualize it as in the tree map. Watch the video above to learn more!
After analyzing the narrative, you should be able to identify the framework of malicious contents or campaigns. You can refer to the propaganda tactics or the conspiracy theories checklist mentioned in this website to see if the narratives are aligned with the above.