Blog Post 2: Miltenberger

In the reading this week of chapter 2 of Arnett’s Communication Ethics Literacy the area that caught my eye the most was the Narrative metaphor of the Communication Ethics Praxis. The general notion of the narrative is that of a “story agreed on by a group of people” (Arnett, 15) and that humanity has this natural narrative paradigm, wherein people are classified as “storytellers” (Arnett, 16). The narrative’s importance in a communication ethics standpoint is its ability to voice or “dwelling” to a good, promoting it (Arnett, 16). Now, in order to promote this idea of ‘good’, the narrative must be agreed on by a group of people who can interpret said narrative for guidance (Arnett, 16). Narratives work as rhetoric, as they are conceptualizations and easy ways to present these ‘goods’ that audiences are able to understand this structure (Arnett, 17). The issue is that sometimes, due to competing narratives leading to different definitions of ‘good’, the intended narrative meant to unite people on a common objective, can become distracting and dividing (Arnett, 18). Arnett suggests that by placing the idea of the ‘good’ into narratives, humanity has been able to develop and understand these guides much easier. 

As someone studying Journalism alongside Communications, the phrase narrative is something that comes up quite often when discussing the media. The context is usually that of dueling narratives between media outlets with opposite political leanings. Especially in the odd state of political polarization that seems to permeate most levels of the media, it seems like every major news story has a different narrative attached to it, depending on the source. Competing narratives in this context make it more difficult to achieve the full agreement by a large group of people for a narrative to be successful. Therefore this idea of ‘good’ becomes almost up to interpretation, depending on where your morals and values lie. The idea of postmodernity, as presented in this chapter, assumes that smaller communities create their own narratives based on shared beliefs, and create competing sets of communication ethics (Arnett, 16).

I think the main question that I have is that I have to wonder whether the competing narratives in the news are a result of increasingly polarizing viewpoints from audiences, or whether the reverse is true.