Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

NARRATIVES AND COMPETING MESSAGES

United States Army Special Operations Command

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

NARRATIVES AND COMPETING MESSAGES

Paul J. Tompkins Jr., USASOC Project Lead

Summer D. Agan, Editor

Amy Haufler, W. Sam Lauber, Summer D. Agan, and 

Guillermo Pinczuk, Contributing Authors

United States Army Special Operations Command

and

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

National Security Analysis Department
This publication is a work of the United States Government in accordance with Title 17, United States Code, sections 101 and 105.

Published by:

The United States Army Special Operations Command

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the 

United States government. Nonmateriel research on special warfare is 

performed in support of the requirements stated by the United States 

Army Special Operations Command, Department of the Army. This 

research is accomplished at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory by the National Security Analysis Department, a nongovernmental agency operating under the supervision of the USASOC 

Sensitive Activities Division, Department of the Army.

The analysis and the opinions expressed within this document 

are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the US Army or the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics 

Laboratory.

Comments correcting errors of fact and opinion, filling or indicating gaps of information, and suggesting other changes that may be 

appropriate should be addressed to:

United States Army Special Operations Command

G-3X, Sensitive Activities Division

2929 Desert Storm Drive

Fort Bragg, NC 28310

All ARIS products are available from USASOC at www.soc.mil

under the ARIS link.
ASSESSING REVOLUTIONARY AND 

INSURGENT STRATEGIES

The Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) series consists of a set of case studies and research conducted for the US Army Special 

Operations Command by the National Security Analysis Department of the 

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The purpose of the ARIS series is to produce a collection of academically 

rigorous yet operationally relevant research materials to develop and illustrate a common understanding of insurgency and revolution. This research, 

intended to form a bedrock body of knowledge for members of the Special 

Forces, will allow users to distill vast amounts of material from a wide array 

of campaigns and extract relevant lessons, thereby enabling the development 

of future doctrine, professional education, and training.

From its inception, ARIS has been focused on exploring historical and 

current revolutions and insurgencies for the purpose of identifying emerging trends in operational designs and patterns. ARIS encompasses research 

and studies on the general characteristics of revolutionary movements and 

insurgencies and examines unique adaptations by specific organizations or 

groups to overcome various environmental and contextual challenges.

The ARIS series follows in the tradition of research conducted by the 

Special Operations Research Office (SORO) of American University in the 

1950s and 1960s, by adding new research to that body of work and in several 

instances releasing updated editions of original SORO studies.

VOLUMES IN THE ARIS SERIES

Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, Volume I: 1927–1962 (Rev. Ed.)

Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, Volume II: 1962–2009

Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare—Colombia (1964–2009)

Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Cuba 1953–1959 (pub. 1963)

Case Study in Guerrilla War: Greece During World War II (pub. 1961)

Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Guatemala 1944–1954 (pub. 1964)

Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare—Palestine Series

Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare—Sri Lanka (1976–2009)

Unconventional Warfare Case Study: The Relationship between Iran and Lebanese Hizbollah

Unconventional Warfare Case Study: The Rhodesian Insurgency and the Role of External 

Support: 1961–1979

Human Factors Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies (2nd Ed.)

Irregular Warfare Annotated Bibliography

Legal Implications of the Status of Persons in Resistance

Narratives and Competing Messages

Special Topics in Irregular Warfare: Understanding Resistance

Threshold of Violence

Undergrounds in Insurgent, Revolutionary, and Resistance Warfare (2nd Ed.)

SORO STUDIES

Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Vietnam 1941–1954 (pub. 1964)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editor thanks Dr. Steve Corman for his insightful review of this 

publication. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the editor.
v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................... iv

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY....................................................1

The Study and Practice of Narratives................................................1

The Advantage of Narrative Studies..............................................2

Summary .........................................................................................4

WHAT ARE NARRATIVES? ................................................................5

Three Perspectives of Narratives........................................................6

Definition of Narrative .......................................................................8

Narrative Classification ......................................................................9

Master, Local, and Personal Narratives.......................................10

WHY ARE NARRATIVES IMPORTANT?......................................... 12

Homo narrans: Narratives and Individual Cognition.......................13

Narratives and Political Behavior.....................................................15

STRUCTURE AND COMPONENTS OF PERSUASIVE 

NARRATIVES ..................................................................... 18

Vertical Integration...........................................................................18

Persuasive Arguments in Narratives................................................21

Narrative Probability and Fidelity................................................22

NEUROSCIENTIFIC INSIGHTS INTO 

EFFECTIVE NARRATIVES ...............................................23

Persuasive Communication and Behavioral Outcomes..................24

Persuasive Communication..........................................................26

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words........................................26

Sacred Values.................................................................................27

Fight or Flight................................................................................29

Narratives and Information Processing.......................................30

Emotional Content........................................................................ 31

Reward Seeking............................................................................. 32

Narrative Transportation, or “Getting Lost in the Story” .......... 32

TOOLS FOR NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: 

SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY .......................................34

Social Movement Theory..................................................................34

Mythomoteurs and the Myth-Symbol Complex..............................43

VARIATION OF NARRATIVES IN RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS .48

Narratives and the Life Cycle of Resistance Movements................48
vi

LIMITS OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS ................................................52

Measuring the Effectiveness of Narratives......................................52

Obtaining Raw Data .....................................................................53

What Data Are Needed? ...............................................................53

Current Approaches .....................................................................54

Public Health Campaigns and Effective Messaging ...................56

The Gray Box ................................................................................59

CONCLUSION.....................................................................................59

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................69

INDEX ..................................................................................................77

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Narrative trajectory of the symbolic story form. ..................9

Figure 2. Pictorial representation of the communication 

process arc............................................................................26

Figure 1. Narrative trajectory of the symbolic story form, reprinted with permission 

of Dr. Steve Corman. The image appears in Jeffry R. Halverson, H. Lloyd Goodall, 

and Steven R. Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (New York: Palgrave 

McMillan, 2011), 20.
1

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

The Study and Practice of Narratives

Humans are bound by stories. Stories shape our internal sense of 

self, the cultures and societies to which we belong, and the knowledge 

that allows us to act within the world. No society in history, perhaps, 

was more bound by its stories than ancient Greece. The stories The Iliad

and The Odyssey, still taught to schoolchildren today, are the epic tales 

that defined the genre. Undoubtedly, even then these stories made for 

rousing dramas when retold by orators or adapted for the stage. Yet the 

stories served a far more profound role than entertainment.

When reading other texts from the era, it is apparent just how important these stories were. One cannot read a work by Plato, the ancient 

Greek philosopher, without encountering a barrage of references to 

verses from The Iliad. When the great thinkers from this era debated 

or discussed Greek society’s most important values, whether justice, 

courage, or piety, the starting point was inevitably how these virtues 

unfolded within the dramas of these stories. Indeed, when creating 

his imaginary “perfect” state, Plato contemplated that one of the most 

important influencers to closely monitor was the poets, or storytellers. 

The ancient Greek word for poetry, poïesis, literally meant “making,” 

alluding to how poets were the craftsmen of their respective societies.

The Iliad, in a fundamental sense, was ancient Greece. A young Greek 

man’s longing for glory and honor in battle was first roused by hearing depictions of Achilles’s superlative martial virtue in the epic poem. 

Throughout the young man’s life, the great warrior would remain the 

standard in personal courage and excellence by which he measured 

himself. If he wanted to know how to sacrifice to the gods, and which 

ones to appeal to for divine favor before an important battle, the epic 

poem again set the standard for proper piety to the divine. It was in 

essence a handbook not only on how to be a Greek but also on how to 

be a good Greek. Martial virtue was intimately connected with what it 

meant to be an ideal citizen and man. The Iliad, consciously, served as 

one of the master narratives of this society.a

In this regard, the Greeks were ahead of their time. What better 

way to teach the next generation about personal courage than recounting Achilles’s bravery in battle against the fearsome Trojans? What better way to teach them about leadership and ethics than through an 

a The concept of master narrative is discussed in greater detail in the “What Are 

Narratives?” section.
2

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

exploration of Achilles’s legendary wrath or his shame at the dishonorable treatment of his honorable enemy, Hector? The narrative of The 

Iliad, because of its dramatic setting, depicts the inner consciousness 

of its characters—their bravery, their motivations, and their internal 

struggles—more clearly than is possible in a textbook or a classroom 

setting. The narrative transports its listeners to experience the human 

condition viscerally.b

Most of us today are probably less aware of how much we rely on 

narratives to understand our world than were our ancient Greek counterparts. After all, The Iliad does not purport to be divine revelation, 

like the Christian Bible, Jewish Torah, or Muslim Koran. Nor is it a 

treatise filled with the latest scientific evidence on the biological evolution of ethics. It is a story—a work of fiction—even if it does depict 

a historical war pitting the Greeks against the Trojans.c Yet The Iliad’s 

influence was not proportional to its measure of objective truth; rather, 

its influence was in its ability to motivate, inspire, and persuade its audiences across generations.

The Advantage of Narrative Studies

Many speculate that narratives are closely intertwined with human 

cognition. In particular, some scientists believe that narratives impact 

how individuals, as well as larger groups such as entire cultures, ascribe 

meaning to the world around them. As such, narratives shape our decisions and, ultimately, our actions. The very stuff of politics.

In recent years, military organizations and planners have taken an 

interest in narratives and their role in operational planning. When 

deployed appropriately, narratives are a force multiplier in efforts to 

shape, guide, and influence future outcomes in line with national security goals. The impact of narratives stems from several factors, including biology and social organizational dynamics, but also changes in the 

security environment after the end of the Cold War.

Recent research conducted by a network of neuroscientists and psychologists appears to confirm interpretive theories of human cognition 

proposed by other scholars in the humanities. Seminal works by a variety of these scholars have long argued that people package information 

in narrative form. The narrative form helps make sense of disparate 

information and give it meaning for individuals or groups.

b The Iliad was meant to be recited by an orator or singer, not read by oneself in 

isolation.

c Archaeological evidence indicates that the city of Troy existed.
Narratives and Competing Messages

3

This work discusses narrative research to better understand how 

narratives shape political behavior. Any political landscape is full of 

competing actors, motivations, and goals. Narratives are especially 

important tools for turning these disparate parts into comprehensible 

stories.1 Political behavior ultimately results from the aggregate activities of individuals. It stands to reason, then, that a better grasp of narratives will illuminate the how and why of the political choices people 

make and the actions they take.2

Narratives are one critical component shaping the outcome of military engagements. Traditionally, militaries have focused on the impact 

of kinetic operations as the primary determinants of conflict outcome. 

Yet, as Clausewitz noted centuries earlier, war is an extension of, not a 

replacement for, politics. Studying narratives helps highlight the social 

and political dimensions of conflict that often remain overlooked when 

conflict is conceptualized in a purely force-on-force manner. Expanding analysis of conflict to include narratives makes greater inroads into 

influencing desired outcomes.

The integration of narratives into operational planning has been 

called narrative-led operations. Literal and virtual battlespaces are 

crowded with narratives projected by military forces, opponents, and 

local and domestic audiences. Most seek to influence stakeholders and 

key audiences in ways that favor their political objectives. Nissen argues 

that the recognition of the importance of narratives has not regularly 

filtered into military planning. When it does, narratives are used to 

support existing operational and tactical realities rather than in the 

strategic planning stage when they can inform operations.3

Because humans are the executors of political conflict, regardless 

of the form it takes, narratives loom large. Technological developments, 

especially social media, mean that the use of force is under near-realtime public scrutiny. In light of these developments, there is great need 

for a dynamic and compelling legitimation of a state’s military action.4

Changes within the post-Cold-War international system have 

impacted political conflict in profound ways.5 Direct conflict between 

states’ conventional forces has decreased. Clashes between large conventional forces have been replaced with smaller-scale asymmetric clashes. 

Most conflicts fall under the heading of civil war. But, nearly half of civil 

wars involve external state support, usually a neighboring rival, betraying the transnational dimensions of seemingly internal conflicts.6

Not only has the way in which conflicts are fought changed but also 

the way in which they end. Most are now concluded by a negotiated 

settlement that includes provisions for the rebel force to participate in 

the legitimate political process of the sovereign state. Negotiations are 

initiated by mediators from the international community or by parties 
4

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

in the conflict. As a result, more resistance movements are taking part 

in legitimate governance than have done so in the past.

In these operating environments, persuasive tools take on greater 

importance for all parties. Insurgents need to persuade the international community of their legitimacy as political contenders. Domestically, they also need to prove their legitimacy and capacity to govern. 

Resistance movements might also seek external supporters, whether 

from states or from other non-state groups with similar sympathies. 

Above all, resistance movements need to persuade their audiences of 

the necessity and effectiveness of taking collective action to address the 

challenges and grievances around which the group has mobilized.

For each of the groups in this short list of examples, narratives play 

a crucial role in influencing outcomes. Conflict is inevitably bound 

with culture. Persuading local populations is a central part of the struggle. Narratives have their own form of rationality that relies more on 

cultural resources than on logical deductions derived from traditional 

means of understanding in the Western world.7 Narratives derive validity, and thus their persuasive capacities, from their internal logic as well 

as how closely they match the perspective of the intended audience.8

Moreover, narratives can use available cultural resources to present 

local and global events in a manner useful to achieving strategic goals.9

Summary

This study builds a basic foundation of knowledge in narratives. 

This foundation includes examination of how scholars and practitioners use the concept, a working definition of the term narrative, and 

discussion of why narratives are important to understanding political 

and social behavior. The structures and components of narratives that 

make them especially persuasive or successful are discussed, drawing 

on research from communications, neuroscience, psychology, political 

science, and other relevant fields.

Despite the volume of narrative research, the field still has limitations that are important for the practitioner to understand. Limitations 

are especially apparent in developing measures of effectiveness for narratives. Each section, where possible, includes pertinent examples to 

explain concepts. The examples are drawn from familiar cultures, nonviolent social movements, and violent resistance movements alike.

Narratives permeate human experience, whether in the social or 

political realm or at the individual or group level. Doing justice, in 

detail, to all of the functions of narratives in political behavior is beyond 

the scope of this work. However, in this study we pay special attention to 

the role narratives play in one of the fundamental problems of political 
Narratives and Competing Messages

5

behavior—how to mobilize people to participate in organized political 

action. The environmental conditions that can lead to individual grievances—whether lack of political opportunity, poverty, or human rights 

violations—are prevalent in many places in the world. The exception 

lies not in the presence of these conditions but in the rarity of organized political resistance to them. Where appropriate throughout this 

work, we focus on the role that narratives can play in overcoming the 

many difficulties resistance movements face in mobilizing others to 

join and support their goals.

WHAT ARE NARRATIVES?

In the past decade, policy makers, academic researchers, military 

practitioners, and media commentators have increased discussion of 

the use of narratives within resistance movements, insurgent groups, 

and counterinsurgent operations. The concept itself migrated from 

other disciplines, particularly from research in literary and postmodern 

theory within the past century. Once the province of postmodern theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, the concept of narrative has become relatively commonplace in the analysis of political 

violence. The migration of the narrative concept to research on terrorism, insurgencies, and other forms of resistance is likely due to the 

importance of influence in the counterinsurgency model outlined in 

FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency. This model considers the local population 

to be the center of gravity because of the importance of its support for 

a government or rebel victory. Winning the “hearts and minds” of the 

population and their subsequent support is critical to gaining ground 

against the enemy, whether for a rebel group or an incumbent government. Effective use of the art of persuasion, then, is paramount.

The theoretical background of narrative research rests on ideas 

about how individuals experience the world around them and then communicate that information to others. Millennia ago, scholars thought 

that when we perceived things in the outside world with our senses, we 

directly experienced the inherent or essential qualities of things. Language was the means to communicate and comprehend essential qualities. Centuries later, the notion of essential qualities was discarded by 

many, particularly as it related to people and language. There was no 

longer any human nature containing core properties that all persons 

commonly shared. Instead, each individual was a unique manifestation and no longer considered part of a larger whole. Language did 

not communicate objective “things” that really existed somewhere “out 

there” but only individual interpretations of that reality, which varied 

from person to person.
6

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

From this perspective, social science research, which deals in generalities, does not have much to say about individuals. The pursuit of a 

single truth fragmented into a search for many truths and individual 

meaning. The fictional novel, as a unique, deep account of an individual’s human experience, was regarded as the most appropriate material 

on which to conduct this research. Narrative research draws on the 

many ideas and concepts in this discipline, known as literary theory or 

literary criticism.d

Despite the great interest in narratives, or perhaps because of it, the 

term narrative is used ambiguously. It is used to describe many different 

functions in relation to human nature, cultures, and organized groups. 

One purpose of this study is to clarify the narrative concept while providing common ground on which to debate this important topic. In 

this section, three perspectives of narratives are introduced. The first 

is at the individual or cognitive level. The next perspective looks at narratives in social/cultural group settings. The last perspective analyzes 

how groups strategically leverage cultural narrative material to accomplish their goals.

Three Perspectives of Narrativese

The first perspective looks at how narratives operate at the individual cognitive level. Theorists and other researchers have long argued 

the importance of narratives, contending that humans organize information in this structure. Jerome Bruner, a psychological theorist, calls 

this the “narrative construal of reality.”10 Recently, neuroscientists, psychologists, and other scientists interested in cognitive research have 

tested this theory through controlled experiments, some of which are 

described in subsequent sections. The data emerging from this young 

research program support the idea that individuals store information 

in narrative form. Although promising, this research does have some 

limitations, especially in terms of operational relevance, that will be 

introduced in the “Limits of Narrative Analysis” section.

On an individual level, humans use narratives to perform important cognitive functions with social implications. Evolutionary biologists and psychologists look at narratives as a linguistic device that is an 

important aid for communication and social interaction. Despite the 

emphasis on narratives as evolutionary developments to help humans 

d There are many branches of literary theory or literary criticism with varied positions on these subjects. The intent is not to cover each of these but rather to provide the 

reader with a generalized sense of how narrative research first developed in the contemporary era.

e Many thanks to Dr. Steve Corman for assisting in the development of this section.
Narratives and Competing Messages

7

function in society, however, narratives first develop at the individual 

level. Research has shown that humans are predisposed to hearing, 

understanding, and composing narratives from nearly the beginning 

of life.11 Narrative communication in children is thought to evolve in 

tandem with a child’s first memories.12

Kerstin Dautenhahn explains the relationship between narratives 

and social interaction in the Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis (NIH). 

In the NIH theory, individuals developed the narrative format to cope 

with social interactions that became progressively more complex as 

humans evolved.13 Narrative communication provided an evolutionary 

advantage to early man because it is the most effective way of communicating with others but also about others. Thus, narratives offered 

humans an efficient way to discuss third-party relationships.

In short, our narrative interpretations are an intermediary between 

us and the world. Oftentimes, it is difficult to really “know” something 

or make claims to “truth” in some matters. In our everyday social interactions, for instance, without an objective reality against which to test 

our interpretations, construing our reality through narratives helps us 

“successfully get from what somebody said to what he meant, from what 

seems to be the case to what ‘really’ is.”14 Narratives fill in the gaps of 

information about human motivations and meaning.

The term narrative is also frequently used to describe the reservoir 

of cultural material that forms over generations in every society. There 

is a near endless variety and volume of narratives in any society. Most 

forms of artistic expression—whether theater, literature, or dance—

involve narrative. At an individual level, narratives are the stories that, 

strung together, form the autobiographies of our lives. At a group level, 

such as in a culture or society, histories, myths, literature, and other 

stories help explain and solidify group identity. They help bring to life 

the norms, values, and beliefs that separate the group from others. 

The ability of narratives to help form group identity and cohesion is an 

important part of mobilizing a target audience to participate in social 

or political activities, such as in a resistance movement.

Lastly, and most important in terms of operational relevance, the 

term narrative is also used to analyze the rhetorical strategies that 

resistance movements use to help advance their goals. When researchers refer to the “narrative” of a resistance or social movement, they 

reference this perspective. The process through which narratives are 

extracted from the larger pool of cultural material and grafted onto 

contemporary events is called vertical integration, discussed in the 

“Structure and Components of Persuasive Narratives” section. It is 

important to note that the cultural narrative material that resistance 

movements draw on was not constructed with any specific strategic 
8

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

purpose in mind.f Instead, the material developed over succeeding 

generations through a slow process of accretion.

Definition of Narrative

In this section, the definition of narrative that informs this work is 

discussed. Most often, narratives are simply equated with stories. Definitions of narrative tend to set the same parameters as those set out for 

stories. Problems begin to appear, however, when debating the basic 

components that make a story a story. Some argue that there is no set 

of conditions that needs to be met before identifying a text as a “story.”

Although it may be difficult to nail down an uncontroversial definition, there are some family resemblances across stories. At the most 

basic, stories are recitations of real or imagined events that contain 

a beginning, a middle, and an end. In turn, events contain actors, 

periods of time, and other entities or concepts related to one another 

through an action or series of actions.15 The plot driving the story contains an agent, or someone striving toward some goal. Many stories also 

contain an antagonist, or a villain or obstacle blocking the agent’s goal. 

These basic elements are present in most story forms, whether oral or 

written, contemporary or traditional.16 Thus, the term story refers to a 

wide variety of resources, such as news stories, family stories, online 

and postings.17

A minimal definition of narrative as a story, however, sets the bar 

too low. Using the parameters described above, a text or speech containing only three sentences could qualify as a narrative. The subject 

matter, arguably, probably is not especially riveting or persuasive if the 

narrative simply recounts our morning commute.

Halverson, Goodall, and Corman provide a more useful definition 

of narrative that views it not just as a story but as a collection of stories, 

or a “coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories 

that serve a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations of its literary and rhetorical form.”18 The collection of stories in the narrative system are related to one another in 

coherent ways. The coherence of the system means that the individual 

stories elaborate and combine with other stories so that the sum of the 

narrative system is greater than its parts.19 When thinking about narratives, especially about their strategic use by resistance movements, it 

helps to distinguish this more complex variety from a simple story that 

f Resistance movements incorporate this material into their own narrative in a process called vertical integration, discussed in the “Structure and Components of Persuasive 

Narratives” section.
Narratives and Competing Messages

9

has only some elementary pattern of association. As a concept, narrative loses its analytic power if it is used to describe nearly every utterance or scribble.

Influential narratives embody some tension or struggle that needs 

to be resolved. These compelling “narrative realities,” as Bruner calls 

them, have some universal qualities despite the particular contexts 

in which they come to life. One of these qualities, Bruner argues, is 

the centrality of trouble. As he says, “stories worth telling and worth 

construing are typically born in trouble.”20 The symbolic story form, 

depicted in Figure  1, explains how narratives using conflict as their 

central feature invite participatory action.

Conict Satisfaction

Participants

Actions

Events

Desire

Narrative trajectory

Figure 1. Narrative trajectory of the symbolic story form.

Unresolved tension or conflict in the narrative fosters a desire for 

action that can only be sated when the conflict itself is resolved.21 The 

classic example is Adolf Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). 

Hitler’s story created an unresolved desire for a German utopia. The 

story invited its readers to take to action to satiate the desire, namely 

the elimination of the Jews. The unfulfilled desire coupled with a suggested solution formed a powerful call to action among Hitler’s German supporters.

Narrative Classification

The discussion above demonstrates that there are different types 

and qualities of narratives. Some types or classes of narratives have 

greater potential persuasive power. Mark  Finlayson and Steven  Corman devised a distinction between different levels of narratives, further 

distinguishing the type of narratives of interest to the Special Operations Forces practitioner. Recounts of leaving the house, picking up 

milk at the store, or other everyday activities are classified as level I 

narratives, “a report of sequences of actions that are locally coherent 
10

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

and connected, with clear chains of cause and effect concerning a set of 

agents and their goals and their motivations.” On the other hand, more 

engaging narratives, or those with persuasive potential, are classified as 

level II narratives. Although they have some structural characteristics 

of the basic level I narratives, level II narratives have added elements 

of conflict, drama, emotional intensity, cultural tropes, or archetypal 

characters.22 It is the addition of these latter factors that helps distinguish between powerful stories crafted by resistance movements and 

those used to catch up our friends or family on our daily lives.

Researchers also group narratives by subject matter. Georges Polti 

categorized thirty-six dramatic situations that commonly occur in most 

stories.g One he identified, “Self-Sacrificing for an Idea,” is a dramatization in which the hero of the story sacrifices himself or herself for 

a higher ideal, whether honor or piety.23 Similarly, Joseph  Campbell 

found a consistent pattern among many myths, a narrative he called 

“The Hero’s Journey.” In it, a hero embarks on a quest in which he must 

survive difficult challenges for which he will be greatly rewarded in the 

end.24 Mark Juergensmeyer outlined a narrative, “Cosmic War,” that is 

common in extremist rhetoric across the political spectrum. In this 

narrative, extremists believe they are acting as agents in a great metaphysical battle between good and evil. The victory of the faithful, which 

might happen only in the distant future but is a preordained fact, will 

result in the realization of God’s plan for humanity.25

Narratives can also be categorized according to function in more 

discrete groups such as resistance movements. William Casebeer and 

James Russell identified two broad types of foundational narratives for 

insurgent groups: transactional and transcendental narratives. In the 

former type, the group emphasizes the benefits its members will accrue 

by working together, such as greater wealth, notoriety, or reformation of 

a state. The motivations in the transactional narrative are instrumental, 

or designed to satisfy individual interests. The other broad type of foundational narrative, transcendental, emphasizes “otherworldly goals” 

with no expectation of fulfillment in this lifetime. Insurgent groups, 

such as al-Qaeda, sometimes use these types two simultaneously.26

Master, Local, and Personal Narratives

In broader groups such as cultures, narratives can also be categorized according to the impact they have on the norms, values, and 

beliefs of a people. Some theorists identify a metanarrative or a master narrative. Its role is to generate lesser narratives in society—the 

story behind the story. It is a series of stories that is deeply embedded 

g Many thanks to Dr. Steve Corman for bringing this source to our attention.
Narratives and Competing Messages

11

in a culture through continual reproduction, and usually reinterpretation, over generations. However, master narratives are not crafted by 

individuals for some strategic purpose. Rather, master narratives gain 

ground through continual repetition and the reverence that society as 

a whole has for the beliefs and values the narratives embody.27 Master narratives help to form culture, those collective characteristics and 

qualities a group shares that distinguish it from other groups—that 

special something, for instance, that makes the French different from 

the Germans.

In the United States, there are a number of master narratives that 

help shape American identity and frequently appear in politics and 

public debate. Among the most familiar is the narrative that Robert Reich calls “The Triumphant Individual.” In this narrative, the little 

guy, or underdog, achieves success by working hard, taking risks, and 

believing in himself. He is rewarded with prosperity, fame, and honor. 

He is the prototypical self-made man who overcame tremendous odds 

and the doubt of others. Historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin 

and Abraham Lincoln epitomize the triumphant individual. In popular culture, the novelist Horatio Alger Jr. lionized this type of figure 

in his rags-to-riches stories featuring immigrant peddlers who became 

famous millionaires.28 These master narratives, and others like it, are 

frequently wielded by the media and policy makers to support their 

positions or goals. Most recently, the Tea Party used the common trope 

of the self-made man to justify positions against social entitlements perceived as handouts to the undeserving.

Cultures and societies, despite having master narratives, are not singular or monolithic. Despite having access to the same cultural material (i.e., the same religious texts, stories, etc.), individuals can develop 

different interpretations of what it means to be a good member of their 

society. The boundaries of what it means to be an American are continually contested in the United States. Even with commonly accepted 

parameters of identity, sometimes well-established values within a single 

cultural system are in competition with one another. Take, for example, 

two commonly held values in American culture: respect for the rule of 

law and ensuring equal access to opportunities for the underprivileged. 

In current debates over immigration reform, these two deeply held 

values are in opposition. While some Americans champion ensuring 

opportunities for immigrants residing in the country illegally despite 

their illegal status, others argue for the necessity of upholding the rule 

of law and barring illegal immigrants’ transition to citizenship. Similarly, throughout the Islamic world, Muslims debate the actions and 

beliefs of “good” Muslims. Islamic extremists, who insist good Muslims 

are those engaged in violent jihad against non-Muslims, compete with 
12

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

more moderate interpretations of what it means to be a good member 

of the umma.

h

In addition to the influential, widely shared master narratives, narratives are also present at the personal and local levels. Personal and 

local narratives differ from master narratives in terms of scope, influence, and temporal proximity to the communities and individuals that 

harbor them. Personal narratives are apparent at the lowest level of 

abstraction, the individual. The personal narrative system is the collection of stories an individual tells about him- or herself that forms the 

autobiography of his or her life. The stories might include tales of the 

first time the person fell in love, why he or she chose a certain career, 

or why he or she moved to a new house or city. As much as they recount 

the past, autobiographies also detail our hopes for the future.

The selection of the stories is as important as the content. We 

choose the string of events, happenings, and relationships that help us 

define who we are, and we communicate it to others. Local narratives 

include stories about events close to individuals and their communities 

that help flesh out the picture of the world as they know it now. For 

instance, local narratives might include stories about elections, assassinations, or natural disasters. Like master narratives, these local narratives help people make sense of the world from a localized or individual 

perspective.29

The tension between the sameness of the cultural materials and 

the variability of interpretation is critical. It means that individuals and 

groups have the ability to alter or reenvision a society’s norms and values. Not all such attempts, however, are successful. In subsequent sections, we discuss analytic tools, frameworks, and research from multiple 

disciplines and perspectives to gain a fuller understanding of when and 

why some narratives, and some political entrepreneurs, are more successful than others in changing the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of 

targeted groups.

WHY ARE NARRATIVES IMPORTANT?

Why are narratives important? Researchers from a variety of fields, 

including neuroscience, political science, and psychology, study the 

role of narratives in human cognition. Politics and political behavior 

are ultimately derived from the perceptions, decisions, and actions of 

individuals. Thus, narratives are crucial to understanding the behavior of groups such as resistance movements. Basic knowledge about 

h Umma is an Arabic term used to describe the global community of Muslims united 

by their religious ties and beliefs.
Narratives and Competing Messages

13

academic fields concerned with group behavior is helpful in understanding the impact of narratives on political behavior. Social movement theory, a branch of political science and sociology that studies 

organized political movements, provides a number of tools that are useful for analyzing narratives. This section discusses the general theories 

of narratives as they relate to individual cognition and group behavior 

and introduces the current empirical research and analytic tools supporting these theories.

Homo narrans: Narratives and Individual Cognition

The common Latin term describing contemporary humans is 

Homo sapiens, or man the wise. It privileges the human’s rational, or 

reasoning, capacity as the primary characteristic distinguishing modern humans from their hominid predecessors. Long before Descartes 

wrote his famous aphorism, “I think, therefore I am,” great thinkers 

used this rational capacity to draw a line between the animal kingdom 

and humanity.

The terms rational and reasoning are usually associated with the scientific method. Through this method, knowledge arises from the iterative process of observing the empirical world and experimenting to 

check hypotheses. Any two people, using the same materials and methods, should be able to draw the same conclusion. This process of logic 

deduction, which creates knowledge on which we can then act, is the 

“logico-scientific” mode of thought.

In contrast to Homo sapiens, Walter Fisher argued that humans are 

best described as Homo narrans, or man the storyteller.30 As discussed in 

the preceding section, narratives are thought to be a critical medium 

of human cognition. Narratives help individuals make sense of their 

everyday lives by developing a foundation of social knowledge. Without 

them, language is just a sequence of sounds:

Our ability to make language meaningful is the work 

of storytelling, an ability that allows us to recognize 

and make meaningful patterns of words, phrases, 

and inflections; to make and recognize common 

story forms and archetypes; and to be responsive to 

those patterns when they are communicated to us 

in fragments.31

In this regard, narratives are critical in helping individuals fill in missing information. Each narrative contains two complementary landscapes. The landscape of action recounts the sequence of events, while 

the landscape of consciousness attributes motivation and intention to 
14

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

actors in the text. Narratives are especially important in helping us 

decipher the latter. In the “Structure and Components of Persuasive 

Narratives” section, we discuss the different structures and components 

of a narrative that facilitate this process.

The two different modes of understanding, the logico-scientific 

mode described previously and the narrative mode, appear to be at 

odds. This separation between the logical and mythological goes back 

millennia, with the birth of the first philosophical treatises of recorded 

history. In them, logos, or rational discourse, was privileged above the 

mere poetic or rhetorical in its ability to accurately comment on knowledge, truth, and reality.32 Both modes of understanding come from 

different ways of knowing what we know.i Whereas the logico-scientific 

mode of thought seeks to legitimize truth by the weight of empirical 

evidence, the narrative mode of thought is truthful in its believability 

or lifelikeness. It just fits with the perspectives or narratives we use to 

make sense of our world.

Consider the following perspectives on the movement of the sun. 

Many people at one time understood the movements of planetary bodies, the sun, and other stars through myths and stories. In the myths 

of ancient Greece, the rising and falling of the sun was attributed to 

the god Apollo, who rode his fiery chariot in a circuit across the sky 

each day. When the Enlightenment occurred in Western Europe, science displaced most mythical explanations. The sun is now as a star, 

fueled by colliding hydrogen and helium atoms, in strictly scientific 

terms confirmed through rigorous scientific experimentation.

The two perspectives in this example serve different purposes. The 

rationalist perspective seeks generalizable truths, or causal explanations, to predict observable phenomena. The narrative perspective, by 

contrast, seeks meaningful explanations. Understanding the sun from 

a rationalist perspective helps to generate knowledge about planetary 

bodies and enable categorizations and predictions about the natural 

world.33 However, for the ancient Greeks, viewing the sun through the 

narrative perspective provided a meaningful explanation highlighting 

the power and majesty of the divine Apollo. It formed part of a larger 

mythic narrative that explained the relationship between the divine 

and human worlds and also described appropriate conduct and possible punishments against breaches of behavior.

i Some political philosophers categorize the difference between these two modes of 

thought as “reason versus revelation.” The competing perspectives have different starting 

points of truth. In reason, the starting point of truth rests on scientific or empirical evidence. By contrast, within revelation the starting point of truth can be divine or ancestral 

law but also, more broadly, tradition or simply “the way we do things around here.”
Narratives and Competing Messages

15

If we approach this narrative about the sun from a logico-scientific 

perspective, it is indeed factually incorrect. The sun is not carried across 

the sky by a divine being. However, the function of the Apollonian myth 

was not to identify facts about the natural world. Instead, it helped its 

listeners to understand the proper ordering of the world according the 

tenets of their religious faith.

The persuasive power of a narrative does not derive from rationalist perspectives of truth, or fidelity referents in the objective world. 

Western culture tends to overemphasize and overvalue rationalist perspectives. Some philosophers of science, such as Thomas  Kuhn and 

Paul Feyerabend, have challenged the role of the scientific method in 

critical advances in scientific knowledge.34 A clearer understanding of 

the function of narrative helps to explain why some resistance movements act in seemingly irrational ways. Insurgents might reject a negotiated settlement to end a conflict, despite the many advantages it offers, 

because accepting the settlement would mean discarding the projected 

future in the group’s narrative.

The tension between these two modes is still present in American 

public discourse. Debates over instruction on intelligent design and 

evolution, for instance, pit Christian narratives derived from the biblical texts against scientific theories of evolution. Proponents of both 

sides seek to answer the fundamental question of where humans are 

from and where they are heading. Fervent believers of intelligent design 

and creationism marshal the book of Genesis and faith to support their 

arguments. On the other hand, as clear evidence of their assertions, 

equally fervent believers of evolution can point to an exhibit in the 

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History presenting a tour de 

force of fossil evidence spanning millions of years. Yet debates between 

those holding these clashing perspectives are unlikely to result in any 

changed attitudes or beliefs because each side operates from different 

method of knowing.

Narratives and Political Behavior

Debates such as the one over intelligent design and evolution point 

to the importance of narratives in political life. Narratives affect our 

perception of reality and in turn affect our responses and actions. 

In this regard, narratives “play a critical role in the construction of 

political behavior.”35 The use of narratives spans from the individual 

to organized groups, such as resistance movements, to entire nations 

and cultures.

Narratives are crucial to the formation of individual and group 

identities. They help societies answer fundamental questions such as 
16

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

where they come from or whether they hold special status in the world. 

In an important sense, cultures are collections of stories transmitted 

from generation to generation. The stories give continuity to societies and cultures. Without the collection of stories, for instance, Islamic 

society would not have a systematic understanding of itself. And without these connections at an individual level, it would be difficult for 

Muslims to see themselves as part of the umma and to have a sense of 

purpose within it.36 The same can also be said for the Christian and 

Jewish communities.

Individuals exhibit a fundamental need to “locate oneself in a 

story” in order to more fully comprehend where the world is headed 

and how they fit into that larger schema. This is readily apparent in the 

role-playing games children play in which they pretend to be adults by 

acting as if they are finding jobs or leaving their parents’ homes. Children’s play is a dress rehearsal for adult responsibility. Even as adults, 

we continue to imagine our ideal futures in terms of career, family, 

retirement, and other major transitions.

The narratives we construct for ourselves are in turn informed by 

the narratives dominating mainstream culture. In the case of groups 

that are excluded, these individuals might develop alternative narratives, and the subcultures that form around these narratives often help 

members of the excluded groups find their places in the world. Creating and transmitting these alternative narratives in the mainstream 

media is often an imperative for members of marginalized groups.37

Narratives provide individuals and groups with a sense of purpose 

and place. However, when the common understanding that a narrative 

generates is contested by another individual or group in society, the 

narrative becomes a source of conflict for the contenders, just as in our 

example of the debate between proponents of evolution and those of 

intelligent design. As a society rethinks its position on critical issues, 

contenders may launch challenges to the stock narratives accepted by 

mainstream society. Narratives play a key role in formulating and maintaining a national identity. Stories about group origins and development permeate national narratives. Many such narratives are passed 

through the formal education system, playing an influential role in the 

development and sustainment of national identity. The importance of 

such narratives means they often become a topic of political debate.38

The study of narratives is important for the Special Operations 

Forces practitioner because it offers one way for insurgent leaders to 

potentially overcome the problem of organizing collective action, a 

challenge well known to economists, political scientists, and others. In 

the 1960s, Mancur Olson39 noted that rational, self-interested individuals will not act in support of a collective good or common interest when 
Narratives and Competing Messages

17

it is easier to sit back, let others do the work, then enjoy the fruits of 

their labor.

It may be useful to consider several examples of the collective 

action problem. Consider, for instance, a collection of factories that 

emit pollution into the environment. The factory owners and workers, 

and indeed society in general, benefit from lower levels of air pollution. Yet in the absence of government regulations, each factory owner 

may refrain from assuming the costs of installing technology that 

captures air pollutants before they are emitted into the environment. 

One factory owner may reason that the other factory owners will adopt 

a strategy of free riding, leaving the original factory owner at a disadvantage because he or she has incurred the cost of the expensive 

technologies while others have not. Collective action problems are also 

present among nations that have banded together to provide for common defense. For instance, within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), US leaders have often complained about the free riding 

behavior of European nations. Government officials speculate that 

European governments spend less on defense knowing that the United 

States will protect them.

The collective action problem is a useful tool because it helps to 

explain the mobilization challenges faced by insurgent movements. 

One can regard the desired outcome of an insurgency, such as a 

revolutionary socialist government, a territory under sharia law, or a 

liberal democracy allied with the West, as a public good requiring selfsacrifice. But resistance is an inherently risky business that offers little 

probability of success.40 This is especially true in the initial stages of a 

rebellion when insurgent groups are small and less powerful than the 

governments they challenge. Oftentimes, the risks mean that only diehard activists, a small segment of the population, are willing to risk 

their lives. As a result, most opposition groups die young.

Groups use a variety of means to overcome this initial mobilization 

hurdle. One strategy is attacks against highly symbolic signs of state 

power. The attacks generate violent images that, whether correct or not, 

portray the insurgents’ growing strength.41 When the acts are repeatedly carried out, people can be forced to choose between supporting a 

crumbling status quo or an opposition growing in strength. Many are 

driven to choose the latter option. Most people have a desire to support 

the winning side and be privy to the spoils of victory. Mobilizing can 

also lessen the chances of being on the receiving end of score-settling 

violence after the conflict has concluded.

Later sections discuss the means through which insurgent groups 

use narratives to change perceptions of a conflict. The distortion can 

compel individuals to sacrifice for the public good. This is accomplished 
18

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

primarily by transforming individual engagement or action into one of 

personal meaning.

STRUCTURE AND COMPONENTS OF 

PERSUASIVE NARRATIVES

Vertical Integration

Resistance movements and other groups use narratives strategically to persuade their audiences to support their goals. In the case of 

Islamic extremist groups, these goals include resisting foreign invaders, rebuking or discrediting apostate leaders of Muslim countries, and 

arresting the decline of Islamic civilization by reinstating a caliphate 

and establishing sharia law.42 Researchers, Special Operations Forces 

practitioners, and others have long discussed the utility of cultivating 

narratives that resonate with the local culture. In social movement theory, which will be discussed later in this section, resonance is described 

through framing analysis. Other approaches, such as the process of 

vertical integration, help to unpack the process to more closely reveal 

the connections between a resistance movement’s strategic narrative 

and the master, local, and personal narratives on the ground.

The vertical integration process is helpful in analyzing how political 

entrepreneurs craft narratives that appeal to targeted populations. In 

discussing this process, we will also touch on several structural components of narratives, such as story forms and archetypes that help 

narratives do the work of persuading. Halverson, Goodall, and Corman conducted an extensive analysis of vertical integration by studying the narratives used by Islamic extremists, which will serve as our 

primary example.

Vertical integration describes a process where political entrepreneurs knit master narratives with personal and local narratives to form 

a strategic narrative. Typically, the narrative links together a host of 

master narratives that have similar story forms and archetypal characters, terms that will be described in greater detail in the following 

paragraphs. The process of vertical integration helps individuals make 

sense of their personal narratives through a lens that better serves the 

goals of the resistance movement, be it the goals of Islamic extremists 

or more benign goals associated with human rights groups. In addition, 

the interpretative lens positions the resistance movement to address 

the crises or problems identified in the narrative.
Narratives and Competing Messages

19

The narrative systems that resistance groups adopt are similar to an 

ideology, although the latter term does not fully capture the strategic 

use of narratives. Looking more closely at ideologies can help better 

articulate the components that are typically part of a narrative system. 

Francisco  Sanín and Elisabeth  Wood, scholars of political conflict, 

define ideology as “a more or less systematic set of ideas that includes 

the identification of a referent group (a class, ethnic, or other social 

group); an enunciation of the grievance or challenges the group confronts; the identification of objectives on behalf of the group (political change—or defense against its threat); and a (perhaps vaguely 

defined) program of action.”43 Following this definition of ideology, 

the core components of a narrative system would include in-group 

and out-group distinctions, an outline of the problem or crisis, and a 

prescription of action for overcoming the challenges identified by the 

resistance movement.

The story form is a critical structural component of master narratives that helps resistance movements craft their strategic communications. Another term commonly used to describe this concept is genre. 

A story form or genre is a standard pattern on which stories may be 

based. The pattern includes stock characters, a set of actions, and a 

sequence of events in a story.44 Story forms or genres are commonly 

articulated and understood in a culture. It would not be a stretch to 

conclude that all cultures and languages include some common story 

forms and genres:

Even the most sophisticated cultures cannot resist the 

siren call of the genres they construct: “reality” by fiat 

or even by statue is made to imitate our literary genres. 

We people our world with characters out of narrative 

genres, make sense of events by assimilating them to 

the shape of comedy, tragedy, irony, romance.45

American culture abounds with story forms, some as simple as the badboy-meets-good-girl plot. Figuring out the plot and the actions of the 

stock characters in dramas or romantic comedies based on this story 

form is a simple matter for most viewers. The story form creates expectations about what is likely to happen as the plot unfolds.

Narrative systems that resistance groups use to justify their actions 

and mobilize supporters make use of archetypal characters.j As the 

term suggests, archetypal characters are the standard characters someone from the culture might expect to find in a story. Archetypal characters encompass the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Oftentimes, 

the stock characters are used as a shorthand, or symbol, for motives 

j Dr. Steve Corman clarified this point in a personal communication.
20

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

typically associated with the characters. Common archetypical characters include the trickster and the femme fatale who operate as deceivers 

in many stories.

Each master narrative has an accompanying story form and archetypal characters. In their analysis of Islamic extremism, Halverson, 

Goodall, and Corman identified thirteen master narratives.k Only 

some of these master narratives are discussed here. Woven together 

in various combinations, these master narratives provide the basis for 

the rhetorical vision outlined by Islamic insurgents.l In the Pharaoh 

master narrative, the story form is the conflict with God. This story 

form recounts God’s punishment of the Egyptian Pharaoh who failed 

to obey God’s edicts. The archetypal character of the Pharaoh represents the tyrant who is out to subjugate or enslave a godly people. When 

a resistance movement describes a contemporary leader as a pharaoh, 

it is consciously recasting the leader into this role, encouraging its audience to view the leader as a godless tyrant deserving of God’s punishment to be meted out by the group and its followers.

The master narratives help define the key grievances and challenges identified by the insurgent group. In the Hypocrites narrative, 

the world is beset by tricksters looking for opportunities to undermine 

Islam. The Crusader and Tatar narratives are frequently used to interpret the contemporary world in this light. In each, a champion, by 

dint of godly virtue and faith, overcomes foreign invasion forces that 

have desecrated and destroyed Muslim lands and restores the Islamic 

social order. In these master narratives, the archetypal characters of 

the crusader and the champion play an important role. Thus, these 

master narratives suggest not only the grievances or challenges but also 

a potential program of action. Several other master narratives, such 

as Hypocrites and 1924, use the ruse story form that accentuates the 

forces of deception aligned against the true believers of Islam. Only 

through concerted vigilance, and the assistance of God, can such forces 

be overcome.

Other master narratives and story forms highlight the positive 

role of self-sacrifice in overcoming the challenges facing Islam. The 

story form of self-sacrifice is especially prominent in the master narratives of the Seventy-two Virgins and the Battle of Karbala. Heroic 

actions, although they may result in death, help overcome the enemies 

of Islam. Rewards for such service manifest in the afterlife but also in 

k For a full list of these master narratives, please see Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Table 14.46

l See Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, “Chapter 14: Master Narratives and Strategic 

Communication,” for an extended analysis of the process of vertical integration in Islamic 

extremism, treated only briefly in this section.47
Narratives and Competing Messages

21

the remembrance and honor the larger Islamic community gives to 

the martyr. A closely linked story form is Deliverance, which highlights 

the rescue of unfortunate victims by a righteous hero, usually Mohammed, such as when the prophet rescued Arabs from the state of pagan 

ignorance, or jahiliyyah, by sharing with them the true revelations of 

God.m The master narratives of Islamic extremism abound with the 

archetypal characters of the prophet and the martyr.

Together, these master narratives, through their story forms and 

archetypal characters, provide the rationale for the program of action 

outlined by Islamic extremism—jihad. They offer powerful incentives 

for struggle, even against overwhelming odds, both by promising eternal rewards in the afterlife and by emphasizing the inscrutability of 

God’s will. No man can know the will of God, who might choose to 

deliver victory to the righteous at any time. Thus, victory is possible, 

even against overwhelming odds. According to this powerful rhetorical 

vision, participation in jihad is a classic win–win situation. Mujahideen 

are either the agents of God who bring about his victory in the here 

and now or the recipients of great rewards in the afterlife in the case 

of death.

To reach their goals, resistance movements use vertical integration 

to recast personal and local narratives in light of a culture’s master 

narratives. The skillful combination of master narratives with similar 

story forms and archetypal characters that logically and emotionally fit 

the recipients provides the audience with resources to make sense of 

themselves and their world and to determine how to properly act under 

these circumstances. Political entrepreneurs are able to recast personal 

and local narratives through a class of arguments that draws similarities between situations in the current world and situations described 

in a culture’s master narrative. It is a process that links the known past 

with the uncertain present.

Persuasive Arguments in Narratives

As discussed earlier, narrative arguments are not typically based on 

rigorous forensics or rational deduction. Instead, these arguments are 

based on loose comparisons reached by common sense. These comparisons include the argument from the analogy, in which an event, 

person, or other contemporary target is shown to have properties similar to an analogue of a master narrative. For instance, extremists often 

draw analogies between current Western and Islamic rulers and the 

m The Deliverance narrative also underlies the Jewish and Christian story form in the 

tale of David and Goliath.
22

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Pharaoh, the Egyptian tyrant bent on enslaving godly people. The 

rule of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1981, was compared to the rule of the tyrannical 

Pharaoh. Like the Pharaoh, Sadat refused to obey God’s will and was 

brought to justice by God’s agent, a role fulfilled by the prophet Moses 

in the original story and by Muslim Brotherhood members in the contemporary era.48

Another example is the argument from a parallel case, which 

makes the claim that a current situation is similar to a past situation in 

a culture’s master narrative. Because of the similarity, one can assume 

both have similar attributes as well as similar outcomes. For instance, 

Sayyid  Qutb, in his highly influential 1964 book, Milestones, made a 

parallel argument between the period of pagan ignorance in the Arab 

world before God’s revelation carried by the Prophet Mohammed and 

the regimes of current rulers in Islamic countries. He extended the 

notion of pagan ignorance in the Arab world, jahiliyyah, to the contemporary world. Like the early Arab world, Qutb’s civilization was in 

decline and in need of deliverance. Whereas the Prophet Mohammed 

acted as God’s agent in the preceding generation, devout Muslims could 

likewise act to deliver the contemporary world from its woeful ignorance and restore to it the splendor of the world of the Prophet’s time.

Narrative Probability and Fidelity

The persuasive capacity of narratives also hinges on other indicators 

of validity, including coherence and fidelity. Audiences are more likely 

to be persuaded by strategic narrative communication that exhibits 

these characteristics. A narrative has coherence when the collection of 

stories composing the narrative forms a cohesive argument. Coherence 

is also apparent when the materials a narrative uses to communicate a 

message fit well with other closely related stories. When comparing a 

narrative with other material, it should not reveal distortions, factual 

errors, omissions, and the like. Finally, coherence also relates to the 

author or narrator of the story. The author should be seen to embody 

the values he or she is putting forward in the narrative.49

However, narratives should also reflect the way in which the audience 

understands the world—the narrative’s fidelity.50 Fidelity often results 

from narratives depicting archetypal conflicts, inspiring a shared desire 

among the audience for resolution. These conflicts, and the yearning 

for resolution, reflect the human condition spanning cultural and temporal boundaries. Most everyone yearns for security, happiness, and 

prosperity, but many people in their everyday lives experience threats 

to these basic desires. Narratives help people manage and make sense 
Narratives and Competing Messages

23

of these threats. Natural disasters, for instance, might be attributed to 

a deity in retribution for or in response to actions taken by a society.

NEUROSCIENTIFIC INSIGHTS INTO 

EFFECTIVE NARRATIVES

Advanced, quality intelligence and analysis are core competencies 

in narrative development and operational success. Researchers have 

made significant progress in exploiting data from social networks and 

various other sources to yield rich insights regarding communication 

preferences and opportunities for disseminating narratives. Yet, these 

technological achievements, combined with knowledge gained from indepth analysis of historical accounts of effective military information 

operations, are not sufficient to inform today’s challenges to narratives. 

One critical gap in understanding narratives is the inability to predict 

how people react to specific, operationally relevant narrative messaging.

Effective narratives are those that produce the desired behavioral 

outcome. From an operational perspective, then, it is necessary to construct narratives whose behavioral impact can be predicted and measured. In this section, neuroscientific research related to persuasive 

communication in general is discussed. Although the research was not 

specifically conducted on the narrative systems of concern to this work, 

the evidence is nonetheless an aid to better understanding the relationship between strategic communication and behavioral outcomes. The 

final part of this section reviews neuroscience research more concretely 

related to how people cognitively process narratives.

In crafting an effective narrative, one must understand the audience’s motivation, bias, and disposition, as well as their communication 

preferences. The insights greatly improve the generation and dissemination of effective narratives. Consider the implications of an operator 

who is equipped with the knowledge, skills, and tools to leverage intelligence about all of the following:

• Key stakeholders or a community of interest

• Narrative elements and strategies

• Interaction of people’s attitudes, beliefs, and past or current 

behaviors in response to various messaging

• Measures of effectiveness

These capabilities would enable more accurate generation, dissemination, and evaluation of narratives, as well as course correction of 

information operations. Tactically efficient, effective, and measurable 

narratives would be deployed. In this regard, nonkinetic approaches 

can effectively nest with more kinetic approaches.
24

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

The neuroscience community is trying to illuminate the underlying neural processes of persuasion, particularly those associated with 

specific behavioral outcomes. The research is helping to identify which 

components of narratives reliably activate particular parts of the brain. 

Identifying the area of brain activation helps predict behavioral outcomes because certain behaviors are expected according to the area 

of the brain being activated. Interpreting and translating this research 

for the information operations community better equips policy makers 

and operators to design narratives that prompt a desired behavior.

Persuasive Communication and Behavioral Outcomes

Neuroscientific approaches are an important contribution to understanding narratives and persuasive communication. The research 

incorporates experimental design missing in much of the social science research available. The methods used offer greater insight into 

the underlying brain activity and biophysical responses (e.g., cardiovascular, electrodermal, neuroendocrine, and eye movement behaviors) 

that occur when an individual engages with messaging or communication. Investigators have used this approach to examine questions about 

motivation, emotion, decision making, economic exchange, trust, perceived expertise, social isolation, and group influence as moderators of 

behavior. Experts are theorizing about what makes a message effective 

for small groups by studying the neurobiology of an individual.

The neuroscience-based communications literature describes 

biobehavioral and other measures being used to validate self-reported 

behavioral changes. Objective measures are better predictors of behavioral change than self-reporting. In other words, people might accurately report their intentions at the time, but the intentions reported 

beforehand do not always match a person’s later behavior. For example, 

people might self-report intentions to vote, quit smoking, or lose weight 

but then choose not to follow through with the intended behavior.

During one study researchers used functional magnetic resonance 

imaging to examine smokers’ neural responses to watching antismoking public service announcements (PSAs).51 After the smokers 

viewed the PSAs, the researchers asked them whether they intended 

to quit smoking. One month later, researchers again asked participants about their intentions to quit and about their current smoking 

behaviors. In addition to asking them questions, investigators obtained 

urine samples from the study participants so that they could objectively 

measure reductions in nicotine and validate the relationship among 

brain activation, reported intention to quit smoking, and actual smoking cessation. The researchers were able to identify the unique neural 
Narratives and Competing Messages

25

activation pattern (in response to the PSAs) associated with individuals who reported their intention to quit smoking and who also showed 

lower nicotine levels during the follow-up. In turn, researchers were 

able to distinguish this pattern from the neural activation pattern 

observed in those who had reported an intention to quit smoking but 

in fact had not reduced their tobacco use (according to the urinalysis).

The revelation of the neural “signature” associated with those who 

reduced their tobacco consumption in response to viewing the PSAs 

could help future efforts to construct effective anti-tobacco-smoking 

messages. The biochemical outcome data, the level of nicotine in the 

participants’ urine, was the ground-truth measure for depicting the 

effectiveness of the message. Unfortunately, not all messages or narratives lend themselves to a biochemical or biophysical ground truth.

People constantly take in messaging stimuli. Furthermore, individuals make decisions about future behavior after processing those 

stimuli. But what occurs in the brain during that process? For example, 

how can we construct narratives to reduce the audience’s likelihood 

of joining a resistance movement or increase their likelihood of participating for the first time in a national vote or reporting a violent 

extremist to authorities? Researchers know that digestion of a message 

likely requires processes involving cognition, emotion, decision making, identity formation, and memory, but they do not yet understand 

exactly how these factors interact in general and, more importantly, 

which specific elements of communications engage certain neural processes for known behaviors. If someone reports feeling empathy when 

hearing a story about a child with cancer, that individual is more likely 

to engage in certain behaviors associated with that empathetic response 

(e.g., increased prosocial action).52

Figure 2 is a pictorial representation of the communication process 

arc. Box A lists various narrative-related stimuli, whereas Box C lists 

various changes in behavior. In between the two is Box B, representing the brain. In this illustration, the brain works to receive, process, 

and react to narrative-related stimuli. Neural measurement (Box B) 

provides fundamental knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of 

narratives and lends critical, objective measure to understanding the 

relationship between A and C. Neuroimaging can assist in this effort, 

identifying brain activation induced by the recipient’s exposure to a 

narrative. In practical terms, operators need an understanding of how 

narrative-related stimuli can lead to behavioral change, but they do 

not necessarily need to know the precise neurological mechanisms 

involved. However, understanding how the narrative-related stimuli 

in Box A link to the behavioral changes in Box C can aid in narrative development strategies that will elicit a desired behavioral change. 
26

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

These data should be the foundation on which knowledge, tools, training, and measurement of narratives are based.

Outputs/observable 

changes in behavior/ 

decision making/

identity

Inputs/dimensions/

stimuli/components/

engagement/state 

(preexisting narrative)

The gray box of how

the brain processes 

narratives

A B C

• Cognitive

• Emotional

• Conscious

• Unconscious

• Heuristic processing

• Systematic processing

• Amygdala

• Prefrontal cortex

• Language centers

•  Vision centers 

• Empathy

• Transportation

• Image processing 

 vs. verbal processing

• Sacred values

• Fight-or-flight 

 responses

• Heuristics

• Reward seeking

• Disgust

• New identity

• Altered decision

 making

• Leaves a group

• Joins a group

• Returns to or goes

 neutral

• Static (no change)

•  Responds to a call 

 to action

Figure 2. Pictorial representation of the communication process arc.

Persuasive Communication

A neuroscientific approach alone does not resolve all unknowns with 

regard to narratives. Rather, neuroscientific insights should be incorporated into the growing field of narrative study to complement insights 

from psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology, communications, economics, and other fields. Integration of all these fields 

should lead to a comprehensive understanding of the factors contributing to the efficacy of narratives. Understanding of several components 

is required to effect desired short- and long-term behavioral change:

• How individuals receive and process narrative input

• The role of individual and group dispositions, motivations, 

and biases in interaction with a narrative

• Key factors driving decisions and actions after engagement 

with a narrative

• The level of engagement with a narrative

The results from neuroscience research related to narratives presented 

below are not intended to be definitive but rather informative.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

The way information is presented can impact how it is processed in 

the brain. Visual spatial data are handled by visual processing centers 

that receive the data from the eyes and distinguish shapes, colors, words, 

and objects to inform, understand, and prepare humans to engage with 

their environment. Text, on the other hand, is processed in the brain 
Narratives and Competing Messages

27

centers associated with language and speech.53 Communications from 

the visual processing centers to the amygdala, the emotion-processing 

center of the brain, are speedier regardless of whether the person is 

making a judgment that involves an evaluation of emotion. On the 

other hand, when processing the more resource-intensive judgments 

involving text, responses in the amygdala are slower.54 Word processing 

centers are located in the frontal cortex, a part of the brain associated 

with reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, context 

updating, and motivation.55 Resource-intensive processing necessitates 

more energy, requiring heightened blood flow in the brain. Compared 

with text, images require less energy, blood flow, and processing power 

to receive, process, and interpret. Researchers have described pictures 

as the cognitive glue that connects events to an image-based narrative 

and increases the intensity of evaluations based on that narrative.56

There is a clear distinction between reactions to image-based and 

text-based communications. The brain areas that process images have 

speedier connections with the amygdala. Image-based communications produce quicker and stronger emotional reactions than do textbased narratives. The latter require more energy and processing power 

because of the slower connection between the language centers and 

the amygdala. In general, text-based messages produce slower and 

weaker emotional reactions. Functionally, this means that images can 

be used to elicit quicker and stronger emotional reactions than can be 

elicited by verbal or textual stimuli. Alternatively, when less-emotional 

reactions are desired, a text-based narrative is the better choice.

One can see how this plays out in advertising and marketing. Competing brands carry out a war of images rather than words. Budweiser 

associates itself with Clydesdales, and Coors responds by associating 

itself with the Rocky Mountains. Coors does not respond with eloquently 

worded explanations about how its product is superior. As one major 

marketing firm put it, “it’s very hard to convince people using words 

when their organ of decision is primarily visual.”57 This particular firm 

advised its clients to make their marketing stimuli more visual and less 

verbal, drawing on the research described herein and noting that the 

areas in the brain that controlling vision are older (from an evolutionary perspective) and more numerous than those processing language.58

Sacred Values

Sacred values are resolute values not susceptible to trade-offs with 

other values. They might be beliefs that a person would not change 

or forsake in exchange for money or other material goods. Messages 

that target one or more of an individual’s sacred values have an impact 

on the individual’s interpretation of events.59 For example, a moral 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

dilemma, such as seeing a person steal merchandise from a store, may 

challenge one’s sacred values. An offer to share the stolen goods as an 

incentive to ignore the theft may backfire because the observer may 

hold honesty as a sacred value that transcends economic exchange values. Sacred values can include religious beliefs, national and ethnic 

identities, or morals.60

Neuroscience evidence indicates that when individuals process 

statements concerning sacred values, neural systems are engaged 

to process evaluations of right versus wrong (temporoparietal junction) and to perform semantic rule retrieval. Semantic rule retrieval 

occurs when the brain retrieves a rule or value that has been ingrained 

to correspond with a specific situation, such as how to respond to a 

salute. The areas of the brain responsible for utility and cost–benefit 

evaluations are not engaged, suggesting that some values are simply 

nonnegotiable because they are knowledge independent of context. 

Accordingly, attempts to “bargain” with these values will generally fail 

from the start because the parts of the brain that consider alternatives 

and weigh options are not engaged. Instead, those parts of the brain 

that determine what is morally right and wrong and call on automatic 

rules of response are fully engaged.

In fact, researchers suggest that efforts to alter sacred values generate 

hostility in the target audience.61 This is explained in part as evolutionary biology and in part as genetic predisposition to holding intolerant 

attitudes. The evolutionary biology theory indicates that sacred values 

are group based and that people consider their group very important. 

Therefore, people will maintain the group’s integrity by upholding and 

defending the group’s sacred values62 even when those values are irrational.63 Basically, just as a person would physically defend his or her 

group against physical threats, a person committed to a sacred value 

will defend his or her group against psychological and moral threats. 

In terms of genetic predisposition, individual differences in tolerance 

are genetically informed, meaning genetics do not necessarily dictate 

how tolerant a person is but do inform an individual’s likelihood to 

react violently when threatened either physically or psychologically.64

With regard to narratives, these findings suggest that audiences 

may not be open to new ideas and different values. A common misconception is that every society introduced to liberal democracy will alter 

its values to match those most common in a liberal democracy. Yet, 

because efforts to change a group’s values can represent a threat to the 

group in the same way as a physical threat, suggestions for change can 

be perceived as threats or attacks. It is just as important not to threaten 

a group’s sacred values as it is not to threaten its physical safety. Narratives that advocate or are perceived to advocate altering fundamental, 
Narratives and Competing Messages

29

sacred values are neurologically blocked. It may be more effective for 

the operator to either connect the proposed values to existing sacred 

values or avoid sacred values altogether. Researchers do not fully understand how to motivate people to change sacred values. Understanding approaches that are effective in changing sacred values would be 

invaluable to advancing effective messaging.

Fight or Flight

As noted in the preceding section, individuals generally react to 

psychological and moral threats to their groups and their values in the 

same way they react to physical threats, namely with hostility. As discussed, researchers propose that this reaction occurs in part because 

issues involving sacred values bypass the cost–benefit analysis processing center in the brain and instead use the moral reasoning and automatic rule retrieval areas. Researchers have also shown that hostile 

responses to arguments may occur as part of a fight-or-flight response 

driven by fear and emotion processing in the amygdala, the area of 

the brain that regulates emotional responses. Projections between the 

prefrontal cortex and the amygdala facilitate the interaction of cognitive and emotion/fear processing, respectively.65 Consider a high 

school basketball player who performs well in practice but on championship game day is nervous and does not play well. There have been no 

changes in the player’s understanding of the game of basketball or how 

to play it, but the emotion and stress of the championship game interferes with and reduces the player’s performance. Likely, the drive from 

the amygdala (the fear- and emotion-processing area) overrides that 

of the prefrontal cortex (the decision-making area),66 allowing emotion/fear to contribute to the player’s performance, as evidenced by his 

reduced performance.

Some emotional responses, such as fear or anger, engage the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in measurable physiological responses. 

The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for regulating body 

functions such as heart rate, sweating, and digestion in response to perceived harm or threats.67 This process is often called the fight-or-flight 

response. The amygdala, via emotion and fear processing, can contribute to engaging the sympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, physical 

threats and psychological threats are not distinguished by the amygdala,68 and importantly, during fight-or-flight responses the body is in 

a state of hyperarousal. In such a state, it is common for higher-order 

cognitive functions, such as exploring the details of arguments, distinguishing friend from foe, or engaging in rational thought, to cease.69

Encountering sacred values in a message disengages the rational components of the brain. The psychological threat engages the 
30

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

sympathetic nervous system, which can lead to hostility. This concept 

plays an important role, with both short- and long-term implications, 

in messages. In the short term, the audience is not receptive to the 

message because it clashes with existing beliefs, and when that clash 

exists, the brain simply does not listen. Instead, it defends. In the long 

term, “unconscious emotional processing in the brain exerts a substantial direct influence on subsequent processing and behavior that is not 

always mediated by rational thought.”70 This means that emotion processing in response to a narrative can have a substantial, direct influence on behavior, as well as on subsequent information processing. In 

this way, a bad first impression can lead to (1) behavior in response that 

is not tempered by rational thought (i.e., a heated reaction) and (2) 

biased information processing that creates a barrier for the persuasive 

message to engage the rational components of the brain.

Narratives and Information Processing

Scholars have categorized the way people process information 

into two possibilities: heuristic processing and systematic processing.71

Heuristic processing is similar to semantic rule retrieval mentioned 

previously. It leads to minimal independent analysis by the audience. 

Systematic processing uses independent, logical analysis of all components of the message, including the environmental context.

These categories represent two very different modes of processing 

information that communicators can leverage. A heuristic is a mental 

shortcut stored in the memory that helps a person reach decision more 

quickly. Triggering a cue is necessary for the heuristic to operate. However, because heuristics are stored in the memory, they are most often 

triggered unconsciously. This means that when one is used, it can unintentionally lead to a biased decision. One common heuristic is expert 

opinion. An “expert” label is the cue that unconsciously causes the audience to settle on the simple decision rule that expert opinion is trustworthy. Unlike people engaged in heuristic processing, those engaged 

in systematic processing intensively identify, assess, and analyze all the 

information presented to them. Audiences engage in systematic processing most often when there is no heuristic or mental shortcut to use. 

In general, heuristic processing leads to quicker decisions and actions, 

underestimation of risks, and overemphasis on positive explanations 

to justify decisions. A person’s emotional state also influences whether 

to use a heuristic or systematic decision-making process. Individuals 

in a positive mood are more likely to engage in heuristic information 

processing, whereas individuals in a negative mood are more likely to 

engage in systematic processing.72
Narratives and Competing Messages

31

Communicators can leverage both of these insights according to 

their desired goal. If a communicator wishes to persuade an audience 

of a viewpoint, then he or she should aim to trigger heuristic processing. Additionally, because research has indicated that heuristic processing is more likely to occur when individuals are in positive moods, 

that communicator should either aim to deliver the message when the 

audience is most likely to be in a positive mood or embed information 

or opportunities to create a positive mood with the messaging. Conversely, if a communicator wants to challenge an adversary’s message, 

he or she would seek to disrupt or disable the heuristic cues used by the 

adversary and pull the audience into systematic processing.

Emotional Content

Recent research has also shown that certain emotions communicated through messages can impact an audience’s receptiveness to messages and likelihood to act. While hatred based on anger or contempt 

generally does not lead to violence or hostility, hatred based on disgust 

is more likely to result in violence and hostility.73

The moral emotion of disgust elicits feelings of repulsion and 

elimination. In that sense, while anger prepares one to fight, disgust 

actually moves an individual to repulse and eliminate the cause of the 

disgust. As a moral emotion, disgust is processed in the regions of the 

brain devoted to moral beliefs and behavior.74 Test subjects who had 

lesions on those regions were incapable of recognizing disgust in others or responding to disgusting stimuli.75 Additionally, when disgust is 

focused on a group, all the members are perceived as innately bad and 

requiring elimination.76 In this regard, disgust represents a boundary 

between inaction and action.77

For communicators this means that disgust is the more effective 

emotion for persuading individuals to act against another group or to 

actively reject another message. Accordingly, narratives aimed at provoking action should focus not on anger or hatred toward the intended 

target of action but instead on disgust of that intended target. The 

origins of disgust that a communicator could leverage will depend on 

the communicator’s cultural knowledge of the audience. Alternatively, 

if the narrative seeks to end violent actions against a group, the authors 

should design messages to undermine any disgust or contributors to 

disgust existing between the groups. If the moral emotion of disgust 

is the line between inaction and action, then much can be gained by 

facilitating or inhibiting feelings of disgust in groups.
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Reward Seeking

Humans have evolved to engage in behaviors that result in reward 

and to avoid behaviors that potentially incur a loss. Researchers have 

discovered that when individuals perceive the potential for a reward, 

the brain’s reward-seeking system is activated.78 The chemical dopamine plays a significant role related to reward-motivated behavior. 

When dopamine is released in the brain, an individual experiences 

intense feelings of well-being.79 The desire to feel the effects of dopamine release can lead individuals to engage in dangerous or sensationseeking behaviors at the potential expense of their well-being. Indeed, 

researchers have found that individuals participating in reward-seeking 

behaviors have lower impulse control and enhanced reward sensitivity 

and are more likely to prefer immediate reward at the cost of long-term 

adverse consequences.80 Some industries, such as the gambling industry, have leveraged these findings by designing their activities, services, websites, and interactive features to provide users with numerous 

small rewards, thereby engaging the reward-motivation brain centers 

and increasing the likelihood of continued engagement. Continually 

achieving low-level rewards maintains a user’s interest, whereas requiring a user to wait patiently for a higher-level reward causes the user to 

lose interest. It is important to note that the reward can be physical, 

monetary, or social. For instance, receiving positive feedback to posts 

on social media sites can incentivize a user to post similar messages. 

Because positive feedback elicits dopamine and oxytocin in the author, 

his or her posts might grow more bold and extremist.81

Communicators can also leverage this understanding of human 

reward-seeking habits by designing messages that provide audience 

members with rewards. However, reward bounties are not the best strategy. Instead, practitioners in other arenas have discovered that small, 

incremental rewards gain favor and maintain attention more effectively 

than a large reward after completing a long, arduous task. Similarly, 

graphic designers have recognized that individuals are deterred by 

large blocks of text. Most segment the material into manageable portions so the audience is rewarded after finishing each segment, providing incentive to continue.

Narrative Transportation, or “Getting Lost in the Story”

 Narrative transportation refers to the experience of getting lost in 

a story. The term transportation was introduced to explain that immersive experience in which, for all intents and purposes, one feels as if 

he or she has moved or transported out of the real world and into the 

story world.82 Scholars describe it this way because the hallmarks of 

transportation include empathizing with the characters, engaging in 
Narratives and Competing Messages

33

extensive mental imagery of the story’s events and surroundings, and 

losing access to real-world information both physiologically and psychologically.83 Importantly, audiences that have experienced transportation return to the real world changed in strong and long-lasting ways.84

Narrative transportation does not trigger careful evaluation or intense 

scrutiny of arguments.85 This means we can have transportive experiences with content that otherwise may not make sense or be rational. 

Researchers refer to this as narrative persuasion, within which are two 

components, the affective and the cognitive.86

The affective component refers to the empathy experienced by the 

audience. Empathy represents the ability to experience the narrative 

from the protagonist’s point of view. With empathy, an audience does 

not feel for the characters but instead feels with the characters.87 The 

cognitive component refers to the change in information processing. 

During narrative transportation, audiences experience decreased analytical processing.88 Both components are integral to effective narrative 

persuasion. Unlike other persuasive media, narrative persuasion does 

not present arguments. “Instead, narratives present information and 

positions that are true within the context of the story.”89 Research indicates that transportation requires accepting the story’s world and that 

transported audiences return to the real world without abandoning the 

information and positions from the story world.90 It would seem then 

that transportive experiences engage our memory processing. Transported audiences disengage from the real world, engage in a story 

world, accept the story world’s beliefs and positions as valid, and upon 

return to the real world maintain belief in the validity of those story 

world beliefs and positions.

Experts continue to study the underlying neurological mechanisms 

of transportation, but research has already revealed some key observations and likely explanations. For instance, while audience members 

are viewing a transportive narrative, their brains are less sensitive to 

stimuli that are outside the story world. In other words, the transportation experience consumes attention capacity, reducing attention 

resources available for current real-world events. Also, transportation is 

associated with reduced activity in the default mode network, the brain 

network activated during self-reflection and self-referential thought. 

The reduced activity in this network supports the notion that transportation is characterized by detachment from the real world.

There are also several common characteristics of transportive 

narratives. The characteristics are divided into those relating to the 

narrative and others relating to the audience. Narrative characteristics include identifiable characters, an imaginable plot, and verisimilitude, or lifelikeness.91 An identifiable character is one with whom the 
34

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

audience can affiliate. If the character is foreign to the audience, then 

the narrative is less likely to be transportive. Identifiability of the character enables the audience to empathize and experience the story from 

the character’s point of view and with the character’s biases. An imaginable plot requires descriptions of settings and events along a temporal 

sequence, evoking mental imagery for the audience. As with empathy, it 

is through mental imagery that audiences engage with the story’s world 

as though it were real. Audiences that do not engage in mentally imagining the narrative world and the plot are less likely to be transported. 

Finally, verisimilitude refers to the story’s realism, but in a broad sense. 

Transportive narratives should emphasize believability rather than 

logical consistency and lack of contradictions. Greater verisimilitude 

increases the likelihood that an audience will suspend reality and be 

transported by the narrative.

Audience characteristics related to transportive narratives include 

familiarity, attention, and transportability. An audience must have 

some prior knowledge of or personal experience with the narrative’s 

topic or genre to be transported by the narrative. The more foreign the 

narrative’s characters, setting, circumstances, or topic, the less likely 

the narrative is to transport its audience. Accordingly, effective narratives need to be based on at least a minimum level of cultural knowledge. Additionally, an audience must be able to focus and concentrate 

on the narrative or have a motivation to pay attention to it. Distraction 

reduces the likelihood that the audience will be transported by the 

narrative. Finally, for an audience to be transported it needs to have a 

propensity for being transported. This is a matter of individual neurological capacity for empathy and mental imagery. The more capable a 

person is at empathizing with another or constructing mental imagery, 

the more likely he or she will be transported by a narrative.

TOOLS FOR NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: 

SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY

Social Movement Theory

Social movement theory is a useful paradigm to analyze insurgent 

narratives and understand how they promote collective action. This is 

particularly the case in a subfield of social movement theory that considers the concept of framing. Social movement theory was originally 

developed by sociologists to understand the formation and evolution of 

a variety of movements, such as the civil rights movement and the prolife movement in the United States. Although this theory was initially 
Narratives and Competing Messages

35

applied to (mostly) nonviolent social movements, the tools and framework are also applied to violent insurgent movements.92,n

It is important to note that narrative, the subject of this work, is only 

one pillar of social movement theory. In isolation, narrative framing is 

unlikely to effectively mobilize without consideration for the remaining two pillars, political opportunity and resource mobilization. Political opportunity is a concept used to explain how the larger political 

environment alters the perception of chances of success or failure in 

resistance movements. The second, resource mobilization, explains 

how groups leverage existing and acquired resources, whether financial, technical, or organizational, that enable resistance movements to 

emerge and sustain their operations. In other words, resistance movements cannot rely on narratives alone to achieve their goals. However, 

where appropriate, we focus solely on the role that narratives can play 

in overcoming the many difficulties resistance movements face in mobilizing others to join and actively support their goals.

A fundamental concept within social movement theory is that of a 

frame. Erving Goffman first defined frames as “schemata of interpretation” that enable people “to locate, perceive, identify and label” events 

that they experience or are brought to their attention.93 More simply, a 

frame represents a worldview or paradigm through which events and 

concepts are interpreted, and as such it represents a means through 

which meaning is constructed and “reality” is interpreted. Within the 

context of a social movement, by assigning motives and meanings a 

frame can help overcome the collective action problem that is inherent in many insurgencies. As such, Benford and Snow define a “collective action frame” as an “action oriented [italics added] sets of beliefs 

and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns 

of a social movement organization.”94 Thus, collective action frames 

perform an interpretive function by simplifying and condensing the 

“world out there,”95 especially in ways “intended to mobilize potential 

adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists.”96 A key aspect of a collective action frame is that it 

is “not merely aggregations of individual attitudes and perceptions but 

also the outcome of negotiating shared meanings [italics added],”97 such 

as, say, through narratives, writings, and the exchange of ideas among 

a community of people.

Benford and Snow noted that collective action frames perform 

three core framing tasks, specifically diagnostic framing, prognostic 

framing, and motivational framing.98 The first involves identifying 

n The application of social movement theory to resistance movements was first advocated by several sociologists who argued that all resistance, whether nonviolent or violent, 

existed on a continuum of “contentious politics.”
36

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

the problem and its victim and attributing the problem to responsible 

actors and causes. The second entails specifying a proposed solution 

and a strategy for carrying out corrective action. The third provides 

a rationale for engaging in remedial collective action, including an 

appropriate vocabulary of motive.99

Each of these concepts can be fruitfully applied to various insurgencies. For insurgent groups, many diagnostic frames are essentially 

“injustice frames” that identify the population from which the group 

emerged as a victim of what the group regards as a historical injustice 

perpetuated by some other actor. For instance, the diagnostic frame of 

the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) encompassed a narrative 

that focused on the loss of Palestinian land to Jewish settlers; the displacement of much of the original Palestinian population to the West 

Bank, Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries; and the establishment of a Jewish state on most of British-Mandate Palestine. In the case 

of the Shining Path, the diagnostic frame centered on the arrival of 

the Spanish and the downfall of the Inca Empire in the sixteenth century as the cause of the current economic and social misfortune of the 

indigenous population of Peru.

There are several things to note regarding diagnostic frames for 

insurgent groups. First, depending on the structural setting of an 

insurgency, that is, the evolution of social, economic, political, and 

international conditions from which an insurgent group emerged, history may or may not play an important role in informing a diagnostic 

frame. In some cases the weight of history will be heavy, as history will 

essentially provide the basis on which a diagnostic frame will be initially developed.

In some cases history will provide an “original sin” that will inform 

the initial narrative of an insurgency. It may also provide the set of 

actors as well as their corresponding actions and group grievances that 

populate the discourse of a diagnostic frame. For instance, the grievances that informed the diagnostic frame of the Shining Path originated from an event more than four hundred years in the past. In the 

case of Shia revolutionaries who flocked to Hizbollah in Lebanon and 

overthrew the Shah in Iran, an original sin from 1,300 years before 

(the death of Husayn ibn Ali in the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD) provided some of the raw material that informed a diagnostic frame. In 

other cases history is less influential. The grievances that motivated 

the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in Nigeria were 

based on the actions of the Nigerian government and not on, for example, the actions of the British during the colonial era.

However, to keep a diagnostic frame fresh and dynamic, an insurgent group may engage in “armed propaganda” to provide events from 
Narratives and Competing Messages

37

the present with which to update the frame. The process is similar to 

vertical integration, described in the “Structure and Components of 

Persuasive Narratives” section. Armed propaganda actions help to produce new meanings and reality from which to generate an updated narrative. In one example, an insurgent group may take actions designed 

to lead to an excessively violent reaction by the government, thus calling into question the latter’s legitimacy. Or the government’s reaction 

may reveal its incompetence, leading the audience to question the 

government’s ability to provide for security (further undermining its 

legitimacy). As an example, at one point the Peruvian government’s 

response to the terrorism, assassinations, and sabotage unleashed by 

the Shining Path was regarded as incompetent and ineffectual, which 

in turn led to less support for the government and, in fact, greater sympathy for the insurgents.100

Another important aspect of diagnostic frames is that they can 

be highly contested. Social movement theorists sometimes speak of a 

“social movement industry.” This mixture of various social movement 

organizations may engage in debates among themselves regarding the 

nature of the problem (i.e., the diagnostic frame) and, consequentially, 

what is to be done about the problem (i.e., the prognostic frame). For 

instance, a variety of Palestinian groups emerged to challenge Israel. 

Some, like the Fatah-led PLO, eventually came to recognize Israel and, 

consequently, developed a diagnostic frame that centered on the Israeli 

occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Other groups, such as 

Hamas, took a maximalist stance by refusing to recognize Israel, so 

their diagnostic frame is notable in that it identifies the problem as 

Israel’s existence rather than simply its occupation of a portion of land 

between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. These differences between diagnostic frames naturally lead to differences in prognostic frames (i.e., negotiations as opposed to perpetual resistance 

against Israel), and indeed such differences have led to internecine 

fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

A group’s motivational frame essentially represents a “call to 

arms,”101 and it is here where one sees an effort to overcome collective 

action problems. Clearly the motivational frames of insurgent groups 

emphasize the need to forcefully address historical and modern-day 

grievances. However, sometimes the most effective motivational frames 

are those that equate actions with affirmation of identity, personal 

significance, and even personal salvation. For instance, racial animosity against Peru’s white elite was one of the motivating factors behind 

the rise of the Shining Path. In meetings in Ayacucho, attendees often 

heard statements such as necesitamos un gobierno de Indios (“We need 

a government of Indians”) and hay que matar a los blancos y destruir las 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

cuidades que siempre nos han explotado (“We have to kill the whites and 

destroy the towns that have always exploited us”).102

Another example is provided by Iranian clerics and jurists both 

before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In speeches and through 

the bully pulpit offered by Friday congregational sermons (khutbah) 

reinstated after the revolution, various Iranian jurists and prayer leaders extolled the notion of martyrdom by equating self-sacrifice to an 

honorable death in support of the revolution. The exemplary martyrdom of the Shia imams at the advent of Islam provided the blueprint. 

The exhortations to martyrdom in the speeches and sermons were 

intended to mobilize sympathetic audiences to take part in collective 

action against the Shah’s repressive regime. Martyrdom in the defense 

of the Islamic government was therefore imbued with deep personal 

significance, as it offered a direct path to personal and eternal salvation in the afterlife and, in fact, a privileged position in the ever after 

right next to the pantheon of martyred Shia imams.

For instance, before the revolution, the discourse and work of 

Dr.  Ali  Shariati, an Iranian sociologist and one of the chief ideologues of the revolution, represent an exegesis in which the author 

expounded on the concepts of jihad and shahadat (martyrdom). In a 

speech titled “Jihad and Shahadat,” Shariati noted that a shahid is one 

who “negates his whole existence” for a sacred ideal and goal.103 The 

canonical example is provided by the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, 

who “consciously welcomed death”104 by choosing to fight the forces of 

Yazid, the Umayyad caliph, whom Husayn regarded as an illegitimate 

ruler. Shariati argued that Husayn chose to engage in battle knowing it 

would lead to his demise “so that [the consequences] of his act might be 

widely spread and the cause for which he gives his life might be realized 

sooner. Husayn chose shahadat as an end for the affirmation of what is 

being negated and mutilated by the political apparatus.”105

The shahid prior to his martyrdom engages in collective action, 

even in the face of impossible odds, not only because of the propagandistic value of the deed itself but also because it represents the choice of 

death over dishonor. A mujahid (i.e., a person engaged in jihad) is a sincere warrior who fights for his or her faith but does not necessarily end 

in shahadat.

106 Thus, “Shahadat is an invitation to all generations, in all 

ages, if you cannot kill your oppressor, then die.”107 Shariati called on 

Muslims to resist the corruption of society through shahadat, by seeking the “red death of martyrs” rather than to die the “black death” of 

cowards.108

From the perspective of social movement theory, the invocation of 

Shariati to choose shahadat represents a motivational frame. Within 

this frame, collective action is encouraged because the underlying 
Narratives and Competing Messages

39

individual act of self-obliteration is sanctified by its positive juxtaposition with the example of Husayn’s martyrdom. In turn, the frame 

implies a privileged place in the afterlife with this most sacred of 

imams. The invocation of Husayn’s example, embodying self-sacrifice 

for the Iranian Revolution and evoking deep personal significance, 

continued after the fall of the Shah, during khutbah, the Friday congregational sermons. Ram noted that prayer leaders often cited the following Koranic verse:109

And reckon not those who are killed in Allah’s way 

as dead; nay, they are alive and are provided sustenance from their Lord; Rejoicing in what Allah has 

given them out of His grace, and they rejoice for the 

sake of those who, being left behind them, have not 

joined them, that they shall have no fear, nor shall they 

grieve. (Koran: 3:169–179)

In one Friday prayer in September  1979, Ayatollah 

Sayyid  Mahmud  Taleqani, commenting on the preceding passage, 

noted that true martyrs find “delight” and “joy” in their self-abnegation 

because they are rewarded with eternal life by God, who takes care 

of all of their needs.110 In a sermon in March  1980, Hojjat al-Islam 

Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the current supreme leader of Iran, stated that 

“the martyrs are addressing us, [saying] ‘you must continue our way,’ ” 

and that they “want us to guard the heritage of their blood, that is, 

the Islamic Republic and the victory of the Islamic Revolution.”111

Additionally, the martyrs are “encouraging us” to hold “the Qur’an 

in one hand and a gun” in the other, to “wage war against all plots 

and cowardliness.”112

In a sermon in October  1979, Ayatollah Hussein-Ali  Montazeri, 

commemorating Iranians killed in combat against Kurds in the Kurdish region of Iran, noted that the former were “martyrs” who “drank 

the elixir of martyrdom.” As such, they were “gathered with the martyrs 

of the advent of Islam.”113 In other sermons, prayer leaders claimed that 

martyrs did not feel the pain of their mortal blows when they died on 

the battlefield. In a sermon given in September 1981, Hojjat al-Islam 

Ali  Akbar  Hashemi  Rafsanjani, who would become a prominent figure in the Islamic Republic, stated that “they [i.e., shahids] don’t feel 

any pain when struck by a bullet, an arrow, a spike, [or] a dagger. . . . 

they don’t see Izra'il [the Angel of Death]—they only see God.”114 In 

April 1983, Rafsanjani told a congregation that “once the bullet strikes 

the body of [our warriors] they are carried on the angels’ wings [to 

paradise, where] they reside by the Prophet of God.”115

From the perspective of social movement theory, these statements 

represent the construction of a motivational frame with a clear message 
40

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

and incentive to engage in collective action. Self-obliteration for the 

sake of the Islamic Revolution is a deeply personal act that is sanctified 

by virtue of its congruence with the exemplary action of the shahadat of 

Husayn ibn Ali. Additionally, shahadat in defense of the Islamic Republic will garner eternal life in paradise alongside the canonical imams 

of Shia Islam.

 Social movement theory also provides a number of concepts related 

to processes of frame development and elaboration that may be useful 

to the operator in deciphering insurgency narratives. One such concept is that of frame articulation. Benford and Snow define this concept as follows:

Frame articulation involves the connection and alignment of events and experiences so that they hang 

together in a relatively unified and compelling fashion. Slices of observed, experienced, and/or recorded 

“reality” are assembled, collated, and packaged. What 

gives the resultant collective action frame its novelty 

is not so much the originality or newness of its ideational elements, but the manner in which they are 

spliced together and articulated, such that a new 

angle of vision, vantage point, and/or interpretation 

is provided.116

Thus, in some situations, the narrative espoused by an insurgency reflects 

themes and ideas that are well known among a populace. Despite the 

audience’s familiarity with the material, the narrative becomes novel by 

virtue of how its component elements are woven together in a compelling story in which causality, attribution, and corrective action are clear 

and resonate with the target audience. The result is a social construction of a “reality” and meaning that may resonate with the segment of 

the population that an insurgent group wants to mobilize.

Before the emergence of the Shining Path, mestizos and Amerindians in Peru were aware of the accumulated grievances. They could 

readily see their inferior economic, political, and social status relative 

to the country’s white population. They also noted that their diminished status and prospects originated with the “original sin” of the 

arrival of the Spanish hundreds of years before. The novelty of the 

Shining Path’s message, though, was its ability to tie together, through 

diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational frames, the various elements 

of the circumstance:

• The nature of the problem and its cause (social, political, 

and economic marginalization brought about by the Spanish 

and their descendants in Peru)
Narratives and Competing Messages

41

• Corrective action (a Maoist insurgency followed by the 

reorganization of the political and economic system along 

revolutionary socialist lines)

• A reason for engaging in collective action (to restore the 

greatness of the Inca civilization that was despoiled with the 

arrival of the Spanish)

Another important concept is that of frame extension. Just as any 

effective marketing campaign tailors its message to different segments 

of the population, an insurgent group often tailors its message depending on the target audience. For instance, the Shining Path emphasized 

the lack of economic opportunities in messaging aimed at educated 

mestizos while stressing vague notions of injustice, racial grievance, and 

economic disparity in messaging aimed at highland Amerindians.117 In 

Vietnam, although the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam 

(NLF) was sponsored by North Vietnam, the latter as well as the Viet 

Cong hoped that the NLF would appeal to non-communist elements. 

Hence, appeals to non-communist segments of the population in South 

Vietnam stressed the NLF’s independence from Hanoi.118

Lastly, another important concept that will likely be relevant for 

many insurgency narratives is that of frame transformation. Benford 

and Snow define frame transformation as the “changing [of] old understandings and meanings and/or generating new ones.” When history 

provides much of the ontology or raw material for an initial insurgency 

narrative, the narrative is likely to be replete with examples of frame 

transformations in which the crafters of the narrative reinterpret a glorious and mythical past to encourage desired collective action.

The case of the Islamic Revolution again provides a rich source of 

material through which to observe the elaboration of frame transformation. In particular, through their discourse, Iranian clerics strove 

to overturn a quietist tradition in Shia Islam that shunned activity in 

politics stretching back a millennium. Ram noted that this tradition 

originated in the middle of the eighth century when the sixth imam, 

Ja'far al-Sadiq, forfeited his right to political rule and other political 

roles reserved for the imam.119 Furthermore, the alleged occultation of 

the twelfth imam (the Mahdi, or Messiah),o an event that supposedly 

took place in 873–74, depoliticized the Shia further. Members of the 

o “Twelver” Shiism is the largest branch of Shia Islam. As the name suggests, Twelvers 

believe in twelve divinely ordained imams since the Prophet Muhammad’s death, of which 

Husayn ibn Ali is the third. The first eleven of the imams were persecuted and killed, 

although the Shia believe that the twelfth imam was taken into occultation by God in the 

ninth century and will eventually return in the end of days to usher in peace and justice 

throughout the world.
42

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

sect internalized the futility of gaining power, resigning themselves to 

suffering what they must in anticipation of the return of the Mahdi.120

After the revolution Iranian clerics used the institution of the khutbah to overturn this passive conception of Shia Islam and to argue 

instead for its revolutionary nature. In some cases this argument was 

advanced through a contrast with different Western ideologies. In 

Friday sermons in September  1981, Rafsanjani criticized “the school 

of thought of Marx and Lenin” for viewing Islam and religion in general as an opiate that kept the masses subdued. For Rafsanjani, the 

Islamic Revolution of 1979 revealed the falsity of such charges, because 

it demonstrated that religion was “the greatest stimulant of the masses” 

and that Islam was the most effective ideology of revolution.121 In 1988 

Khamenei noted that, as opposed to “materialist” ideologies (such as 

communism and capitalism) that view individual will as determined 

and thus not autonomous, Islam teaches that human beings possess 

free will and are autonomous with respect to their social action and 

choices.122 To support this revolutionary conception of Shia Islam, 

prayer leaders often cited Koranic verse 13:11, “Surely, Allah does not 

change the condition of a people until they change their own condition,” and based on it Rafsanjani, in a February 1982 sermon, argued 

that “humanity is not a deterministic movement, but rather a voluntary movement that should be initiated by society, by the people themselves.”123 Thus, according to Islam, “the basis of revolution and the 

condition for the progression of a revolution . . . is man.”124

Iranian clerics also rehabilitated the earthly careers of various Shia 

imams. The clerics emphasized the imams’ steadfast devotion to God 

in their heroic efforts to establish an Islamic government, as opposed 

to their gloomy and sorrowful defeat against Sunni temporal power. 

In a May 1981 sermon Khamenei noted that all of the imams “struggled, they waged jihads, they endured persecution, imprisonment, 

banishment and martyrdom” for the establishment of an Islamic government.125 In fact, prayer leaders depicted all of the prophets since 

Abraham as struggling against oppression and depicted the effort to 

overthrow the Shah to establish an Islamic government as a continuation of their efforts. One sermon from May 1984 noted that

Moses revolted against the Pharaohs; Abraham 

against Nimrod and the Nimrods; Jesus against the 

tyrants . . . of his time; and Muhammad . . . too, delivered the people from the hands of oppressive rulers. 

In contrast to what some self-interested people say—

that the prophets had always been instruments . . . of 

oppressors . . . they always . . . stood up against the 

taghuts [tyrants, idolaters].126
Narratives and Competing Messages

43

In August  1980 Khamenei noted that “our Islamic Revolution . . . was, therefore, a resumption of the revolution of the prophets, 

[because it] stood up against injustice from its inception . . . [against] 

the . . . oppressors who rules [sic] Iran.”127

The canonical example, of course, is that of the martyrdom of 

Husayn ibn Ali. But rather than reciting the preexisting clerical view of 

the example of Ali, which stressed the avoidance of useless resistance 

(and of politics in general), Iranian clerics after the revolution reinterpreted the myth of the shahadat of Ali as signifying the importance of 

the struggle against perceived oppression and superior power. Husayn, 

noted Ayatollah Rouhollah Musavi Khomeini, the undisputed leader of 

the revolution,

taught us how to struggle against all the tyrants of history, showed us how the clenched fists of those who 

seek freedom . . . may triumph over tanks, machine 

guns, and the armies of the Satan . . . [Husayn] taught 

us that if a tyrant rules despotically over the Muslims 

in any age, we must rise up against him . . . however 

unequal our forces may be, and that if we see the very 

existence of Islam in danger, we must sacrifice ourselves and be prepared to shed our blood.128

We can see, therefore, that social movement theory provides a useful 

framework to deconstruct insurgency narratives and understand how 

they promote collective action. Many narratives are likely to encompass 

diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational frames that identify the nature 

of the problem as well as its victims and culprits, corrective actions to 

be taken, and a rationale for voluntarily engaging in self-sacrificing collective action to achieve a desired end-state. Effective motives will likely 

be those that imbue individual action with deep and lasting personal 

meaning, and signification of individual acts may be accomplished 

through the reinterpretation and glorification of an existing tradition.

Mythomoteurs and the Myth-Symbol Complex

In prerevolutionary Iran, Islamic political entrepreneurs infused 

important Shia cultural and religious symbols in order to persuade others to collectively mobilize. In the previous section, we explored how 

social movement theory can help us understand the basic components 

of this persuasive narrative. However, this phenomenon can also be 

analyzed within a broader process encompassing the construction and 

mobilization of a variety of emotive symbols to effectuate ethnogenesis 

and promote ethnic solidarity and collective action. In his work The 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Ethnic Origin of Nations, Smith noted that many ethnic communities can 

trace their ideational origins to a living past consisting of a collection 

of myths, memories, values, and symbols, which he termed a “mythsymbol” complex. This complex contains a kernel, termed a “mythomoteur,” which helps constitute an ethnic group.129 More specifically, 

Smith noted:

There is also an important aesthetic dimension; ethnic symbols provide satisfying forms, and ethnic myths 

are conveyed in apt genres, for communication and 

mobilization. As they emerge from the collective experiences of successive generations, the myths coalesce 

and are edited into chronicles, epics and ballads, 

which combine cognitive maps of the community’s history and situation with poetic metaphors of its sense of 

dignity and identity. The fused and elaborated myths 

provide an overall framework of meaning for the ethnic community, a mythomoteur, which “makes sense” 

of its experiences and defines its “essence.” Without a 

mythomoteur a group cannot define itself to itself or to 

others, and cannot inspire or guide collective action.130

Hence, a mythomoteur is generative—it plays a fundamental role 

in constructing ethnic groups. Additionally, it emerges from a variety 

of media, including the written and spoken word, as well as from various cultural performances, such as plays, epics, and ballads. What are 

the contents of a mythomoteur? Smith noted a number of component 

myths, and narratives play a fundamental role in constructing and 

sanctifying these myths.

First, there is the Myth of Temporal Origins, or When We Were Begotten, and the corresponding Myth of Location and Migration, or Where 

We Came From and How We Got Here.

131 Various ethnically based insurgencies contain origin myths that address these two questions. For 

instance, many of the European Jews who fought for a Jewish state in 

Palestine believed that the Torah provided the Jews with a “title-deed” 

to the land. The religious among them traced their origin to Abraham, a shepherd from Ur in southern Mesopotamia who moved his 

family to Haran in modern-day Turkey and then to Canaan following 

God’s revelation:

Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and 

from your father’s house, to the land that I will show 

you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless 

you, and I will aggrandize your name and you shall be 

a blessing. (Torah, Genesis 12:1–2)
Narratives and Competing Messages

45

Based on these clues, scholars believe that Abraham made his way to 

Canaan around 2100 BC, although archeology has yet to confirm the 

historical accuracy of the stories told about Abraham.132

Another ethnic group motivated by sanctified accounts of their temporal and spatial origins is the Sinhalese, who believed they were given 

a divine right to rule over the entire island of Sri Lanka to nurture 

and propagate Buddhism. The canonical text that describes the origin 

of the Sinhalese is the Mahavamsa, and it notes that the progenitor of 

the Sinhalese race, Vijaya, arrived with his followers to the island from 

north India more 2,500 years ago, precisely on the day in 543 BC when 

the Sinhalese believe the Buddha died. Indeed, the Sinhalese believe 

that the Buddha designated the island as a repository for his religion. 

The Mahavamsa has the Buddha stating:

Vijaya, son of King Sinhabahu, is come to Lanka from 

the country of Lala, together with seven hundred followers. In Lanka, O Lord of gods, will my religion be 

established, therefore carefully protect him and his 

followers and Lanka.133

Other notable component myths include the Myth of the Heroic 

Age, or How We Were Freed and Became Glorious, the Myth of Decline, or

How We Fell into a State of Decay, and the Myth of Regeneration, or How 

to Restore the Golden Age and Renew Our Community as “in the Days of Old.” 

Readers familiar with the Old Testament will be aware that Exodus 

and the Davidic Kingdom represent high points in the history of the 

ancient Israelites, but there are a number of other examples of groups 

conceiving of a mythic and heroic past and offering explanations for 

subsequent decline and strategies for regeneration. For the Sinhalese, 

the ascension of King  Dutugemunu to the throne in 161 BC is portrayed in the Mahavamsa in a heroic light, as it came after a long campaign against Elara, a Tamil prince from the southern Indian Chola 

dynasty. As the Mahavamsa stated “his war cry was ‘not for kingdom but 

for Buddhism.’ ”134

For some Sinhalese nationalists, particularly those who believed 

that the Sinhalese came from superior Aryan stock, Sinhalese civilization entered into decline with the arrival of vulgar Europeans in 

the sixteenth century. One such Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist who 

believed in the racial superiority of the Sinhalese over the other ethnic 

and religious groups in Sri Lanka was Anagarika Dharmapala. Writing 

during the British colonial period, Dharmapala noted that:

From the day the white man set foot on this island, 

the arts and sciences and the Aryan customs of the 

Sinhalese have gradually disappeared and today the 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Sinhalese have to kiss the feet of the Moor [and] the 

dastardly Tamil.135

How should the Sinhalese recover their greatness? For Dharmapala, 

the answer was simple:

My message to the young men of Ceylon is . . . Believe 

not the alien who is giving you arrack whisky, toddy, 

sausages, who makes you buy his goods at clearance 

rates . . . Enter into the realms of our King Dutugemunu in spirit and try to identify yourself with the 

thoughts of that great king who rescued Buddhism 

and our nationalism from oblivion.136

Accounts of decline and strategies for renewal and uplift are also 

common among Islamic fundamentalist groups. Many argue that the 

decline of the Islamic world relative to the West was caused by the movement away from the true Islam practiced during the golden age of the 

time of the Prophet. Ayatollah Khomeini told his followers that Iranian 

people were “led astray, and your greatest misfortune is that you forgot 

Islam. . . . the most important cause of the victory [of the revolution] 

was the very same revival of the values of Islam and faith.”137 In fact, for 

Iran’s revolutionary clerics, Islam had always been a revolutionary faith, 

and previous “court ulema”p who had propagated a quietist version of 

Shiism were guilty of giving service to oppressive rulers, because they 

had “stupefied” the minds of the faithful by concealing the inherent 

liberating nature of Islam.138

Another type of myth that may motivate various insurgencies, especially those that are ethnically based, is what Smith terms the “myth of 

ethnic election.” In this myth, a group is convinced of its own exceptionalism by virtue of divine selection.139 The Sinhalese believed that 

they were entrusted with the development of Buddhism. This belief in 

their divine election proved to be an obstacle in their conflict with the 

Tamils because it contributed to the belief that any concessions to the 

latter would foster separatism and ultimately lead to the dismemberment of sacred territory.

Another example, of course, is the belief of religious Zionists. The 

Zionists maintain that God reserved the land of Palestine (and beyond) 

for the Jewish people, as indicated in the Torah:

p Ulema are Muslim religious scholars with experience in Islamic jurisprudence, 

which in turn endows them with the ability to pronounce on matters related to sharia, 

or Islamic law. In the current context the term court ulema is an epithet, as it was used to 

deride previous religious scholars who counseled Shia against interpreting the tenets of 

their faith in a politicized manner.
Narratives and Competing Messages

47

To your seed [i.e. Abraham’s descendants] I have given 

this land, from the river of Egypt until the great river, 

the Euphrates river. The Kenites, the Kenizzites, and 

the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, 

and the Rephaim, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites and the Jebusites. (Torah, 

Genesis 15:18–21)

Yet there is nothing unique about these two cases. In fact, Smith 

noted that beliefs in exceptionalism rooted in presumed divine election have been prevalent throughout the Middle East and Europe. In 

Russia, the Tsars and the Orthodox Russian clergy characterized Moscow as a “Third Rome.” After its conversion to Orthodox Christianity by 

St. Gregory in 301 AD, the mountain kingdom of Armenia cemented 

a belief in its divine mission on the basis of it being the “first Christian 

nation.”140 Such myths, as noted by Smith, have the potential to mobilize believers for collective action:

In all these instances, myths of ethnic election have 

helped to mobilize communities and ensure their 

survival over long periods. Because the ethnic myth 

is a dramatic tale that links the present with a communal past, and one that is widely believed, it helps 

to draw the members into a distinctive community, 

conferring on them a special aura, that of “the elect.” 

Through its symbolism, it strives to unify different 

classes and regions, spreading ethnic culture outwards from the urban centers and the specialist strata, 

who guard the traditions, thereby creating a more 

participant society.141

An accompanying belief is that of an “ethnoscape.” Ethnoscapes 

are geographical spaces that, according to Smith, have been invested 

(through various types of narratives, such as epics, ballads, and chronicles) over time with powerful emotional connotations and cultural 

meanings for a particular ethnic group.142 Examples abound in history, such as “Mother Russia,” Zion/ Jerusalem/Al Quds, Kosovo Polje, 

Ulster, Tamil Eelam (for Sri Lankan Tamils), and the entire island of 

Sri Lanka itself (for Sinhalese-Buddhists in Sri Lanka). An ethnoscape 

may be the resting place of “our ancestors” or it may also be the site 

where miracles allegedly occurred and prophets are buried.143 Additionally, a territory may become sanctified as an ethnoscape over time 

if it is the site of repeated performance of sacred acts in accordance 

with a divine mission, where the territory itself is a reward for the faithful observance of a sacred covenant.144
48

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

This collection of myths and symbols is a powerful pull on the consciousness of believers, who are sometimes willing to kill others and sacrifice life and limb to uphold such beliefs. Indeed, one theory from the 

field of political science, symbolic politics theory, argues that extreme 

ethnic violence, rather than being caused by conflicts of interest or 

uncertainty regarding the intentions of opposing groups or whether 

they can commit to a settlement, is actually caused by the presence of 

hostile myths of other groups (perhaps based in part on the component 

myths identified by Smith) in combination with fears of group extinction.145 The Special Operations Forces practitioner, therefore, will need 

to be mindful of how adherence to powerful sacred myths can help 

overcome the collective action problem by providing a powerful motivation to engage in violent collective action to further the material or 

ideational interests of a particular group.

VARIATION OF NARRATIVES IN 

RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS

Narratives and the Life Cycle of Resistance Movements

Narratives serve different functions for an insurgent organization. 

In this work, we have focused on how narratives help such organizations 

overcome collective action problems. In addition to this important function, narratives crafted by resistance movements have numerous other 

purposes, including to indoctrinate new or existing members or to 

gain external support from a foreign state. In addition, the functions of 

these same narratives can change over time to adapt to different points 

in an organization’s life cycle. For instance, the narrative an organization adopts when it first forms will be different from the narrative it 

uses to support itself when it has become fully functional and mature. 

Unfortunately, little research has been done on these important issues. 

In this section, we will analyze how resistance movements have adapted 

narratives to changes in both internal and external circumstances.

Numerous experts and leading guerrilla warfare theorists have 

developed models to explain the phases of an insurgency. Arguably 

Mao Zedong developed one of the most widely influential models. In 

his model, Mao describes the slow transition of an insurgent movement 

from guerrilla units to a full-fledged conventional force capable of 

defeating the incumbent government or occupying power. In today’s 

security environment, however, Mao’s phasing model is of limited utility. As discussed earlier, direct conflicts between states are rare. Instead, 

the overwhelming majority of conflicts are civil wars, or conflicts 
Narratives and Competing Messages

49

between a non-state actor and an incumbent government (and less 

often, an occupying power). Furthermore, most of these conflicts are 

not terminated by decisive military victories but rather by negotiated 

settlements through which the resistance movements are incorporated 

into the legal political structure.

As a result, analyzing narrative variation according to Mao’s model 

will not provide much analytic leverage in investigating how resistance 

movements adapt to such transformations. More resistance movements 

are being integrated into the legitimate political process than in previous decades. Although a thorough analysis of the life cycle of insurgent 

groups is beyond the scope of this work, other researchers have begun 

to explore how narratives vary according to the transitions that many 

organizations undergo throughout their lives.

One researcher, William  Casebeer, has constructed an initial 

phasing model to analyze narrative variations.146 In Casebeer’s simple 

model, resistance movements begin at an origination point, after which 

they grow, reach maturity, and oftentimes transform. In the transformation stage, resistance movements might simply die. Others might be 

co-opted by the state and some, as described above, might be included 

in the legal political structure as part of a negotiated settlement to 

the conflict.

In the transition from growth to maturity, resistance movements 

require more robust capabilities to function. Casebeer has divided 

these into four main functions:

1. Support (resources)

2. Maintenance (internal security)

3. Cognitive (strategic planning)

4. Conversion (operations, shadow governance activities)

In a mature organization, there is congruence between these functions 

so that all work together smoothly to keep the organization functioning.

During each of these points during a group’s life cycle, its narrative serves different functions. In the initial genesis stage, resistance 

movements craft narratives to mobilize followers. Most often, resistance 

movements craft narratives highlighting unjust acts or situations resulting from an incompetent or illegitimate government. Within social 

movement theory, these political entrepreneurs are said to use political opportunity structures. These structures are vulnerabilities within 

a political system that create opportunities for creative non-state actors 

to challenge the authority of the state. Commonly, these opportunities result from a decrease in repression that lessens the cost of organized political resistance or from divisions within government elites. 

Sometimes, political opportunities are single acts, or a series of acts, 
50

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

committed by the government or occupying force that are especially 

egregious and are not promptly or effectively addressed. For example, 

in Northern Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s, the Irish Republican 

Army (IRA), and later the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA),q

cited numerous acts of police brutality against peaceful Catholic protesters in an effort to persuade the Catholic community that their way 

of life and neighborhoods were under attack. The acts themselves, and 

the IRA’s skillful manipulation of the political opportunity, were critical in mobilizing the Catholic community to support the armed resistance of PIRA.147

In the growth phase, narratives also help resistance movements by 

reinforcing or transforming cultural identities favorable to the goals 

and identity of the group. Similar to the concept of “frame bridging” 

described in the preceding section, resistance movements can adapt the 

narratives surrounding an existing identity to better serve recruiting 

needs. The April 19th Movement (M-19), an insurgent group formed in 

the early 1970s in Colombia, was especially adept at this practice. The 

founding members of the M-19 splintered from existing leftist guerrilla groups such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). To differentiate itself from these other groups, the M-19 

crafted a narrative depicting the group as an exciting new alternative. 

The M-19 contrasted itself sharply with the rigid, ascetic, dogmatic 

FARC. Its famous tagline was “Revolution is a party.” This narrative 

strategy was especially important to the group as it operated in dense 

urban centers such as Bogotá. Its signature style helped to attract an 

avant-garde, creative membership that contributed to the group’s skill 

in flair and spectacle.

During the critical transformation process, resistance movements 

use narratives to smooth their transition to different organizational 

forms. This is especially the case when an organization is transitioning to include a different set of stakeholders, such as when a group 

transitions to a political party in the aftermath of conflict termination. 

Instead of needing a narrative to mobilize a population to armed violence, the resistance movement-cum-political party now requires a narrative capable of mustering votes. In addition, part of this transition 

also requires demobilizing armed soldiers into normalized citizens. 

Often, this creates ample opportunities for disgruntled insurgents to 

form splinter groups that complicate the delicate process. An adept 

narrative and strong leadership are required to successfully weather 

the challenges.

q The PIRA, which formed in 1969, was a radical offshoot of the IRA.
Narratives and Competing Messages

51

The M-19 was among resistance movements in the 1990s that demobilized to enter the legal political process a part of a negotiated settlement with the Colombian government. The final decision to demobilize 

and form a political party, reached in 1989, took many years. For 

decades, the M-19 had adhered to a deeply ingrained narrative adapted 

from the Cuban Revolution and other Latin American revolutionaries. 

According to this narrative it was imperative to commit to the struggle 

until death, just as many leftist martyrs, including Che Guevara, had 

themselves done. This narrative made even the mention of reconciliation or negotiation with the enemy anathema to many in the M-19.

However, circumstances in the 1980s altered how the M-19 perceived the utility of the struggle. This decade began the onset of the 

so-called “dirty war” in Colombia. The dirty war brought with it kidnappings, extortions, alliances with drug traffickers, and paramilitary 

death squads, all of which had a horrific impact on the civilian population caught in the middle. M-19 members later reported that it was difficult for many in the group to reconcile their part in the ongoing dirty 

war, which had killed thousands of civilians, with the group’s narrative of protecting ordinary Colombians from government oppression. 

During this period, the M-19 began to further distance itself from its 

sometimes ally, the FARC, after an especially heinous internal purge 

perpetrated by a FARC offshoot, the Ricardo Franco Front, left hundreds of insurgents dead.

The final decision to demobilize came from an internal democratic 

vote initiated at the Santo Domingo camp, a demilitarized zone. The 

group had lengthy discussions and debates, sometimes augmented by 

outside visitors. The final vote for demobilization was cast by 227 of the 

230 M-19 members present. The decision to demobilize required that 

the M-19 adapt how it framed its utility to those it wanted to serve and 

also to adapt how it framed its struggle. As part of its transition, the 

M-19 shifted its narrative from targeting the military, which were after 

all conscripted ordinary Colombians, to the “oligarchy.” It adopted 

the slogan, “Life for the nation, peace for the armed forces, and war 

against the oligarchy.” It was also careful to characterize its transition 

as a continuation of struggle by other means, not a military defeat. As 

one former M-19 described:

This process was not the product of a military 

defeat. . . . Due to the current reality of armed confrontation in Colombia, of its degradation, it barbaric 

and institutional character, the value of and justification for abandoning arms is reaffirmed.148

Ultimately, the M-19 was successful in demobilizing its ranks, even if it 

failed to prosper as a political party.
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Resistance movements use narratives in a variety of ways to help 

them execute key functions needed to achieve their political goals. 

Throughout this work, we analyze how groups use narratives to overcome the problem of collective action. However, it is important for the 

Special Operations Forces practitioner to understand how a narrative 

strategy can shift throughout the life cycle of a resistance movement. 

The functional demands of a nascent movement are much different 

than those of a mature organization. We examine how several insurgent groups varied their narrative strategy to meet changing internal 

and external circumstances.

LIMITS OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

Measuring the Effectiveness of Narratives

Those who design and implement narratives face significant obstacles when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of their efforts. Methodologically speaking, it is difficult to isolate a group’s narratives as 

the causal factor of the group’s success in achieving its strategic goals. 

This difficulty arises from the potential presence of confounding variables that might better account for the effects thought to result from a 

group’s strategic communication. Moreover, although narratives are an 

important component of a group’s mobilization and other strategies, 

narratives have limitations. A carefully crafted narrative in and of itself 

cannot mobilize a population in the absence of other crucial variables, 

such as resource mobilization and political opportunities. In this section, we discuss these limitations and review basic strategies Special 

Operations Forces practitioners can use to help determine the effectiveness of narratives.

As mentioned in the “Structure and Components of Persuasive Narratives” section, neuroscience remains at the level of identifying correlations through carefully designed experiments focusing on observable, 

measurable behavior. In many cases, researchers have not yet progressed 

to reliably identifying causal relationships between narrative elements 

and changes in behavior. Part of the challenge of determining causal 

relationships is measuring the effectiveness of narratives. There are 

numerous impediments to gaining such data in samples of sufficient 

size to establish such reliable relationships. The research community 

continues to work on solutions to this challenge.
Narratives and Competing Messages

53

Obtaining Raw Data

It is important to note that the research referenced in this study 

was performed in controlled settings in sophisticated laboratories. In 

these environments it is relatively easy to gather data. Instrumentation, 

research staff, and study participants are in the same facility. In addition, everyone has a shared understanding of the purpose of gathering 

the data. The data that are most useful to researchers and practitioners, however, exist outside of laboratories and controlled settings, in 

the real world. Many of the target audiences of operationally relevant 

narratives reside halfway across the world in communities that are not 

necessarily friendly to being surveyed. Accordingly, it is difficult in 

some instances to obtain raw data on the impact of narratives. Even if 

researchers or operators devise ways to obtain data, there remain significant obstacles to measuring the effectiveness of narratives. Direct 

and indirect measurement opportunities may be available and appropriate for a given operational circumstance including a narrative. Planning the measurement strategy at the time the narrative is created is 

critical to advancing data collection to assess the narrative’s efficacy.

What Data Are Needed?

Before methods are devised to obtain data, practitioners need to 

determine which data need to be obtained. Measures of effectiveness 

for narratives are lacking, and at least two significant obstacles need 

to be overcome to develop such measures. Any measure of effectiveness will need to distinguish between the impact of a narrative and the 

impact of the myriad other influences and circumstances surrounding 

individuals’ behavioral choices. Narratives are only one influence on 

an individual outside of a controlled lab setting, and researchers and 

practitioners measuring effectiveness will need to delineate between 

actions taken because of narratives and actions taken because of other 

influences, such as need or desire for monetary gain. This assumes that 

such delineation is possible, when in fact it is likely that individuals’ 

actions are driven by a combination of these and other influences. However, measuring the effectiveness of a narrative on behavior requires 

knowing it was the narrative that led to the behavior. Otherwise, it is 

only conjecture to assert that behavioral change occurred because of a 

strategic narrative.

Additionally, it is crucial to define what constitutes success for a narrative. Each narrative has its own aim, but in the context of countering 

violent non-state actors, there are multiple possible definitions of success. Narrative success could mean the target audience ceases actions 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

against US interests. Perhaps transforming violent non-state actors into 

inactive discontents constitutes success. Or, a narrative could be considered effective only when it causes a violent non-state actor to turn 

180 degrees and not only stop violent acts against US interests but 

also start acting in favor of US interests. Or finally, maybe success is 

achieved when anti-US violent non-state actors redirect their violent 

actions against other groups and their interests. The same issue will 

unfold for the aim of any narrative, and the solution may be to redefine success with each narrative campaign or instance of messaging. In 

any case, measuring the effectiveness of narratives to change behavior 

requires being able to define what constitutes success, failure, and neutral results in between.

Current Approachesr

Narrative practitioners at the Department of State’s Center for 

Strategic Counterterrorism Communications revealed that there are 

methods for gathering limited data. For instance, social networking 

platforms have enabled operators to track exposure to narratives. An 

operator can look at the number of “likes” a piece of narrative receives 

on Facebook or how many times it has been shared on the social networking site. Additionally, an operator can track how many times 

a tweet on Twitter is retweeted. However, these data provide only an 

indication of exposure because Facebook likes, Facebook shares, and 

Twitter retweets indicate only frequency and do not provide substantive 

content illustrating the audience’s reaction. However, these functions 

were designed to indicate positive attitude toward the content, so it can 

be inferred that the higher their frequency, the greater approval the 

message is receiving.

To gauge the impact of a narrative, a Special Operations Forces 

practitioner can also examine the adversary’s response. For instance, 

the mere response of an adversary is an initial indication that the narrative had an impact, whether positive or negative. The narrative caused 

enough concern that the adversary expended resources to respond.

Furthermore, practitioners can look at the content of the response 

and determine which elements of the narrative bothered or worried the 

adversary the most. This can provide clues to highlight which elements 

should be continued or enhanced because they resonate with the target audience. However, a clever adversary might also focus its response 

on the elements it is least concerned with to trick the narrative’s author 

r The ARIS authors thank the US Department of State’s Center for Strategic 

Counterterrorism Communications for sharing the research and findings described in 

this section.
Narratives and Competing Messages

55

into investing resources in those elements at the expense of the truly 

effective elements.

Finally, the degree of response can tell the practitioner how bothersome, and therefore effective, a narrative is in the eyes of the adversary. Conventional logic dictates that the more resources an adversary 

expends to respond to a narrative, the more damaging the adversary 

believes the narrative is to its campaign. Yet, this also presents an opportunity to deceive the operator by suggesting a narrative is effective when 

in fact it is not. The goal of such deception would be to encourage the 

narrative’s author to produce similar messaging because it is ineffective 

and in fact not worrisome, thereby taking resources away from other 

narrative efforts that might be more effective. At some point, however, 

the cost of producing such a deception outweighs the value, so these 

deception operations would likely be limited. The lesson remains that 

an adversary’s response to a narrative can inform an operator about 

the adversary’s concerns, which elements of the narrative resonate with 

the target audience, and how effective the narrative might have been.

A possible measure that would provide more fidelity in assessing 

whether a narrative is effective is a call to action. A call to action refers 

to an instruction in the narrative to take a particular course of conduct. The Get Out the Vote campaign of the 1990s is one example. 

This campaign engaged various media to instruct people to vote in 

elections. The designers of this campaign were able to measure the 

effectiveness of their messaging by tracking increases in voter turnout. 

Similarly, there are various public health campaigns focused on vaccinating at-risk populations against disease. The creators can determine 

the effectiveness of their messaging by counting how many people heed 

their advice and report to the clinic for vaccination.

Calls to action, however, do not provide a perfect measure of effectiveness because some of those who engage in the desired conduct may 

do so because they have been told to do so by others who saw the message. This can artificially inflate the number of people influenced by 

the message. Additionally, calls to action may not be well suited for 

the context of resistance movements. One difficulty is determining 

the action that the narrative’s author would call on the target population to take. Another challenge is that the audience might agree with 

the narrative but still might not take the requested action because the 

adversary poses too great a danger. Although calls to action can tell 

operators a lot about what is effective in a narrative and with whom, 

they may be difficult to execute in the context of insurgencies or other 

manifestations of resistance movements.
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Public Health Campaigns and Effective Messaging

What is effective messaging? In the operational context, effective 

messaging, including narratives, is designed to achieve a specific outcome (i.e., a persuasive narrative), and that outcome should be measurable. Measuring strategic and tactical outcomes may not be easy 

or obvious in the operational setting. Both direct and indirect effects 

may offer sufficient options to predict the likelihood that a narrative 

will achieve its purpose or confirm the efficacy of a narrative that has 

been deployed.

Factors influencing behaviors are multiple and complex. We know 

from social science and neuroscience disciplines that individual differences and environmental influences interact to yield a change in 

behavior (if there is one) in response to persuasive messaging. How 

then do we determine whether a message achieves the purpose for 

which it was created or designed? There is little predictive validity in 

recipients’ self-reported accounts of how they perceive messages, how 

they have processed messages, or how they intend to act in response 

to messages. People cannot always describe why or how they have particular thoughts, perceptions, or feelings. Furthermore, there is a substantial disconnect between self-reported intention to act and actual 

behavioral outcome (i.e., having taken action). Given the limitations of 

self-reporting, how do we proceed to understand, construct, and measure persuasive messages?

Objective measurement approaches, such as those found in neuroscience, can complement what can be learned from social science 

approaches. Specifically, to overcome concerns related to self-reporting 

methodologies, we can gain additional insight from considering the 

neural response to persuasive messaging in real time. Understanding the underlying mechanisms may be one way to predict behavioral 

change in response to operationally relevant persuasive messaging.

In this manner, a neuroscientific approach can help us understand 

the complex cognitive processes involved in attention, memory, decision making, and discrimination. For example, certain brain regions 

are activated when people rate a message as persuasive, in contrast to 

when they rate a message as not persuasive.149 These regions are similar 

to those that are activated when people engage in mentalizing (undertaking the mental processes of making sense of each other and ourselves) and perspective taking (understanding other people’s thoughts, 

feelings, and motivations). Messages that have been specifically tailored 

to an individual or group with similar characterization or motivation 

(e.g., voters of a specific political party, age bracket, and socioeconomic 

status, or history of making political campaign contributions) have been 
Narratives and Competing Messages

57

shown to have a greater impact on behavior than messages created for a 

general audience.150 This is not particularly surprising. In further study, 

brain areas associated with self-referential processing were activated in 

response to tailored messages as compared to the decreased activation 

observed in response to general messages. Self-referential processing 

means that in response to individual-targeted messaging, the participants personally evaluated their intentions and goals with respect to 

the messaging.151

The message source also contributes to the persuasive process. Generally, expert sources delivering the message are more persuasive than 

nonexpert sources. Researchers have shown that brain areas associated 

with semantic elaboration, memory formation, and trust are activated 

when engaging with a message delivered by a perceived expert source. 

These findings indicate that attention to the source of the message (in 

terms of the messenger’s expertise) may have implications on attitudes 

about and memory of the persuasive message.152

Recently, marketing, economics, and communication disciplines 

have also used a neuroscientific approach to delve more deeply into the 

product–consumer relationship, economic exchanges, and the efficacy 

of public health messaging. Public service announcements (PSAs) are 

a key component in the public health tool kit for delivering persuasive 

health messages via mass media. The ultimate purpose of these messages is to change the public’s health behaviors.

Research in health communications clearly demonstrates the attributes of a persuasive message: a neuroscientific measurement and a 

measurable outcome. It is a context in which validity to predict both 

short- and long-term behavioral change may be determined as a result 

of the narrative’s clinical relevance and the audience’s engagement 

with the health care system.153 For example, increased activation in the 

prefrontal cortex (a key decision-making area of the brain) predicted 

increased use of sunscreen in study participants one week after they 

were exposed to persuasive messaging concerning sun exposure. Importantly, the neural activation pattern predicted an additional 23 percent 

of the variability in behavior above participants’ self-reported intention 

and attitudes about sunscreen.

A number of researchers have also examined the value of antismoking campaigns to determine whether there are real reductions 

in tobacco use in response to anti-smoking persuasive messages. 

Researchers imaged the brains of smokers while the smokers watched 

anti-smoking PSAs. The researchers also asked the participants about 

their intentions to reduce their tobacco use after having watched the 

messages.154 Activation in the prefrontal cortex explained 20 percent of 

the variance in exhaled carbon monoxide levels (a biological indicator 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

of recent tobacco smoking) one month after the initial testing and selfreported intention to quit. These findings suggest that the brain activation pattern may be a marker to predict future reduction in tobacco use.

These findings illustrate that an objective measure of behavior 

is a better predictor of behavioral change than the audience’s selfreported intention. Along this line of inquiry, Wang et al. examined 

anti-smoking PSAs to confirm the relationship between brain activation patterns and behavioral outcomes in order to try to determine 

the features of the PSA that were most effective in changing smokers’ 

behavior.155 Brains of smokers who were not seeking treatment were 

imaged (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) while the 

smokers viewed a number of PSAs that were considered to have both 

strong and weak arguments (e.g., risks of cancer and other disease were 

considered strong arguments, whereas yellowed teeth and bad breath 

were considered weak arguments) and differing levels of sensationalism (e.g., disturbing pictures of smokers in ill health versus pictures of 

actors smoking in popular movies). The researchers’ findings indicated 

that a number of brain regions were activated by a combination of the 

strength and the sensationalism of the PSA content. One specific brain 

area predicted the smokers’ urine cotinine levels (the gold-standard 

biological marker of nicotine use in the preceding three to five days) 

one month after smokers watched the PSAs. That is, the higher the activation in this brain area, the lower the cotinine level at the one-month 

follow-up (indicating a reduction in nicotine use). Interestingly, this 

brain area, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is associated with selfreferential and internally focused attention. As illustrated in the other 

examples, the predictive strength of the relationship between the brain 

and the smokers’ behavior was greater than that of the relationship 

between the smokers’ self-reported intention to quit and their behavior.

Including the neuroscientific findings from public health/

communication studies of persuasive messages is relevant to this discussion. These findings illustrate the relevance of a neuroscientific 

approach to understanding underlying mechanisms of persuasive messages and the importance of objective outcome measures to determine 

the predictive validity of persuasive messages. Through these examples, 

we have illustrated that persuasive messages can effect real, measurable 

behavior change. Certainly, a neuroscientific approach and certain 

measurement strategies are not practical for the operational setting. 

Their utility is in determining and validating the features of effective, 

persuasive messages and encouraging the community to plan for and 

measure the efficacy of messages.
Narratives and Competing Messages

59

The Gray Box

 Finally, it is important to recall that humans are not always able 

to explain the reasons for their actions. People will rationalize their 

actions and express what they believe was their motivation for taking 

an action, but neuroscience has progressed enough to demonstrate 

that humans do not report their motivations accurately. As an example, 

economics has relied on the premise that humans are rational actors 

in their decision making. Neuroscientists have discovered that the emotional centers of the brain play a much larger role in decision-making 

than rational-actor theory would suggest. In light of this, any measurement of a narrative’s effectiveness cannot rely on the audience reporting its reasons for acting. The human brain remains a gray box about 

which we understand a great deal—but about which there is still much 

to learn. Accordingly, neuroscientific insights into narratives must be 

received with recognition that they do not come from reading a person’s mind. These insights reveal useful connections and elucidate the 

processes at play, but they do not yet provide definitive answers on how 

individuals interact with narratives.

CONCLUSION

The power of narratives has been recognized for millennia. Yet, in 

our modern world, it is only now that we are beginning an in-depth 

exploration into how narratives impact individual decision making 

and, ultimately, our actions. Because in part, the study of politics, such 

as the dynamics of resistance movements, is a study of the interaction 

of beliefs, decisions, and action, the use of narratives as a starting point 

for analysis is crucial.

One of the first challenges is confronting the level of ambiguity in 

the concept of narratives. The term is broadly used in different contexts for different purposes. Here, we have broken down narratives 

into three interrelated concepts. First, narrative is used to describe processes in human cognition. In short, people often think in story form. 

Without this narrative structure filling in missing or opaque information, our ability to interpret and attribute meaning in our lives would 

be hindered. This is especially important when filling in information 

gaps related to the invisible inner mental landscapes of people and 

groups, such as motivations and intentions.

Second, narrative is also used to describe the artifacts of our cognitive processes. Because we think in stories, we produce many of them. 

Some are as simple as the story surrounding our morning commute. 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Others emerge in richer cultural forms, such as myths, epics, visual art, 

and dance.

Lastly, narrative is also used to describe individuals’ and groups’ 

strategic, rhetorical use of this accumulated cultural material to influence and persuade audiences. Resistance movements use this form of 

strategic communication to overcome the manifold problems of mobilizing people to collective action. In this work, we have talked about 

how all three of these related ways of thinking about narratives are 

important for Special Operations Forces practitioners to consider.

It is clear that not all narrative artifacts are equal, although most 

do share some common elements. In terms of its emotive power, a story 

recounting our morning commute, for instance, cannot usually compete with a story of a master storyteller like Leo Tolstoy. To more carefully analyze strategic communication, a good definition of narrative is 

necessary to separate the variety of narratives most commonly used for 

strategic purposes. For the purposes of this work, we identified a narrative as a coherent set of interrelated stories that inspires its audience 

to resolve a conflict through the use of various literary or rhetorical 

forms. Scholars also distinguish between level I and level II narratives 

to account for the significant differences in quality, with level I narratives recounting simple events and level II narratives depicting deep 

complexity. Narratives that are used for the purposes of strategic communication are generally of the more complex level II variety.

Others have identified master narratives, or deeply ingrained stories. Master narratives describe a series of interconnected stories that 

serve as the blueprint for most of a society’s other stories. These narratives influence the beliefs, values, and norms in a society. Most often, 

such artifacts are constructed and reinterpreted within a society over 

generations and not necessarily for some specific strategic purpose. 

Master and other narratives are not static; the ability to reassess and 

reinterpret these powerful narratives gives resistance movements the 

opportunity to shape them for their particular purposes. When skillfully manipulated, master narratives can be used persuasively.

There are many bodies of research that touch on narratives and 

their use in strategic communication. Research in communication, 

political science, sociology, and, to a lesser extent, psychology tells us 

a great deal about group dynamics and narratives, giving the Special 

Operations Forces practitioner tools and frameworks useful for analyzing and developing persuasive messages. One such framework, the 

process of vertical integration, is a good model for thinking about how 

resistance movements can make master narratives relevant for local 

populations. Vertical integration describes how resistance movements 
Narratives and Competing Messages

61

craft persuasive messages by connecting local and personal narratives 

with the master narratives of the targeted society.

Likewise, in social movement theory, researchers use the concept 

of framing to explain how social movements are able to successfully 

mobilize their audiences. Successful groups use a wide array of framing tools that distill complex information about the world into actionable components. The trio of collective action frames—the diagnostic, 

prognostic, and motivational frames—together help persuade an audience that there is a problem, a solution to the problem, and a need to 

do something about it.

Another body of research in this field focuses on narratives through 

the lens of the myth-symbol complex. In this framework, scholars 

study how emotive symbols are used to consolidate group identity and 

promote collective action. All groups with cohesive identities develop 

myth-symbol complexes composed of myths, memories, values, and 

the like that together separate the group from others outside it. More 

specifically, each of these complexes contains a mythomoteur, a kernel 

that constitutes the core of group identity. Mythomoteurs exert a powerful pull on the consciousness of their adherents. When group identity is threatened, these mythomoteurs form potent tools to motivate 

extreme self-sacrifice for the good of the community, such as taking up 

arms, killing others, and risking death.

In contrast to the group dynamics approach of the social sciences, 

neuroscientists, psychologists, and others look for the biological foundations of narratives at the level of individuals. This research, although 

limited, provides insights into the causal relationship between narratives and observable changes in human behavior. Much of this research 

benefits from experimental design lacking in other fields. From this 

research, scientists have identified some key elements of a persuasive 

narrative. This research has shown that invoking different systems of 

information processing, whether heuristic or systematic, can lead to 

more predictable outcomes. Developing the trust of an audience also 

increases susceptibility of the audience to the narrative and decreases 

the likelihood of a violent response.

It is not surprising that another key element is the persuasive effectiveness of imagery. In part because they incur lower cognitive burdens, 

images produce more rapid, emotional reactions than textual and verbal stimuli alone. Likewise, responses to textual and verbal stimuli are 

liable to be more rational and conscious than responses to imagery.

Narratives that detail struggles involving religious or ethnic identity are likely to invoke strong responses. Neuroscientific research 

explains the biology of these virulent reactions to threats to sacred values, which are sacrosanct beliefs that adherents would not be willing 
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

to compromise for reasons of utility, such as monetary gain. Research 

has shown that different parts of the brain are used to process issues 

of morality than for making cost–benefit evaluations. This presents difficulties in crafting narratives, because attempts to alter sacred values 

are usually met with strong fight-or-flight instincts, much as if the person had been physically threatened.

Lastly, anyone who has lost track of his or her surroundings while 

deeply engrossed in a book or a movie has experienced the power of 

transportation. The term describes the immersive experience of being 

psychologically transported to the world of the narrative. In this state, 

the audience empathizes with the characters, constructing vivid imagery of the events and surroundings of the narrative while being blind 

to cues from the real world. The persuasive power of transportation lies 

in the emotive, not the cognitive, centers. In other words, we are not 

transported because the story is true or rational but rather because it is 

simply a good story. We are most likely to be transported by stories that 

have characters we can identify with, an imaginable plot, and a likeness 

to the world as we understand it.

As this work has demonstrated, there is substantial research to guide 

the Special Operations Forces practitioner in countering and crafting 

persuasive narratives. Despite the promise of this research, no one, 

as of yet, has constructed a foolproof “recipe” for crafting persuasive 

narratives that will work for all people in all places. Indeed, scholars 

are divided on whether this is even possible. Some maintain that the 

only way to persuade and influence is through the application of deep 

knowledge of the local culture and people. In other words, all persuasive methods are specific to the individual or culture. Others, such as 

those conducting the research discussed in this work, believe that it is 

possible to build a good model as a starting point for strategic communication. However, it is clear that the communities studying narratives 

have much work to do in before they will be able to identify which narratives, and which components of those narratives, are responsible for 

changes in behavior according to the expected outcomes.

NOTES

1 Mark A. Finlayson and Steven R. Corman, “The Military Case for Narrative,” Sprache 

und Datenverarbeitung: International Journal for Language Data Processing 37, no. 1–2 (2013): 

173–191.

2 Molly Patterson and Kristen Renwick Monroe, “Narrative in Political Science,” Annual 

Review of Political Science 1 (1998): 315–331.

3 Thomas Elkjer Nissen, “Narrative Led Operations.” Militaert Tidsskrift 141, no. 4 (2013): 

67–77.
Narratives and Competing Messages

63

4 Ibid.

5 Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science 

Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 415–429.

6 Idean Salehyan, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and David E. Cunningham, “Explaining 

External Support for Insurgent Groups,” International Organization 65, no. 4 (2011): 

709–744.

7 Finlayson and Corman, “The Military Case for Narrative.”

8 Walter Fisher, “Narration as a Human Cognition Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral 

Argument,” Communications Monograph 51 (1984): 1–22.

9 Finlayson and Corman, “The Military Case for Narrative.”

10 Jerome S. Bruner, The Culture of Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 

1996), 130–149.

11 Stephen John Read and Lynn Carol Miller, “Stories are Fundamental to Meaning and 

Memory: For Social Creatures, Could it be Otherwise,” in Knowledge and Memory: The 

Real Story, ed. Robert S. Wyer Jr. (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1995), 

139–152.

12 Katherine Nelson, “The Psychological and Social Origins of Autobiographical Memory,” Psychological Science 4, no. 1 (1993): 7–14.

13 Kerstin Dautenhahn, “The Origins of Narrative: In Search of the Transactional Format 

of Narratives in Humans and Other Social Animals,” International Journal of Cognition and 

Technology 1, no. 1 (2002): 97–123.

14 Bruner, The Culture of Education, 130–131.

15 Jeffry R. Halverson, H. Lloyd Goodall, and Steven R. Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist 

Extremism (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2011), 13.

16 William D. Casebeer and James A. Russell, “Storytelling and Terrorism: Towards a Comprehensive ‘Counter-Narrative Strategy,’ ” Strategic Insights 4, no. 3 (2005).

17 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 13.

18 Ibid., 14.

19 Ibid., 23–24.

20 Bruner, The Culture of Education, 142.

21 Kenneth Burke, “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle,’ ” in Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays, ed. Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell (Thousand Oaks, 

CA: Sage Publications, 2006), 149–168.

22 Finlayson and Corman, “The Military Case for Narrative.”

23 Georges Polti, The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations (Franklin, OH: James Knapp Reeve, 

1924), 67.

24 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 

Press, 1968), 1–18.

25 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 184–166.

26 Casebeer and Russell, “Storytelling and Terrorism: Towards a Comprehensive ‘CounterNarrative Strategy’.”

27 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 14.

28 Robert Reich, “The Lost Art of Democratic Narrative,” The New Republic 232 (2005): 

16–19.

29 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 180–181.

30 Fisher, “Narration as a Human Cognition Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” 1–22.

31 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 12.
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Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

32 Fisher, “Narration as a Human Cognition Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” 1–22.

33 Jonathon M. Adler, “Two Modes of Thought: The Narrative/Paradigmatic Disconnect in 

the Bailey Book Controversy,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 37, no. 3 (2008): 422–425.

34 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London; 

Atlantic Highlands: NLB; Humanities Press, 1975); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

35 Patterson and Monroe, “Narrative in Political Science,” 315–331.

36 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 12.

37 Patterson and Monroe, “Narrative in Political Science,” 315–331.

38 Ibid.

39 Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

40 Gordon H. McCormick and Frank Giordano, “Things Come Together: Symbolic Violence and Guerrilla Mobilisation,” Third World Quarterly 28, no. 2 (2007): 295–320.

41 Ibid., 309.

42 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 179.

43 Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín and Elisabeth Jean Wood, “Ideology in Civil War: Instrumental Adoption and Beyond,” Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 213–226.

44 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 20.

45 Bruner, The Culture of Education, 136.

46 Halverson, Goodall, and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 184.

47 Ibid., 179–206.

48 Ibid., 190–192.

49 Ibid., 24.

50 Walter R. Fisher, “Narrative Rationality and the Logic of Scientific Discourse,” Argumentation 8, no. 1 (1994): 21–32.

51 A. L. Wang et al., “Content Matters: Neuroimaging Investigation of Brain and Behavioral 

Impact of Televised Anti-Tobacco Public Service Announcements,” The Journal of Neuroscience 33, no. 17 (2013): 7420–7427.

52 J. A. Barraza et al., “The Heart of the Story: Peripheral Physiology during Narrative 

Exposure Predicts Charitable Giving,” Psychological Science (forthcoming).

53 John J. Ratey and Albert M. Galaburda, A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and 

the Four Theaters of the Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001).

54 Terry L. Childers and Yang Jiang, “Neurobiological Perspectives on the Nature of Visual 

and Verbal Processes,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 18, no. 4 (2008): 264–269.

55 Eric R. Kandel, Principles of Neural Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012).

56 Robert S. Wyer Jr., Yuwei Jiang, and Iris W. Hung, “Visual and Verbal Information Processing in a Consumer Context: Further Considerations,” Journal of Consumer Psychology

18, no. 4 (2008): 276–280.

57 Douglas L. Fugate, “Neuromarketing: A Layman’s Look at Neuroscience and its Potential Application to Marketing Practice,” Journal of Consumer Marketing 24, no. 7 (2007): 

385–394.

58 Ibid.

59 G. S. Berns et al., “The Price of Your Soul: Neural Evidence for the Non-Utilitarian 

Representation of Sacred Values,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

Series B, Biological Sciences 367, no. 1589 (2012): 754–762.

60 Ibid.
Narratives and Competing Messages

65

61 P. Hatemi et al., “Are We Recruiting for Al Qaida? Imposing Liberal Values on Illiberal 

Populations,” in The Neurobiology of Political Violence: New Tools New Insights (Washington, 

DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2010).

62 J. Adelman and A. Chapman, “Social Identification, Influence, and Why People Join AlQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” in Influencing Violent Extremist Organizations Pilot Effort: 

Focus on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, eds. J. Adelman and A. Chapman (Washington, 

DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2011), 13–44.

63 S. Atran, “Moral Imperatives and Democratic Dynamics in the Fight Against AQAP in 

the Context of the Arab Spring: Policy and Research Challenges,” in Influencing Violent 

Extremist Organizations Pilot Effort: Focus on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, eds. J. Adelman and A. Chapman (Washington, DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2011), 45–90.

64 P. Hatemi, R. McDermott, and K. Stenner, “Reducing Recruitment into Islamic Terrorist 

Organizations: The Antagonistic Effect of Liberal Democracy Promotion,” in Influencing 

Violent Extremist Organizations: Pilot Effort: Focus on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, eds. 

J. Adelman and A. Chapman (Washington, DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2011), 

177–210.

65 Kandel, Principles of Neural Science.

66 Georg Northoff et al., “Reciprocal Modulation and Attenuation in the Prefrontal Cortex: 

An fMRI Study on Emotional–Cognitive Interaction,” Human Brain Mapping 21, no. 3 

(2004): 202–212.

67 Kandel, Principles of Neural Science.

68 J. Beer, “The Importance of Emotion: Social Cognition Interactions for Social Functioning,” in Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social 

Behavior, eds. E. Harmon-Jones and P. Winkielman (New York: The Guilford Press, 

2007), 15–30.

69 Ibid.

70 Caleb J. Siefert et al., “Winning the Super ‘Buzz‘ Bowl: How Biometrically-Based Emotional Engagement Correlates with Online Views and Comments for Super Bowl Advertisements,” Journal of Advertising Research 49, no. 3 (2009): 293–303.

71 Alexander Todorov, Shelly Chaiken, and Marlone D. Henderson, “The Heuristic-Systematic Model of Social Information Processing,” in The Persuasion Handbook: Developments 

in Theory and Practice, eds. J. Dillard and M. Pfau (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 

195–211.

72 Beer, The Importance of Emotion: Social Cognition Interactions for Social Functioning, 15–30.

73 D. Matsumoto, H. Hwang, and M. Frank, “The Role of Emotion in Predicting Violence,” 

in The Neurobiology of Political Violence (Washington, DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2011).

74 Canna et al., Neuroscience Insights on Radicalization and Mobilization to Violence: A Review, 19.

75 A. Calder et al., “Impaired Recognition and Experience of Disgust Following Brain 

Injury,” Nature Neuroscience 3, no. 11 (2000): 1077–1078; H. Chapman et al., “In Bad Taste: 

Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust,” Science 323, no. 5918 (2009): 1222–1226.

76 Matsumoto et al., “The Role of Emotion in Predicting Violence.”

77 L. Harris, “The Neuroscience of Social Decision-Making and Social Cognition: Implications for Violent Extremist Organization Recruitment and Retention,” in Influencing 

Violent Extremist Organizations Pilot Effort: Focus on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, eds. J. 

Adelman and A. Chapman (Washington, DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2011).

78 B. Knutson and G. Wimmer, “Reward: Neural Circuitry for Social Valuation,” in Social 

Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior, eds. 

E. Harmon-Jones and P. Winkielman (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 157–175.

79 I. Aharon et al., “Beautiful Faces Have Variable Reward Value: fMRI and Behavioral Evidence,” Neuron 32, no. 3 (2001): 537–551.
66

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

80 G. Dong, J. Huang, and X. Du, “Enhanced Reward Sensitivity and Decreased Loss Sensitivity in Internet Addicts: An fMRI Study during a Guessing Task,” Journal of Psychiatric 

Research 45, no. 11 (2011): 1525–1529.

81 A. Desjardins and E. Orlina, Cyber on the Brain: The Effects of CyberNeurobiology and CyberPsychology on Political Extremism (Washington, DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 

2012).

82 R. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).

83 M. Green and T. Brock, “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, no. 5 (2000): 701.

84 V. Romero, “Deterrence Via Narrative—The Role of Narrative Transportation in Creating Persuasive Messages,” in White Paper on Leveraging Neuroscientific and Neurotechnological 

(NeuroS&T) Developments with Focus on Influence and Deterrence in a Networked World, ed. H. 

Hriar Cabayan and others (Washington, DC: Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment, 2014).

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Green and Brock, The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives, 701.

91 T. Van Laer et al., “The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of 

the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Narrative Transportation,” Journal of 

Consumer Research 40, no. 5 (2014): 797–817.

92 Doug McAdam, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2001).

93 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York: 

Harper Colophon, 1974), 21.

94 Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An 

Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 614.

95 Ibid., 616–617.

96 David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant 

Mobilization,” International Social Movement Research 1, no. 1 (1988): 198.

97 William A. Gamson, Talking Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 111.

98 Benford and Snow, Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment, 617.

99 Ibid., 616–617.

100Ron Buikema and Matt Burger, “Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),” in Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare Volume II: 1962–2009, ed. Chuck Crossett (Ft. Bragg, NC: 

United States Army Special Operations Command, 2012), 96–97.

101Benford and Snow, Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment, 617.

102Buikema and Burger, “Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),” 79.

103Assaf Moghadam, “Mayhem, Myths, and Martyrdom: The Shi’a Conception of Jihad,” 

Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 1 (2007): 133.

104 Ibid., 134.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid., 133–134.

107 Ibid., 134.

108 Ibid., 133.

109Haggay Ram, Myth and Mobilization in Revolutionary Iran: The Use of the Friday Congregational Sermon (Washington, DC: American University Press, 1994), 70.
Narratives and Competing Messages

67

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid., 71.

112 Ibid.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid., 73.

115 Ibid.

116 Benford and Snow, Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment, 

623.

117 Buikema and Burger, “Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),” 94.

118 Ibid.

119 Ram, Myth and Mobilization in Revolutionary Iran: The Use of the Friday Congregational Sermon, 37.

120 Ibid., 37–38.

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid., 41.

123 Ibid., 41–42.

124 Ibid., 42.

125 Ibid., 45.

126 Ibid.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid., 68.

129Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), 15.

130 Ibid., 24–25.

131Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1999), 63–65.

132P. Kyle McCarter, “The Patriarchal Age,” in Ancient Israel: A Short History from Abraham to 

the Roman Destruction of the Temple, ed. Hershel Shanks, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 

Prentice Hall, 1999), 2–3, 21.

133Gananath Obeyesekere, “Sinhalese-Buddhist Identity in Ceylon,” in Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change, eds. George De Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 1982), 233.

134 Jack David Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict: An Anthropological Perspective on International Ethnic Conflict (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 106.

135 Ibid., 113.

136Obeyesekere, “Sinhalese-Buddhist Identity in Ceylon,” 251.

137Ram, Myth and Mobilization in Revolutionary Iran: The Use of the Friday Congregational Sermon, 41.

138 Ibid., 40.

139 Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation, 130.

140 Ibid., 133–134.

141 Ibid., 135.

142 Ibid., 150–151.

143 Ibid., 151–152.

144 Ibid., 153.

145 Stuart J. Kaufman, “Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice? Testing Theories of Extreme 

Ethnic Violence,” International Security 30, no. 4 (2006): 45–86.
68

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

146William D. Casebeer, “Military Force and Culture Change: Systems, Narratives, and the 

Social Transmission of Behavior in Counter-Terrorism Strategy” (Master’s Thesis, Naval 

Postgraduate School, 2006), 24–26.

147Chuck Crossett and Summer Newton, “The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA): 

1969–2001,” in Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare Volume II: 1962–2009, 

ed. Chuck Crossett (Ft. Bragg, NC: United States Army Special Operations Command, 

2012), 379–422.

148Mauricio García Durán, Vera Grabe Loewenherz, and Otty Patiño Hormaza, M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to Democratic Politics: Striving to Keep the Revolution Connected to the 

People (Berlin: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, 2008), 

33.

149E. Falk et al., “The Neural Correlates of Persuasion: A Common Network Across Cultures 

and Media,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22, no. 11 (2010): 2447–2459.

150 Seth M. Noar, Christina N. Benac, and Melissa S. Harris, “Does Tailoring Matter? MetaAnalytic Review of Tailored Print Health Behavior Change Interventions,” Psychological 

Bulletin 133, no. 4 (2007): 673.

151 Hannah Faye Chua et al., “Neural Correlates of Message Tailoring and Self-Relatedness 

in Smoking Cessation Programming,” Biological Psychiatry 65, no. 2 (2009): 165–168.

152V. Klucharev, A. Smidts, and G. Fernandez, “Brain Mechanisms of Persuasion: How 

‘Expert Power’ Modulates Memory and Attitudes,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 3, no. 4 (2008): 353–366.

153Christopher N. Cascio, Sonya Dal Cin, and Emily B. Falk, “Health Communications: 

Predicting Behavior Change from the Brain,” in Social Neuroscience and Public Health, ed. 

P. A. Hall (New York: Springer Science and Business Media, 2013), 57–71.

154Emily B. Falk et al., “Neural Activity during Health Messaging Predicts Reductions in 

Smoking above and beyond Self-Report,” Health Psychology 30, no. 2 (2011): 177.

155A. L. Wang et al., “Content Matters.”
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Narratives and Competing Messages

77

INDEX

A

Accumulated cultural material, 60

Action

collective, 15–16

landscape of, 13

Adversary’s response to narratives, 

54–55

Alger, Horatio, Jr., 10

Al-Sadiq, Ja’far, 41

Ambiguity, in concept of narratives, 59

American culture, story forms in, 19

American identity, 11

Analogies, 21–22

Ancient Greeks, 1–2, 14

Anti-smoking public service 

announcements, 24–25

April 19th Movement (M-19), 50, 51

Archetypal characters, 19–20

Arguments, in persuasive narratives, 

21–22

ARIS (Assessing Revolutionary and 

Insurgent Strategies) series, iii

Armed propaganda, 36–37

Armenia, 47

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent 

Strategies (ARIS) series, iii

Audience, 61

obtaining raw data from, 53

for transportive narratives, 23

B

Behavioral outcomes

and effectiveness measures, 53

factors influencing, 56

persuasive communication and, 

24–26

Benford, Robert D., 35, 40, 41

Bias, of audience, 23

Bruner, Jerome, 6, 9

Budweiser, 27

C

Call to action, 55

Call to arms, 37–38

Campbell, Joseph, 10

Casebeer, William, 10, 49–50

Causal relationships, 52

Center for Strategic Counterterrorism 

Communications, 54

Characters, identifiable, 33–34

Classes of narratives, 9–12

Cognition

artifacts of, 59–60

importance of narratives in, 13–15

narratives at level of, 6–7

narratives entwined with, 2

Coherence, 22

Collective action frames, 35–36

Collective action problem, 15–16

Communication

image-based vs. text-based, 26–27

narrative, 7

persuasive (See Persuasive 

communication)

understanding audience 

preferences for, 23

Communication process arc, 25–26

Conflict, in narratives, 9

Consciousness, landscape of, 13–14

Coors, 27

Corman, Steven R., 9, 18

“Cosmic War” narrative, 10

Creationism, intelligent design vs., 15

Cultural group setting, narratives in, 

7, 10–11

D

Data on narratives, 53–54

Dautenhahn, Kerstin, 7

Deliverance story form, 21

Dharmapala, Anagarika, 45–46
78

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

Diagnostic framing, 35–37

Disgust, 31

Disposition of audience, 

understanding, 23

Dopamine, 32

Dutugemunu, King, 45

E

Effective messaging

defined, 56

in public health campaigns, 56–58

Effective narratives

defined, 23

measuring effectiveness (See

Measuring effectiveness of 

narratives)

neuroscience of (See Neuroscience 

of effective narratives)

Elara, 45

Emotional content, receptiveness to 

messages and, 31

The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Smith), 

43–44

Ethnoscapes, 47

European governments, 17

Exceptionalism, 46–47

F

FARC (Fuerzas Armadas 

Revolucionarias de Colombia), 

50, 51

Fatah, 37

Feyerabend, Paul, 15

Fidelity, 15, 22–23

Fight or flight response, 29–30

Finlayson, Mark, 9

Fisher, Walter, 13

Frame articulation, 40–41

Frame extension, 41

Frame transformation, 41–43

Framing, 35–40, 61

Framing analysis, 18

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de 

Colombia (FARC), 50, 51

G

Genre (story form), 19–21

Get Out the Vote campaign, 55

Goffman, Erving, 35

Goodall, H. Lloyd, 18

Group cohesion, 7

Group identity, 7, 15–16

Guevara,Che, 51

H

Halverson, Jeffry R., 18

Hamas, 37

“The Hero’s Journey” narrative, 10

Heuristic information processing, 

30–31

Hitler, Adolf, 9

Husayn ibn Ali, 38–39, 43

Hypocrites narrative, 20

I

Identifiable characters, 33–34

Identity

American, 11

group, 7, 15–16

individual, 15–16

Muslim, 11–12

Ideology, 19

The Iliad (Homer), 1–2

Image-based communications, textbased vs., 26–27

Imagery, 61

Individual identity, 15–16

Individuals, 5–6; See also Cognition

Information processing, 30–34, 61

and emotional content, 31

heuristic vs. systematic, 30–31

of image-based vs. text-based 

messages, 26–27

interaction of factors in, 25

of messages involving sacred values, 

28

in narrative form, 6–7
Narratives and Competing Messages

79

and narrative transportation, 32–34

and reward seeking, 32

Information storage, 6

Intelligent design, creationism vs., 15

Iranian Revolution (1979), 38–43

Irish Republican Army (IRA), 50

Islamic extremist/fundamentalist 

groups

master narrative rationale for, 21

mythomoteurs of, 46

vertical integration of narratives 

by, 18

Islamic master narratives, 21–22

J

Jewish state, 44–47

Juergensmeyer, Mark, 10

K

Khamenei, Sayyid Ali, 39, 42–43

Khomeini, Rouhollah Musavi, 43, 46

Khutbah, 42

Kuhn, Thomas, 15

L

Landscape of action, 13

Landscape of consciousness, 13–14

Language, 5, 13

Leveraging narratives, to advance 

goals, 7–8

Life cycle of resistance movements, 

48–52

Literary theory (literary criticism, 6

Local narratives, 12

Local populations, winning support 

of, 5

Logico-scientific mode of 

understanding, 14–15

M

M-19 (April 19th Movement), 50, 51

Mahdi, 41–42

Mao Zedong, 48–49

Master narratives (metanarratives), 

10–12, 20–21, 60

Measuring effectiveness of narratives, 

52–59

behavior change measures, 24

current approaches to, 54–55

determining what data are needed, 

53–54

and human reporting of 

motivation, 59

limits of, 52–59

obtaining raw data, 53

in public health campaigns, 56–58

Mein Kampf (Hitler), 9

Metanarratives; See Master narratives

Milestones (Qutb), 22

Military engagements, narratives 

shaping, 3

Modes of understanding, 14–15

Montazeri, Hussein-Ali, 39

Motivation

of audience, understanding, 23

self-reports of, 59

Motivational framing, 36–40

Movement for the Emancipation of the 

Niger Delta, 36

Muslim Brotherhood, 22

Muslim identity, changing boundaries 

of, 11–12

Myth of Decline, 45

Myth of ethnic election, 46–47

Myth of Location and Migration, 44

Myth of Regeneration, 45

Myth of Temporal Origins, 44

Myth of the Heroic Age, 45

Mythomoteurs, 43–48, 61

Myth-symbol complex, 43–48, 61

N

Narrative analysis tools, 34–48

limits of effectiveness measurement, 

52–59
80

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

mythomoteurs and myth-symbol 

complex, 43–48

social movement theory, 34–43

Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis 

(NIH), 7

Narrative-led operations, 3

Narrative mode of understanding, 14

Narrative persuasion, 33

Narrative realities, 9

Narratives, 1–2

classification of, 9–12

as collections of stories, 8–9

definitions of, 8–9

effective (See Effective narratives)

importance of, 12–18

and individual cognition, 13–15

at individual cognitive level, 6–7

leveraging, to advance goals, 7–8

and life cycle of resistance 

movements, 48–52

local, 12

master, 1, 10–12 (See also Master 

narratives)

measuring effectiveness of (See

Measuring effectiveness of 

narratives)

personal, 12

persuasive (See Persuasive 

narratives)

and political behavior, 15–18

in social/cultural group setting, 7

use of term, 6–8

Narrative studies, 60–61

advantage of, 2–4

theoretical background of, 5–6

Narrative transportation, 32–34, 62

National Liberation Front for South 

Vietnam (NLF), 41

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization), 17

Neuroscience of effective narratives, 

23–34, 56–59

and behavioral outcomes, 24–26

factors of persuasive 

communication, 26–30

information processing, 30–34

for persuasive narratives, 23–34

NIH (Narrative Intelligence 

Hypothesis), 7

NLF (National Liberation Front for 

South Vietnam), 41

North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

(NATO), 17

O

Olson, Mancur, 15–16

Operations, narrative-led, 3–4

P

Palestine Liberation Organization 

(PLO), 36, 37

Personal narratives, 12

Persuasive communication

and behavioral outcomes, 24–26

factors in, 26–30

and fight or flight response, 29–30

image-based vs. text-based, 26–27

neuroscience of, 56–59

and sacred values, 27–29

Persuasive narratives, 18–23

arguments in, 21–22

neuroscientific insights into, 23–34

probability and fidelity of, 22–23

vertical integration in, 18–21

Pharaoh master narrative, 20

PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican 

Army), 50

Plato, 1

PLO (Palestine Liberation 

Organization), 36, 37

Plot, 34

Political behavior, 3, 12–13, 15–18

Political conflict, post-Cold-War, 3–4

Political opportunity, 35

Polti, Georges, 10
Narratives and Competing Messages

81

Probability, of persuasive narratives, 

22–23

Prognostic framing, 36, 40

Provisional Irish Republican Army 

(PIRA), 50

Public health campaigns, effective 

messaging in, 56–58

Public service announcements (PSAs), 

57–58

Q

Qutb, Sayyid, 22

R

Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi, 39, 42

Ram, Haggay, 39, 41

Rational (term), 13

Reality(-ies), 7, 9

Reasoning (term), 13

Reich, Robert, 11

Resistance movement life cycle, 48–52

Resistance movements, 3–4

Resource mobilization, 35

Reward seeking, 32

Rhetorical strategies, 7–8

Ricardo Franco Front, 51

Russell, James, 10

Russia, 47

S

Sacred values, 27–29, 61–62

Sadat, Anwar, 22

Sanin, Francisco, 19

Scientific method, 13, 15

Self-sacrifice story form, 20–21

“Self-Sacrificing for an Idea” narrative, 

10

Sensory perception, 5

Shahadat, 38, 43

Shariati, Ali, 38

Shia revolutionaries, 36, 42, 46; See also

Iranian Revolution (1979)

Shining Path, 36–38, 40–41

Sinhalese, 45–46

Smith, Anthony D., 43–44, 46, 47

Snow, David A., 35, 40, 41

Social interaction, narratives in, 7

Social movement industry, 37, 61

Social movement theory, 13, 34–43

frame articulation in, 40–41

frame extension in, 41

frames in, 35–40

frame transformation in, 41–43

resonance in, 18

Source of messages, 57

Special Operations Research Office 

(SORO), American University, iii

Stories, 1, 8; See also Narratives

Story form (genre), 19–21

Success of narratives, defining, 53–54

Symbolic politics theory, 48

Systematic information processing, 

30–31

T

Taleqani, Sayyid Mahmud, 39

Tea Party, 10

Text-based communications, imagebased vs., 26–27

Transactional narratives, 10

Transcendental narratives, 10

Transportive narratives, 32–34, 62

“The Triumphant Individual” 

narrative, 11

U

Understanding, modes of, 14–15

United States

American identity, 11

and European government defense 

spending, 17

V

Validity of narratives, 4

Values
82

Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies

and introduction to liberal 

democracy, 28–29

sacred, 27–29, 61–62

Verisimilitude, 34

Vertical integration, 7, 18–21, 60–61

archetypal characters, 19–20

defined, 18

story form (genre), 19–21

W

Wang, A. L., 58

Wood, Elisabeth, 19

Z

Zionists, 46–47