Narrativisatie

Narrativisatie, or narrativization in English, is a concept used in sociology, anthropology, media studies and psychology to refer to the process by which experiences, events or data are transformed into a narrative. It involves selecting what is included or excluded, arranging events in a temporal sequence, attributing causes and intentions, and giving the outcome a coherent meaning that fits a recognizable storyline.

This process affects how people remember events, interpret their own lives, and understand public happenings. It can help make sense of complexity and facilitate communication, identity formation, and moral evaluation, but it can also obscure contingency, oversimplify issues, and reinforce dominant master narratives.

In practice, narrativisatie appears in journalism (constructing a storyline around a crisis), politics (national or ideological narratives), history (canonical narratives), and therapy (narrative therapies). In daily life, people tell stories to connect with others and to cope with events.

Critiques include risk of manipulation and biases due to selective storytelling; emphasis on coherence over accuracy.

Methods to study it include discourse analysis, narrative analysis, and content analysis.

Related terms include narrative identity, framing, and storytelling.

Etymology: the Dutch term is formed from naratief and the suffix -isatie.