A communication theory that defines human sense‑making and persuasive judgment as primarily organized by narratives: people evaluate messages according to internal narrative coherence and fidelity to values or experience rather than only by formal logical proof or isolated propositions.

Principle

Communicative acceptance and persuasion are driven more by perceived narrative coherence and fidelity than by deductive validity in contexts of ordinary public understanding.

Demonstration

Situation: A public-health campaign presents the same information as (A) statistical charts and (B) a patient’s recovery story. Recognition: Audiences find the recovery story easier to follow and emotionally salient. Action: More viewers adopt the recommended behavior after hearing the story than after seeing the charts. Consequence: Policy uptake and interpersonal transmission increase through narrative framing, even when both presentations contain the same facts.

Misapplication

Concluding that a persuasive narrative is therefore epistemically true. The error treats rhetorical plausibility (coherence and fidelity) as equivalent to empirical verification; narrative acceptance is evidence of persuasion, not proof of fact.

Consequence

Messages framed as coherent, value‑aligned stories are more likely to be accepted, remembered, and propagated; this changes attention, belief formation, and collective priorities by amplifying certain explanations and minimizing others through storytelling incentives.

Reversal

In domains demanding formal proof, reproducibility, or statistical validation (e.g., controlled scientific inference, technical certification), narrative coherence is neither sufficient nor appropriate as the primary standard of acceptance.

Boundary

Clearly within: persuasive editorial pieces, news features, public testimony, and campaigns that structure information as stories. Boundary case: policy briefs that combine case vignettes with empirical summaries—narrative aids interpretation but must be checked against data. Clearly outside: mathematical proofs, algorithmic verifications, or technical specifications that operate by formal logic and measurement rather than storytelling.

Semantic Tension

Empirical verification ↔ Meaningful persuasion: the need to distinguish truth validated by evidence from acceptability produced by narrative coherence.

Synthesis

The Narrative Paradigm explains why storytelling is a dominant mode of persuasion and sense‑making: narratives shape what people find plausible and actionable, but that plausibility is a rhetorical, not automatically epistemic, criterion.