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If there's anything narrative intelligence has taught us, it's that narratives are as unpredictable as the people who create them. They grow. They change. They evolve.
Narrative intelligence also tells us there's a very good reason why. The environments from which narratives emerge are themselves unstable. Fraught with shaky economics, political unrest, warfare, and other forms of trouble, these places are hardly the model of social stability. As a result, opinions are constantly changing as new developments take place and new facts emerge. The result is a constantly-changing trajectory for any given narrative.
We see this instability in media narratives all the time. While one news outlet is telling us to practice social distancing and get our COVID vaccines, another is questioning whether the coronavirus is even all that serious. Remember how uncertain and divided we all were about the pandemic only a few years ago? That was because the prevailing narrative kept changing.
So what are we to do? How can we keep up with it all, let alone decide what's true and not true?
The answer, of course, lies in narrative intelligence. Narrative intelligence not only enables us to track where and how narratives originate, but how they expand and develop over time.
This isn't as easily accomplished as it might sound, though. Narratives are slippery things. Just when you think you have your grip on one, it slides right through your hands like a slippery eel.
It almost goes without saying, then, that narrative intelligence requires vigilance. Constant vigilance. Not hour by hour, not minute by minute, but second by second. With so many narratives appearing in the time it takes to draw a breath, we need a system in place that allows us to keep track of and categorize them all.
That's where Kudzu comes in. Its narrative intelligence capacity achieves the seemingly impossible. It monitors and categorizes narratives on a perpetual, ongoing basis. Each time a narrative changes course or assumes new aspects, Kudzu is there to catch it. In short, it provides real-time, fluid narrative intelligence, allowing users to see what is being said about any given subject at any given time.
Named for the leafy vine that graces much of the deep south, Kudzu is very much like its namesake. It covers everything. Various feeds pull in media content from the U.S., Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and so on.
Such a global reach is critical to understanding narratives. Narrative intelligence has shown us that narratives are no longer confined to national borders, if ever they were at all. The proliferation of instantaneous worldwide communication technology means that any narrative can leap across continents in a matter of nanoseconds.
Nor do linguistic barriers any longer impede the spread of narratives. With translation technologies having reached their present capacities, the shift from one tongue to another happens seamlessly. The same software that enables narratives to travel the globe at lightning speed can also switch languages as it does so. As a result, narratives are no longer merely local. They've gone global.
No matter who generates a given narrative, then, no matter where they are, that narrative can easily find its way around the globe without any further effort from them. And that's a problem. Anybody anywhere can claim that a vaccine is dangerous, that the president is colluding with foreign powers, or that children are being held hostage in the basement of a pizza joint. And when we believe false narratives, we act in ways that are detrimental to our own well-being.
That's the reason narrative intelligence has become so essential. But with narrative intelligence it's possible to trace a narrative's origins, as well as who spreads it and how it morphs along the way.
But all of that requires technology, technology that is powerful enough to pull in and categorize the steady stream of narratives from the world over, while persistent enough to do it in real time on an ongoing basis.
Kudzu is just such a technology. A premiere suite of tools that allows users to view and study narratives in any way they please, it represents the next phase of narrative intelligence. Why not reach out to us for a demo, and let us show you how we take narrative intelligence beyond the next level?
