2026/05/01 by Tinghui Wu, Guoqiang Yan · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Health Professions · #Narrative Theory and Analysis #Media Influence and Health #Digital Storytelling and Education
paper · doi:10.1111/ropr.70103
openalex publication_date 2026/05/01 · openalex created_date 2026/05/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/18
ABSTRACT While the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) increasingly attends to narratives articulated by individuals, the mechanisms explaining why certain individual narratives garner attention remain under‐explored. By integrating social media interaction metrics, this study advances NPF scholarship regarding individual narratives. We empirically analyzed the relationship between narrative characteristics within public comments on China's National Centralized Drug Procurement (NCDP) policy and digital engagement metrics, specifically the volume of likes and replies. The results indicate that audience likes are employed both to express support for and concern about individual characters in individual narratives, and to convey evaluations of organizational characters. Combining the two metrics, we find that highly engaging individual narratives are characterized by distinct individuation or vivid imagery. Notably, even within a controversial policy context, villain and victim narratives constructed by individuals did not generate significantly higher engagement. This finding highlights the complex internal fragmentation of public opinion and underscores the necessity of accounting for users engaging primarily through lightweight interactions in the analysis of individual narratives. Furthermore, narratives framed around policy benefits generated greater engagement than those centered on costs, suggesting a divergence between classical psychological assumptions and attentional allocation on social media platforms.