When a story breaks, many possible framings compete for adoption. Within hours, complex social dynamics begin to pull interpretations toward attractor basins shaped by deeper ideological commitments. Narragist models this process the way physicists model phase transitions — because the mathematics are the same.
Public discourse is a complex system. It has attractors, phase transitions, and early warning signals — and they're measurable if you extract the right structure from the text.
Below the surface of any framing are causal assumptions, moral foundations, and worldview commitments that make it feel coherent to its audience. Narragist extracts optimized representations of these implicit structures, and tracks how they evolve, converge, and reorganize over time. The result is a dynamical systems view of the narrative landscape — not a scorecard.
Multi-pass LLM extraction recovers the presuppositions, warrants, worldview commitments, and implicit causal structure embedded in each document. These aren't sentiment scores or topic labels — they're the hidden variables that make a framing feel natural to its audience.
Embedded in a shared vector space, these structures become a measurable field. We apply the same tools used for opinion dynamics, critical phenomena, and ecological regime shifts: order parameters, correlation lengths, variance spectra. Narrative landscapes become quantitative objects.
How quickly does within-group framing variance collapse? Faster convergence signals stronger attractor pull from existing worldview commitments.
Detecting thresholds where narrative landscapes reorganize — when gradual frame drift gives way to sudden shifts in dominant interpretation.
Rising autocorrelation and variance in narrative embedding space as leading indicators, the same signatures that precede transitions in ecological and financial systems.
Narrative convergence and frame-shift detection as leading indicators for market movements. Structured quantitative signals from discourse dynamics.
Model how events will be framed across media ecosystems before narratives diffuse and crystallize. Map the attractor landscape instead of guessing at it.
Longitudinal datasets of narrative structure with quantitative dynamics. Testable predictions grounded in complex systems theory, not ad hoc coding schemes.
Narragist is in active development. Sign up for occasional updates on progress and launch timing, or reach out directly.
No spam. Just the occasional signal.
Thanks — check your inbox to confirm your subscription.
Or reach out directly to ross@narragist.com