ABSTRACT
This chapter describes storytelling as fundamental to human experience, examining the relationship of conflict to violence in story construction. At the end of this chapter, students should be able to discuss how conflict functions in news and fiction, the characteristics of story conflict, and the definitions of violence, aggression, theory, and research. Sequential Art: “The Neighbor” provides a point of discussion when a woman witnesses the murder of her next-door neighbor and struggles to explain what happened. The narrative is used in subsequent chapters to illustrate information seeking, cultivation, and resonance. Key Concepts: hero’s journey, genre, story, conflict, aggression, violence, graphic violence, institutional violence, theory, research, hypothesis, independent variable, dependent variable, data, anecdotal evidence, microscopic theories, macroscopic theories, structural and functional approaches, cognitive and behavioral theories, critical theory, cultural studies.
