About the Center
The National Center for Narrative Intelligence is convening experts and advancing the field.
Our focus
The National Center for Narrative Intelligence (NCNI) is an interdisciplinary research center based at the University of Mississippi.
It is pioneering an urgent field of study: How the stories we share, especially online, shape the ways we perceive the world and influence our behavior.
NCNI's research and training helps leaders analyze narratives, so that they can make more intelligent decisions. The applications for this work are many:
- Our government must track and respond to threats in the information environment including harmful disinformation.
- Law enforcement agencies at all levels need to understand how to engage with the public in ways that aid crime prevention.
- Public health organizations need to learn why certain groups distrust science-backed guidance.
- Business leaders leveraging AI to gather and report information need to understand how different narratives may have shaped the original data.
In these areas and many more, NCNI is equipping our nation’s decision-makers with a more nuanced understanding of the narratives at play within their focus populations.
National Security Summit 2024
The inaugural event featured U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, William Crowell (former Deputy Director of NSA) and Chancellor Glenn Boyce.
Founding and mission
NCNI was established in 2023 to be the central hub for collaboration and resource-sharing among government, academia and private enterprise. It is the first and only center of its kind in the United States.
The need for a national center to study narrative origins, effects and responses was established in the National Defense Authorization Act (FY 2024) through the leadership of Sen. Roger Wicker, the highest-ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services.
The center’s primary tech partner, EdgeTheory, is a Mississippi-based narrative intelligence firm that was instrumental in the center’s founding. Its AI-powered platform is among tools and technologies used for tracking, synthesizing and analyzing live narratives, as disinformation campaigns increasingly develop and scale at speed.
Today, the center’s principal activities include foundational and applied research and education, narrative intelligence (NARINT) expertise, technology, workforce development, and programs through collaboration and as a partner to academia, private industry, and government.
The center additionally enables leaders in public and private sectors to upskill their own teams’ understanding of narratives, while teaching how to use tools and technologies, how to better evaluate narratives and how to effectively tell stories.
About Narratives and Narrative Intelligence
Narrative intelligence is the holistic approach of anticipating, gathering, analyzing, following, and communicating stories or messages, and evaluating their impact on audiences.
Narratives are persuasive. They shape our everyday lives in ways we often don’t realize. They affect how we decide what we believe, how we relate to others, how we spend our money, even what we think is beneficial to eat or drink.
Narratives are powerful. They can influence wars and elections, affect the global economy, and sway public opinion and policy. They also have the potential to improve the lives of millions, by strengthening the understanding and circulation of accurate information on everything from business and foreign affairs to healthcare and election integrity.
Narratives come to us from virtually everywhere in our physical and digital environments, from memes on social media to historical experiences passed down through generations. They are the stories that help us make sense of things.
With great speed, but little depth. Narratives in the digital age move fast. They can be created, amplified and coordinated at an overwhelming pace. At the same time, digital narratives tend to be short, packaged for a society with limited attention spans and less ability to consider content critically.