Interactivity Boosting Narrative Quality (IBNaQ): How interactivity increases the salience of key narrative features in strategic narratives

Strategic narratives have been shown to be persuasive but the effects are oftentimes small. The affordances of digital media allow us to elevate the strategic potential of these narratives. In interactive digital narratives (IDNs), readers become players or interactors who get to have an impact on the narrative. This theoretical article presents the IBNaQ Hypothesis (Interactivity Boosting Narrative Quality) and demonstrates how interactivity can make key narrative features in strategic narratives more salient. With narrative quality going up, the narrative experience can be more fluent and engaging, which boosts the narrative’s effectiveness. After an introduction of narratives and interactive digital narratives, an overview is presented of how various key narrative features, related to the narrative’s structure, characters and setting, can be reinforced by interactive features. The paper concludes with a road map for putting the IBNaQ Hypothesis to the test.