In the Age of AI: The Narrative in the Story

By Tyron Devotta

One of the most important lessons I learned as a journalist, and later as a public relations practitioner, is that stories rarely succeed on their own.

At first glance, this may sound counterintuitive. After all, we are taught that a good story should be compelling, well-written, factual, and relevant. While all of these qualities matter, they do not fully explain why some stories capture public attention while others disappear without a trace.

The reason lies in something deeper: narrative.

Shared stories

Historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari makes an intriguing argument in both Sapiens and Homo Deus. Human beings, he suggests, did not come to dominate the planet because they were stronger than other species or even necessarily more intelligent. Their advantage lay in their ability to cooperate in extraordinarily large numbers. What made such cooperation possible was the existence of shared stories.

People do not need to know one another personally to act together. They simply need to believe in the same narrative. Nations, religions, currencies, corporations, and even legal systems are, in many ways, stories that large groups of people collectively agree to believe in.

The implications of this insight extend far beyond anthropology. They go to the very heart of modern communications. In public relations, there is often a tendency to focus on the immediate objective: a product launch, an event, a corporate announcement, a policy position, or a campaign. These are important. Yet communicators frequently make the mistake of treating each communication as a standalone event. It rarely is.

The peg

Every story exists within a wider narrative ecosystem. It is part of a conversation that began long before the story appeared and will continue long after it disappears from the headlines.

This is why some press releases instantly resonate while others struggle to gain traction. The difference is often not the quality of the writing but the quality of the connection.

A story that exists in isolation is difficult to place. A story that connects to a broader narrative immediately becomes more meaningful.

Journalists have long understood this, even if they do not always describe it in those terms. In the newsroom, there is a concept known as the “news peg.” It is the hook that makes a story relevant today rather than yesterday or tomorrow. The peg is rarely the story itself. The peg is the larger issue to which the story attaches.

The big picture

A company investing in renewable energy is not merely announcing a project. It is entering a wider conversation about sustainability, climate resilience, and energy security.

A logistics company implementing new digital systems is not simply discussing technology. It is participating in a broader narrative about competitiveness, efficiency, and the future of trade.

A mobility platform discussing taxation is not merely addressing compliance. It is stepping into a national debate about regulation, fairness, and the digital economy.

Oh, for that matter, a government talking about corruption is engaging in a larger conversation about good governance, transparency, and believing in what is right.

Story vs narrative

The story may belong to the organization. The narrative belongs to society. Understanding this distinction is becoming increasingly important in an age where information is no longer consumed in the way it once was.

For decades, media consumption was largely linear. Editors decided what mattered. Audiences consumed it. Today, people increasingly curate their own information environments. They scan, filter, summarize, and select. Increasingly, they are assisted by artificial intelligence. This shift has profound implications.

AI systems do not simply process information. They identify patterns. They connect themes. They seek context. They look for relationships between events. In many ways, they operate similarly to human cognition but AI has the power through its algorithms to digest the vast amounts of information in a blink of an eye and produce summaries working on an agenda of its own!

An isolated piece of information is less valuable than information that fits into a recognizable framework. This means that communicators must think beyond campaigns. Campaign-centric thinking asks a simple question: What do we want people to know, feel, or do right now?

Narrative-centric thinking asks a much larger question: What story about the world are people already telling themselves?

Campaign vs narrative

The distinction matters. A campaign may last weeks or months.

A narrative can endure for years.

A campaign seeks attention. A narrative shapes interpretation.

The most effective communicators understand that their role is not merely to distribute information. It is to identify the narratives already shaping public understanding and then position their stories within those currents.

Recognising reality

This does not mean manufacturing narratives or manipulating audiences. It means recognising reality. Every story enters an environment already crowded with assumptions, beliefs, fears, hopes, and expectations. People interpret new information through those existing lenses.

The job of the communicator is therefore not simply to tell a story. It is to understand the story beneath the story. At one level, this requires connecting the dots within a campaign so that every communication reinforces a consistent message. At another level, it requires connecting those dots to the larger conversations taking place in society. Only then does a story acquire meaning beyond itself. Only then does it become part of something larger.

And perhaps that is the enduring lesson from Harari’s observation about human civilization. Shared stories have always been the infrastructure of cooperation. They are the invisible architecture that allows societies, institutions, and markets to function. Communications, at its best, is not about creating noise.

It is about finding where a story fits within that architecture. Because the stories that endure are rarely the ones that stand alone. They are the ones that connect to a narrative people already recognise, and in recognising it, choose to share.