Screen Stories and Moral Understanding: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

The stories we tell and show, in whatever medium, play a vital role in human cultures by contributing to moral understanding. This complex cognitive achievement involves the ability to understand why, ask the right questions, categorize, apply models to specific incidents, and make connections between morally charged situations. Screen Stories and Moral Understanding explores the conditions under which stories on screens can lead to moral understanding, the means by which moving image fictions can transfer knowledge to and cultivate perspectives in viewers, the role of affect in generating moral understanding, the viewer's engagement with characters, and what we do with screen stories after viewing them.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 10 October 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

The narratives we create and share, across various mediums, serve diverse functions within human societies
cultures. One such purpose is to foster moral understanding. Moral understanding surpasses mere knowledge; it encompasses a multifaceted cognitive accomplishment that may involve one or more of the following: the capacity to comprehend the reasons behind actions, the skill of asking pertinent questions, the ability to categorize information, the application of models to specific scenarios, or the ability to establish connections between morally charged situations that share a common underlying significance. While the fields of communication, psychology, philosophy, and film and media studies have made substantial scholarly strides in this domain, they adopt distinct grounding assumptions and employ different terminologies. Screen Stories and Moral Understanding approaches the topic from an interdisciplinary standpoint and examines the circumstances under which stories we encounter on screens, such as movies, streamed series, and television, can foster moral understanding among viewers.

In five comprehensive sections, this book delves into the nature of moral understanding in relation to screen stories, the mechanisms through which moving image fictions can impart knowledge and cultivate perspectives in viewers, the role of emotion in shaping moral understanding, the viewer's engagement with characters, and the subsequent actions we take regarding screen stories after experiencing them.

Weight: 380g
Dimension: 235 x 157 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197665671