There seems to be a tendency among journalists, non-fiction authors and scholars to subtly craft their accounts and case studies so that they conform to what people intuitively expect from a "good story." I've been trying to find some extant research on the subject, but have only managed to find some references to "narrative fallacy/bias" and to some work in journalism studies [1], neurology of narratives [2] and in historiography [3]. I'm sure there have to be some other works and would be glad for any help in locating pertinent research!
[1] Journalism as Storytelling, Coverage as Narrative
ROEH, ITZHAK. The American Behavioral Scientist 33.2 (Nov 1, 1989): 162.
[2] The Neurology of Narrative. Kay Young and Jeffrey L. Saver. SubStance
Vol. 30, No. 1/2, Issue 94/95: Special Issue: On the Origin of Fictions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2001), pp. 72-84
[3] White, H. (1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe.
I'm afraid I don't have specific references for you, but I don't think this is a subtle bias, I think it's very deliberate - when taking classes on how to talk about my research to journalists I've been very explicitly told that a good news story needs to be a narrative, not just in terms of beginning, middle, end but also in the sense that there needs to be a problem that is solvable, there needs to be a helper and an opponent. This is all good old literary structuralism/narratology (Greimas etc) that I recognise from studying literary theory, but as I am not an expert on research on journalism my best adv ice would be to look at journalism textbooks, which I suspect will explicitly tell students to craft their work narratively. You'll probably also find further refererences there.
Greimas' actant model is summarised in the first paragraph of this wikipedia article, with a link to the academic paper he wrote on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actant
How are you defining "research"? Is it possible to escape narrative bias? Perhaps deconstruction theory and work by Derrida would address the subject, but then that may lead to more bias literature.
Not too long ago, noise from a robust, 2-person quarrel woke me up early in the morning, on a peninsula outside of Stockholm. They're brothers. One thinks journalism (whole media system) is reliably full-proof, and news get published whenever there is something relevantly good to report. The other one is conspirationist and thinks that news reports don't get published, even if they fit the journal parameters -- especially when the stories negate the interest and reputation of the journal company along with the Status Quo regulating it...... I recommend you to research literature about "Pathological Rationalism" in journalism..... periodical/publications in underground press/clandestine press (i.e. media released without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant governmental / religious / institutional group). Hope that help. Good luck.
I don't see any problem in narrativizing scholarly findings. In order to be able to communicate there is no escape from putting your research into a narrative framework. It depends on what kind of narration you choose. There is more than just one model, narrations no longer has be told chronologically, there are more ways to propel the story than a single, goal-oriented protagonist and stories can have open endings. you have to find a mode of narration that fts your content, But in some way you have to include at least narrative elements in the presentation of your research.
While the issue relates to journalism in this particular case, it reaches far beyond into the philosophical realms. Questions of knowledge in terms of phenomenology and so forth were raised eons ago, and were "more recently" coined and canonized by Hegel and Kant; and then again widely confronted in the 20th century by everyone from Russell to Husserl to the French poststructuralist, Sartre et.al.
I terms of your question about narrative bias, I would definitely suggest your to read Lyotard's short and very accessible account on knowledge and its relation to narrative:
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/idav/documents/Lyotard_-_Postmodern_Condition.pdf
The main text is only about 70 pages, and you do not, in my opinion, need any specific insights on the various references Lyotard gives. It may not give you an empirical methodology, but I can only imagine that it would offer interesting perspectives on the subject.
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/idav/documents/Lyotard_-_Postmodern_Condition.pdf
Maybe these references (related to screenwriting field) can help you:
Rosenthal, Alan. From Chariots of Fire to The King's Speech: Writing Biopics and Docudramas, Southern Illinois University Press; 1st Edition edition, 2014.
---- “Why docudrama?” Fact and Fiction on tv (también incluye asuntos sobre películas), Carbondale: Southern Illinoism 1999.
KRAMER, MARK y Wendy CALL, Telling True Stories, Penguin, 2007.
From the adaptations studies' point of view:
LEICTH, Thomas, “Film adaptation and its discontents”. Chapter: "Based on a True Story”,John Hopkins, Baltimore, 2007.
Good luck!
Many thanks to everyone for your great answers, and my apologies for taking so long to respond - was away for a while and then kind of forgot all this.
But these are definitely extremely helpful suggestions and I'm certainly going to follow this path to see where it may lead. Thanks again, now I might know what to do as a postdoc :).
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