Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

Q1. Which of the following is not typical of a pandemic story, according to materials cited in the lecture?

A.   A plot beginning with the identification of an emerging infection.
B.  Discussion of the global networks through which an infection travels.
C.  A terse narrative detailing the development of a vaccine against the pandemic virus.
D.  Presentation of the pandemic as a ``spectral trauma'' lacking a distinct plot or clearly defined human agents.

Correct Answer: (C)   Options B and C are typical of pandemic narratives, according to Priscilla Wald. Option D is taken from Elizabeth Outka's description of the typical features of stories set during the outbreak of Spanish flu. This leaves Option C: the lecture does not discuss if vaccine development is typical of most pandemic narratives.

---

Q2. According to the lecture, which of the following is not true of the COVID stories posted on Wattpad?
A.  A majority explicitly concern the pandemic.
B.  A minority focus on more mundane, non-pandemic related topics.
C.  Many focus on communication topics relating to phones, screens, etc.
D.  Many are explicitly about the politics of the pandemic.

Correct Answer: (D).  The lecture does not discuss whether stories in the Wattpad corpus focus on the politics of the pandemic. By contrast, the lecture explicitly states that Options A and B are true of the Wattpad corpus, i.e., that 57% of Wattpad COVID stories explicitly concern the pandemic, while the rest (43%) do not. The lecture also explicitly states that Option C is true of the corpus, i.e. that communication topics are popular, especially among the more mundane COVID stories.

---

Q3. Which of the following accurately describes how Richard Jean So measures the "fabula" of a COVID story, the extent to which it is about COVID?

A. He uses a binary variable to indicate whether a given story is above a certain threshold of containing words from COVID-centric topics. 
B. He determines whether a story has a fully-connected network of characters. 
C. He measures the extent to which stories trade off between containing words from COVID-centric topics and having a fully-connected network of characters.
D. He compares the average length of stories that contain some words from COVID-centric topics (i.e. are "moderately about" COVID) to the average length stories with many words from COVID-centric topics (i.e. "very much about" COVID).

Correct Answer (A). Option B is incorrect because it describes So's technique for measuring sujet, rather than fabula. Option C describes So's final analysis, but this is broader than his specific treatment of fabula. Option D is invented, and would not be a good way of measuring fabula because the degree to which a story is about COVID does not depend directly on the length of that story. This leaves Option A as the correct answer; see also Lecture Overview: Key terms to keep in mind.