Whereas the facts layer represents the objective, verifiable data layer, Chron has another narratives layer on top of it.
An author can create a narrative, which is basically a series of events/actors/political entities, all taken from the facts layer, linked together chronologically. And each item in the narrative has a small description, written by the author itself. Linked together, they form a story.
A narration is a step in the narrative. Concretely, each item consists of:
- one or more facts taken from the facts layer
- one or more media attachments (description text, video, photo etc).
A narrative is then just an ordered series of narrations.
UX-wise, similar to This one about Napoleonic wars. For example, if you search for "history of electricity", the map will take you from Franklin to Volta to Faraday each time you press "next", and on each stop there'll be a small description of what happened.
Narratives are by nature subjective. They are the author's way of telling a story. For example, the "WW2" narrative will definitely not be the same if told by a French or by a German university, although they both take data from the same facts layer.
Protected narratives are narratives that are owned by an author, and can only be modified by the author. They are however readable by the public. Chron's idea is to have some known authorities (e.g. universities or historians) create their own narratives on their field of study, and present it to the world.
This may also be seen as a branding opportunity for them, which in this case can be turned into a source of revenue for Chron.
Public narratives are narratives that can be modified by anyone, like a Wikipedia article. But instead of reading the article, the narrative will take you from item to item on the map.
Read more in the chapter about collaboration.