RE:"because people pull back during such periods and reassess their views and the stories they find believable.".....



Regardless of pullbacks, and even though"pullbacks" is a very good word to really ponder about now, what's really more important is the real focus of what, and how your opening sentence really veils the word "propaganda". The rest of the article really continues to further veil much of the rooted implications of just what propaganda is, and how easy it really is to manipulate populations.



Your text gives a gentle nudge to the overall focus, if there is any, to the overwhelming bulk of propaganda content that is in the bucket of public-focused- predigested and regurgitated just-in-time- content disseminated for carefully or really just AI edited acceptable public media bits of opinion content organized under specific word-topic and indexed data bases.



Narratives need to have some conclusion. If the narratives themselves really have no conclusion, and no direction, then yes, there is ultimately a logical conclusion that will, and can be found by AI in the nonsensical random pile. However, the logical conclusion may be the absolute negative, and totally unexpected result due to any and all circumstances beyond even any AI control functions.



Since "any and every way", seems to be the new reality for revealing any truth about our world today, here's a couple of good reads that probe the "narrative" that may add to the logical pile:



https://www.cato.org/commentary/1920s-income-tax-cuts-sparked-economic-growth-raised-federal-revenues



https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/think-trump-is-hitler-go-to-dachau/



Some facts really need to be examined about how any state looses all power to exist within any level, of any kind of any level, of any type of social contract when there is no funding left, due to no effective tax revenue streams to support a state based on any kind of social contract, at all.



Then, really examine: "Propagandists have always used ignorance to manipulate."



And, that little quote is a lead sentence from a paragraph, somewhere in that second link.