Narrative theory analyzes how media texts convey meaning through storytelling. It is important to study because narratives are how audiences understand the meaning of different types of media like TV, films, novels and advertisements. There are three key narrative theorists discussed - Vladimir Propp identified common character archetypes like heroes and villains that appear across different stories. Tzvetan Todorov proposed that most narratives follow a pattern of equilibrium being disrupted by an outside event that must be resolved. Roland Barthes suggested narratives can be broken down into codes of events and puzzles that engage audiences in deriving meaning.