What is Cautionary Tale

Cautionary tales are structured stories that describe protagonists who are faced with critical decisions and often take wrong turns and suffer for it, sometimes irretrievably; these tales warn people of dangers. In cybersecurity communications, cautionary tales are an integral part of the strategic messaging. This chapter explores the uses of multimodal cautionary tales in strategic cybersecurity communications, in a convenience sampling of the following: mass-scale search terms, academic and mass media text sets, social imagery, related tags networks, and social video. This work identifies their strengths and weaknesses in suggesting methods for promoting personal cybersecurity safety. Some suggestions for higher efficacy in cybersecurity cautionary tales are suggested, in light of the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.