From Fiction to Fact-Checking: Applying Literary Analysis to Combat Mis/Disinformation in the Post-Truth Era

Abstract

The fast pace of misinformation and disinformation poses a massive challenge to democratic deliberation and epistemic trust in what is now termed a ‘post-truth era’ in which affective affinity and identity alignment can often outcompete evidence-based judgment. The sophistication of the stories, their emotional appeal, and platform logics with which misleading stories are created and shared have not been matched by fact-checking and media literacy programs. This study suggests an interdisciplinary approach: the use of tools of literary studies, particularly narratology and rhetorical analysis, to augment media literacy and cognitive robustness in the face of mis/disinformation. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of selected novels (Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) alongside empirically documented cases of political, health, and climate-related disinformation, the study elaborates a Narrative–Literary Media Resilience (NLMR) model. The model brings new concepts to the fore, including unreliable narration, focalization, multi-perspectivity, narrative gaps, and satirical defamiliarisation, to create a systematic examination of how narratives are constructed, framed and emotionally manipulated, as well as whether they are factually correct or not, thus leading to the concept of “form-checking”. Media literacy is reinforced by literary training, which (1) increases the awareness of selective disclosure and ethical slippage in the form of unreliable narration, (2) makes people aware of framing and ideological bias through focalization, and (3) encourages disciplined scepticism about misinformation through using ambiguity or irony, in addition to prebunking methods. Through a blend of narratology, cognitive psychology and communication research, the article suggests that literary analysis can be incorporated into media literacy curricula to develop diagnostic reading practices, which precede traditional fact checking practices.