Weaponized Storytelling: Disinformation and Narrative Building
Author : Ajay Patel
Abstract :
Narrative makes, disinformation believable’–making both narrative and disinformation as two symbiotically linked phenomena. Narrated disinformation is a much more dangerous phenomenon than the military-nuclear technologies. It has the power to mould the world if under the hand of individuals like Hitler and Putin–who all relied upon on this phenomenon to build a grand-narrative. In this way narrated disinformation casts or creates a world where people’s thinking and opinions moves along with the disinformation induced perspective and its culmination builds the aforementioned grand-narrative. It doesn’t matter what is the truth, only that it matters is that it is believable. So in this sense, ‘narrative makes, disinformation believable’. Only disinformation in isolation amounts to nothingness. It only becomes lethal when it is transformed into a narrative. In this essay we will see how disinformation is used as a narrative building tool and the process of the said `building’ narrative. We will analyze this process of narrative building with the help of three case studies–one, text Weak Strongman (media manipulation in Putin’s Russia) by Timothy Frye; second text ‘Soul stealers of The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768’ (Tales of the China Clipper) by Philip A. Kuhn and third text The Jews Enemy (Nazi Propaganda during Second World War & the Holocaust) by Jeffrey Herf–all in a global perspective.
Keywords :
Disinformation, Narrative building, Weak Strongman, Storytelling.
