Introduction: Narrative Literacy

To date, the notion of narrative literacy has remained underdeveloped. If it is used at all, it is mostly conceptualised as a creative skill: the capacity to turn experiences into narrative (Romero-Ivanova et al., 2019). In the context of our current “era of total narrativity” (Meneghelli 2013), in which everything either is, or should be presented as a story, it can be understood why this would be an important skill. In this special issue, however, we will argue for a more reflexive narrative literacy, in response to the “storytelling boom” (Mäkelä &amp; Meretoja, 2022) that has led to story-saturated public spheres, in which the power of narrative is employed, often in surprisingly sophisticated ways, to persuade and manipulate: from marketing to political spin, from change managers trying to get their workforce behind the company’s latest transition, to social media users successfully spreading the strangest conspiracy theories. In this context, we see a need for a narrative literacy that encompasses the ability to recognise narratives, to assess whether narration takes place in good or bad faith, and, through an increased awareness of how narrative functions, the ability to resist the persuasive force of storytelling (cf. Dillon and Craig 2022). We also argue that narrative literacy should be expanded to include not just the ability to storify experiences, but an increased awareness of the potential affects and effects of narrative and how these can (or should?) be leveraged.<br/>Conceptualised as such, narrative literacy can be summarised as the capacity to recognise how narratives are constructed (rather than neutral representations of life as it is), and how they may be used for persuasion. Narrative literacy enables us to critically reflect on how a given story negotiates certain values. Throughout the proposed contributions to this special issue, we will explore narrative literacy as (1) a skill that helps us to storify our experiences, but also to remain aware that the resulting narratives involve both selection and manipulation, with an inherent rhetoric; and (2) as the ability to recognise and ‘read’ both explicit and implicit narratives, as well as to reflect on why we interpret a certain narrative in a certain way (Korthals Altes 2014). <br/>The special issue covers a broad and interdisciplinary range of approaches. The papers offer analyses of case studies – both successful and failed – of narrative literacy in diverse settings: conspiracy theories spread through social media, health care, communication and journalism. A number of them assess the intertwinement of narrative literacy and futures literacy: the ability to think beyond assumptions about what the future will be like based on the current status quo, and instead consider scenarios that are more diverse and less easily foreseen. Two contributions, furthermore, explore how experiments with the literary form may improve our narrative literacy. Despite this diversity, one thing that all contributions have in common is that they do not just analyse their case studies to come to conceptual and theoretical insights in storytelling practices, but also consider how those insights may help us to design interventions in storytelling practices in the public sphere that may improve people’s narrative literacy. <br/>