Examining Narrative Patterns in Disinformation and Trustworthy News: A Comparative Analysis

In this study, we examined how disinformation and trustworthy news differ in their narrative construction across nine theoretically motivated dimensions. We address the following research question: how do disinformation and trustworthy news differ in narrative organisation and epistemic grounding? We analysed 610 English-language news articles (308 pro-Kremlin disinformation and 302 trustworthy articles) covering selected international events from 2015 to 2023, using data derived from the EUvsDisinfo dataset. Narrative elements were extracted using a hybrid pipeline combining large language models and knowledge graphs, resulting in article-level representations for comparative analysis. Ordinal scores (1–5) were assigned for emotional intensity, cultural complexity, conspiracist structure, source diversity, crisis intensity, evidence support, media control, solutions orientation and memory work. Non-parametric comparisons showed significant differences in eight of these nine dimensions. Disinformation articles revealed stronger conspiracist structuring and greater meta-media hostility, as well as significantly lower source diversity, evidence support, cultural complexity and weaker memory work. Emotional intensity did not differ reliably across disinformation and trustworthy news. A simple additive NarrativeRisk score, which we designed as a transparent and interpretable summary measure, showed between-group differences in both parametric and non-parametric tests. As a univariate discrimination indicator, NarrativeRisk achieved ROC AUC ≈ 0.84. Cluster analysis identified three recurrent narrative profiles, including one dominated by disinformation, one by trustworthy news and one mixed profile. These findings indicate that disinformation is distinguished not only by factual unreliability but also by different patterns in narrative organisation.