The Fortress Within: Belief, Identity, and the Limits of Media Literacy
Why Facts Fail When Meaning Holds Us Together
This article is the third in a four-part series titled The Limits of Enlightenment, exploring how identity, emotion, and narrative manipulation challenge traditional models of media literacy. Each piece builds toward a reconceptualization of media literacy as a practice of civic resilience in a polarized, affect-driven information ecosystem.
In 2015, as refugees moved through Europe in search of safety, the Hungarian government launched a billboard campaign: "If you come to Hungary, you must respect our laws," the signs read in Hungarian. The message was not directed at the refugees, it was for Hungarians. These were not public information notices. They were symbolic fortifications, reminders of who belonged and who did not. The point was not to inform. It was to affirm identity.
We were made believe that an accurate set of facts may change minds, but this is not happening. Not just in Hungary, but in classrooms, in online debates, and across the civic sphere. The failure is not a matter of ignorance, it is a function of belief. Beliefs are not freestanding claims we revise when shown contradictory evidence. They are embedded in systems, tied to memory, identity, and the narratives that give us continuity. Offering a counter-fact is not just an informational act. It pulls at the stitching of a much larger fabric: how someone understands the world and their place in it.
Social psychologist Milton Rokeach saw beliefs as forming a hierarchy. At the core are the beliefs closest to identity and values. Around them are intermediate beliefs, translating those values into worldviews. On the periphery are beliefs about specific facts or events, which can shift without shaking the structure. While peripheral beliefs are flexible, core beliefs are not. If you try challenge the core, the whole structure resists.
Philosopher W.V.O. Quine proposed a different image: belief as a web. In this view, ideas are not stacked but interconnected. Beliefs hold together by coherence. If a new fact aligns with what is already believed, it is woven in. If it contradicts central strands, tension builds. The issue is not just truth, but pattern. What does or does not fit the shape of things already known?
This is why reasoning often fails to persuade. We imagine it as a method for uncovering truth. More often, it serves to protect coherence. When a belief is challenged, reasoning acts less like a neutral evaluator and more like a repair crew. We reinterpret, resist, or redirect. This is not a sign of irrationality. It is a sign that minds are designed not just to process information but to protect meaning.
Belief is not confined to individuals, it is also distributed. We hold our beliefs with others, in peer groups, in families, in digital enclaves, and across national narratives. These shared contexts shape what feels credible. A claim that seems implausible on its own may feel legitimate when echoed by a trusted community. Belief gains weight not only from evidence, but from ritual, repetition, and resonance with group norms. This is not a flaw in how humans think, it is how social animals build worlds.
This helps explain why political information is rarely assessed on its own terms. It is often judged by whether it reinforces a collective story. After the Brexit vote, some voters admitted, "I know it’s not accurate, but it makes sense to me". The statement was not about factual precision, it was about emotional logic, how an idea fit within a broader structure of belonging.
Misinformation thrives in these architectures. The danger is not just falsehood, but that it enters a system already primed to metabolize it. Russia’s disinformation strategies make this clear. Their goal is not to persuade: it is to erode coherence itself, to flood the space with so many contradictions that belief becomes fragile. The effect is disorientation, not conversion.
This brings us to media literacy. Traditional approaches teach individuals to verify sources or detect manipulation. These skills matter, but they are not enough. What is needed now is a form of media literacy that understands belief as socially and structurally embedded. To challenge a belief is not to remove a faulty claim, it is to intervene in a network of identity, memory, and social trust. That requires a different kind of awareness that does not ask simply, "Is it true?" but "What function does this belief serve? What identity does it protect? What story does it extend?"
To understand belief this way is not to excuse falsehood. It is to navigate the terrain on which persuasion and resistance actually occur. Belief is not a cabinet of files. It is a structure we inhabit. It stabilizes us, binds us to others. When it is reinforced, we feel safe. When it is challenged, we defend it, not because we lack reasoning, but because we live in meaning.
Media literacy, seen in this light, becomes less about individual acuity and more about collective resilience. It is the capacity to live with difference while preserving the integrity of shared spaces. It is not just about knowing more. It is about holding together a reality that facts alone cannot sustain.
Belief, in the end, is not what we think. It is how we remain intact. Or come undone.