Disinformation stirs tensions between France and Mali

Audio 03:15

Serge Daniel DR

By: Sophie Malibeaux |

Grégory Genevrier Follow

3 min

French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Mali on Monday, December 20, 2021. A visit to clarify relations between the two countries, as matters of tension have accumulated in recent months.

Mistrust of France is fueled by disinformation on social networks.

And RFI is not spared by the infox.

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Our correspondent Serge Daniel has been working in Mali for twenty years now. He has been the target of a disinformation campaign on social networks for some time. A video circulating on Facebook accuses France of doing everything to " 

sink the Malian Transition

 ". Its author claims that our colleague would be used for this purpose. 

This publication is part of an anti-French narrative that presents France as an ally of terrorists in the Sahel.

This video, already seen more than 140,000 times, claims to make revelations about Serge Daniel, and claims to have evidence, which it nevertheless refrains from providing.

The publication quotes elements from the life of Serge Daniel.

In particular the fact that he is Franco-Beninese, which is no secret.

Our fellow fact-checkers in Mali were not mistaken.

The BenbereVérif site exposes the manipulation from December 8, 2021. 

Please note, these comments attributed to Serge Daniel are handled⤵️ # ReseauxSocial #BenbereVerif https://t.co/OPkpTjregn

- Benbere Mali (@BenbereM) December 8, 2021

On the incriminated video, we see a series of photos of the journalist, accompanied by excerpts from an interview, and a synthetic voice which accuses him, wrongly, of "

 selling his people

 ".

This same voice accuses him of being " 

in direct contact with the terrorists present in northern Mali 

".

An accusation that has no basis.

The soundtrack adds that " 

every time a mission must be carried out by terrorists in Mali, Serge Daniel is aware of everything

 ".

This is a deliberately erroneous interpretation of an interview he held on

Burkina Faso Radio Broadcasting

in 2018.

Slanderous accusations

What is perverse in this affair is the insinuation of proximity to the terrorists. In fact, if we refer to the original interview, granted two years ago to RTB, our correspondent explains well how he deals with this sensitive subject of terrorist attacks. Claims of attacks can reach it, but they are not systematically disseminated and in any case, never without verification, in particular with the local authorities. 

This is the basic job of the journalist.

Receiving demands from terrorists is not relaying their propaganda.

The original interview is quite clear, the accusations made on this Facebook account followed by nearly 12,000 people are unwarranted.

In addition to the spurious use of this old interview, the disinformation campaign also uses two fake tweets.

Screenshots / Twitter / Montage RFI © Screenshots / Twitter / Montage RFI

These fabrications supposedly complement the message of the video.

In essence, the journalist would apologize for working for France.

But in reality, these are invented texts, affixed to tweets by Serge Daniel.

These are low-end assemblies since neither the typography nor the graphic charter of Twitter are respected.

Serge Daniel filed a complaint. 

Russian influence 

These are anonymous attacks and therefore difficult to trace.

But by examining the divisions, we see that those who help to amplify the circulation of the infox, are also ardent defenders of a Russo-Malian rapprochement.

The artificial nature of the amplification is obvious, because the infox is sometimes retweeted every minute by the same account.

The most active tweeters are also broadcasting messages to the glory of Vladimir Putin, calling on Wagner's Russian mercenaries to come to Mali and denouncing the arrival of Emmanuel Macron on Monday, December 20. 

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  • Infox

  • Social networks

  • Russia

  • Mali

  • France

  • RFI

  • Media education

  • Emmanuel Macron

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