The underside of the infox, the Podcast podcast chronic

UK: elections polluted by infox

Boris Johnson's conservative party won a landslide victory in the December 13, 2019, early elections. The Tories leader praised this Friday morning tweeting, saying, " We live in the best democracy in the world ." A slogan in the form of provocation, not only in the eyes of its opponents, because it seems that the democratic debate was the big loser of these elections, literally polluted by infox.

Never have voters had so many means at their disposal to verify the statements of the candidates. For example, the online news sites " Full Fact ", " First draft ", which belongs to the network of journalists " cross check " for " cross check ", but also " Fact check " of channel 4, or still " reality check " of the BBC. All did a huge job of detecting infox, sparing no great political training, to achieve this conclusion: the overbid, manipulation of figures, the publication of fake graphics with fanciful data, the use of pseudo experts, false testimony has become the most popular ingredient in election campaigns. Millions of pounds have been spent on political ads on the networks, full of misinformation.

Despite all these new verification tools, nothing seems to prevent infox from circulating. This is illustrated by the case of the little boy photographed lying on the floor of the Leeds Hospital.

48 hours before the vote, the picture of little Jack on the ground with his breathing apparatus makes millions of views on social networks. Jeremy Corbyn does not resist exploiting this cliché with strong emotional content. He brandishes the front page of the newspaper with this photo in full rally to deplore the disrepair of public health services.

Boris Johnson, interviewed on this subject refuses to look at the photo-he will apologize thereafter. In the meantime, the machine of disinformation has been racing. The photo is presented - wrongly - on social networks as a staging . And these allegations are spreading at a tremendous speed, despite the investigation that testifies to the veracity of the story. Little Jack slept on the floor because the hospital had no bed for him.

Data journalists have been able to trace the circuits of misinformation. Twitter accounts linked to the conservative party did not hesitate to spread the infox. Fake Facebook accounts have relayed but also many unscrupulous Internet users. The lie is assumed.

As for the impact of this type of manipulation on the electorate, it remains difficult to measure. The infomation is confusing, but one can not establish a causal link between a false campaign and an election result. Nevertheless, manipulations leave traces on the internet. We ended up learning how the exploitation of the personal data of Facebook subscribers had been used, in June 2016, to target voters likely to lean in favor of Brexit. All ends up knowing each other.