The pitfalls of disinformation: knowing them to better thwart them

A woman walks past a mural by French artist JR on a building in New York, April 22, 2020. © Timothy A. Clary / AFP

Text by: Olivier Favier Follow

7 mins

In a world where information circulates at an unequaled speed, it is sometimes difficult to disentangle the true from the false, the seriousness of a journalistic work from the more or less probable formatting of a false content.

This misinformation can take many forms. 

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The requirement of neutrality, control, diversity and respect for sources are the alpha and omega of serious journalistic work.

More than ever, this comes up against the dissemination of numerous contents, in particular on the Web, on “re-information” sites, platforms and social networks.  

All seek to establish for various reasons what they call an “alternative truth”.

The expression is indeed problematic, because if the truth is complex, that it can and must be perceived from multiple angles and points of view, it does not coexist with a contrary truth.  

The facts, the dates, the figures, are elements open to interpretations, but we cannot modify them in the direction of what we would like to demonstrate, unless, of course, we have new and proven information. 

Truth and ideology 

Sometimes information disturbs, confuses, upsets our certainties.

It then feeds our thinking.

But it can also thwart interests or beliefs to such an extent that some will not hesitate to deny or minimize its impact. 

To explain the indulgences of a fringe of the European and Latin American radical left for the very right-wing Russian President Vladimir Putin, after his armed support for the regime of Bashar el-Assad and his decision to invade Ukraine, an old concept has come back into fashion: “campism”.  

Until the 1980s, the USSR embodied for some, simply because of its rivalry with the United States, a form of anti-imperialism – even though its desire for domination had been manifested by arms at very many times, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan.

Despite the total ideological break of today's Russia with the communist model, the reflexes of the bipolar world have sometimes remained. 

On the side of the far right and conservative movements, we advocate "freedom of speech" when it comes to thwarting the convictions against sexist or racist remarks, for example.

" 

" will be the response to the reminder that the law punishes discrimination. 

The defense of minorities is thus swept away with the back of the hand as falling under “well-meaning” or “moraline”.

Another term that has spread in recent years, “wokism”, came from the American right to stigmatize progressive activists and their “woke” [“awakened”] culture.  

The term is much more offensive, because it suggests that any criticism of our society and its injustices would be the work of an organized ideological movement, which would no longer just be ridiculous, but would aim to threaten the established order.  

What makes “news” 

The set of opinions accepted over time in society is called, in sociology, the “Overton window”.

At the beginning of the 20th century, for example, colonization was widely perceived in metropolitan France as a “work of civilization”.

Such a definition is now only defended by very conservative circles, to the point that in 2017, the future French President Emmanuel Macron did not hesitate to qualify colonization as a “crime against humanity”.  

But developments can take the opposite path.

The trivialization of racist comments in public debate in France – including those of a candidate for the 2022 presidential election whom the courts have condemned – has thus been able to increase the public's tolerance threshold, helping to make assertions acceptable. which, ten years ago, would have raised an outcry. 

The prioritization of information – what is or is not considered to be top news – is the result of many factors.

One of them is the so-called “proximity law” or what is known in journalistic jargon as the “dead mile” phenomenon.

A drama will have more importance in our eyes if it is close to us.

Much has been said about the difference in treatment between Ukrainian and Afghan refugees in recent months.  

From relativism to misinformation 

But minimizing the importance of information can also give rise to real manipulation work.

A classic technique is "whataboutism", which consists of diverting the conversation to other subjects that are supposedly just as important or to operate what is called an accusatory inversion.

During the Cold War, each side thus pointed out the crimes of the other so as not to have to answer for those who were accused of it. 

When that is no longer enough, we resort to false information, fake news or

.

To fight against this phenomenon, many media have set up verification cells in order, among other things, to determine if information is talked about because it is simply surprising or if this "buzz" is based on a fabrication.  

The formula has flourished and is now used by sites that use the codes to discredit, this time, real information.

Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda sites have been reposting accusatory images for Russian troops with the word “Fake” stamped in red, without further explanation.

President Putin and his relatives thus qualify the most serious accusations of abuses by Russian troops, for example in Boutcha. 

Fake news is today, like rumors in the past, a real danger to democratic life.

As Italian computer scientist Alberto Brandolini has shown, denying fake news requires much more time than it takes to utter and spread it.

“

,” wrote the English philosopher Francis Bacon already at the beginning of the 17th century, “

 » 

From conspiracy to anti-system logic 

The lie can set itself up as a system.

It then gives rise to a paranoid interpretation of reality, conspiracy.

The reasoning can be elaborate, present the appearance of a “counter-investigation”, it remains built on false premises, erroneous, diverted or partial data.  

Conspiracy exploits our fascination with what is hidden from us, which is also the basis of a perverse effect known to journalists as the Streisand effect.

In 2003, singer Barbra Streisand wanted to prevent the disclosure of an aerial photograph of her property, thereby arousing curiosity and obtaining the exact opposite of the desired effect. 

This taste for “alternative truths” carries us into what is called the reign of “post-truth”.

One of the starkest examples of recent years is Donald Trump's repeated lie about rigging the US election, which no investigation and denial has completely stopped.  

It has also given rise to the figure of the “contrarian” (from the English

) who opposes on principle what he perceives as the dominant opinion.

This attitude, also called “anti-system”, is very different from critical thinking, which consists in maintaining the autonomy of one's opinions.

The “contrarian”, on the other hand, is dependent on the opinion he denounces, since he needs it to express his own. 

This is how the contrarian logic fed a large part of the antivax discourse, then of the pro-Putin discourse.

A recent survey showed that in Canada, 88% of those vaccinated with three doses thought that Vladimir Putin was committing war crimes compared to 32% of those who were not vaccinated.

In either case, many will have taken sides against what they saw as the dominant discourse.

On this part of the population, the evidence provided and the reasoning supported will often have little hold, because it is perceived from the outset as part of a vast propaganda discourse. 

Our selection on the subject:

• To listen :

→ Fight against infox or fight for information

→ How do networks manipulate our opinions?

→ “Dark information”: investigation of these info counterfeiters who produce fake news

→ Why so many misconceptions?

How to cultivate critical thinking?

• To read :

→ The factory of conspiracy

→ Odil, the French-speaking platform that relays initiatives to fight against disinformation

→ Artificial intelligence to fight against online disinformation

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