Contenu du sommaire : La fausse information de la Gazette à Twitter

Local authorities circumventing disinformation in Lyon at the start of the Religion wars
The city of the 16th century is a place of many whispers and of all kinds of news. Amongst them, fake news spread largely and can sometimes pose a threat to local powers who must manage this flow in order to protect their mode of governance. The urban elites have therefore attempted to work their way around this threat strategically, in order to counter the danger of disinformation. The example of the city of Lyon at the start of the Religion wars illustrates how the authorities endeavored to transform fake news into a political asset, in order to defend the urban community's interests, notably thanks to their own informative media.

The Fake Deaths of the Sun King, or the Impossible Control of Information
From the very beginning of Louis XIV's seven-decade-long reign, fake news about the state of his health have repeatedly circulated. Such a recurrence of spurious information can partly be explained by the general suspicion against the two official newspapers of the time, La Gazette and Le Mercure Galant. However, by trying to read between the lines of official press, foreign journalists and gossip-mongering nouvellistes often contributed to creating even more fraudulent information. Hence rumors, sometimes downright outlandish, virally circulated from word of mouth or via the press amidst the French Court, spread from Paris to other foreign capitals, and acquired the status of alternative facts.

China: official communication challenged by false news and rumours
Favoured by the emergence of social media and the lack of credibility of official information, false news and rumours proliferate in China. This article explains how these phenomena occur in a country led by a power that censors information, it presents their messengers and exposes the reasons why the public considers false news and rumours as potentially true. Finally, it analyses the authorities' repressive response to the challenge faced by the official communication, in the centre of which lies the credibility of the information accessible to the Chinese people.

The fact-checking to restore the truth: the ambivalence for the media in front of false news
Mainstream media are ever more numerous to display their fact-checking work, particularly in politics, through special journalistic formats and headings. However, surprisingly, some of these same media continue to spread otherwise fake news. This obvious paradox can be explained by fact-checking's history : it was born in the States during the 1920's and its modern version seems like a reinvention or an adaptation to nowadays economical and editorial media constraints. This will of scrupulous verification of journalistic contents seems to transform itself in an ostentatious verification strategy.

Between the truth of the facts and the truthfulness of discourses: the TV journalistic manipulations
In this article, false news is envisaged from the study of four examples of TV journalistic manipulations. The relations of these journalistic discourses deliberately false with the lie and the fraudulent loan of images are to be underlined. As a type of deception, false information breaks not only the requirement of journalistic truth, but also that of the sincerity of journalistic discourses. Understanding journalistic deceptions and by extension the fake news means fundamentally reaffirming the existence of a responsibility of the media in society.

False information in Wikipedia, a neutrality issue
Is false information approached in Wikipedia as an epistemological concern ? When and how does falseness become subject to discussion in an editorial context where the truth is not supposed to be debated ? Taking the case of the entry “Aéroport du grand ouest” (cf : Notre-Dame-des-Landes) I will demonstrate that false information is identified in Wikipedia as a breach of its rules and principles regarding verifiability and neutrality more than a factual error.

Digital rumors factory. How falses informations circulate on Twitter?
In this article we highlight the fact that a digital platform like Twitter is not a way to produce false information, but to set it in motion. We discuss, from the study of three rumors following the attacks of July 14, 2016 in Nice in France, how Twitter promotes the circulation of these rumors as much as their denial.

Rumors from overseas at Louis XIV's era : verification and deformation of news in erudite letters
How an information were considered as true or false in Louis XIVth era and good for publication ? Focusing on news circulation from extra-European worlds, by nature uncertain, and actors of these publication it's possible to describe the process of verification of their content. Using printed sources (gazette, mercure, books) as well as handwritten sources (hand newsletters and letters) about the same event permit to illustrate several publication's aim and how the news support and narrative variated several times. Michel Begon, Rochefort's intendant, is the correspondent of Esprit Cabart de Villermont who's connected to journalists : Donneau de Visé, author of the Mercure Galant especially. In letters, the news is accredited by a series of writing process in order to check the integrity of transmission and the fact that an event occurred. This has to be distinguished from a second step where the information is written for its publication : issues are no more about fact but politics. Is it wise to publish a news ? News is deemed real by the sheer act of writing and publishing them. This also commits the credibility of the publisher. To this point narrative had also to be appropriate in the Navy political field as well as in the Louis XIV's absolutist aim in order to be published with a limited consideration for the truth. Because publication credit engage intermediary credit, avoiding an information obviously fake were necessary : it has to remain believable to not harm those who transmitted it.

Holocaust denial and Conspiracism: typical examples of Disinformation
Holocaust denial and conspiracism are both typical examples of disinformation. They are also intimately and historically linked. The denial of the genocide of the Jews, inaugurated by Maurice Bardèche three years after the end of the Second World War, installs at the center of its discourse a so-called « international Jewish conspiracy » that would have fabricated this « xxth Century Hoax » in order to justify the existence of the State of Israel and extort reparations payments to Germany. The ideologists Robert Faurisson and Roger Garaudy, followed by their political heirs, cast « to evolve » the denialism taking it out of the confidentiality and giving it an international echo. A galaxy combining conspiracy theorists and Holocaust denials emerged following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Against the backdrop of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism, it re-enacts an anti-Semitic discourse that places at its heart the denunciation of the « Jewish power ».

Chernobyl, an ecological catastrophe: the regiment of false information
The media coverage of the catastrophe that took place on the 28th April 1986 in the nuclear power station of Chernobyl in the Ukraine combined all the modalities of false information.Subjected to an imperative leaving close to no space to indecision or the undecidable the media covered the accident and its consequences to the best of their abilities. Indeed, the myth of the toxic cloud, said to have spared all of France- a specimen of the so called “canard” (fake news), the newspapers of the XIX criticised- was quickly challenged. It consequently dominated the debates and became a subject in itself : In what way is false information spread ? However, factuality is not equal to truth and when the former is unachievable than the latter is generally of a more controversial nature. This was the case for the reflection on sanitary damages caused by the passing of the famous toxic cloud, whose passing remains to this day a controversial subject.This article takes another look at the regiments of falseness that constituted the framework for this long during saga : The falseness due to lack of information, the falseness because of the withholding of information, the falseness resulting from various types of state-lead manipulation, and finally the falseness defined by an epistemic failure- considering the difficulty journalists encountered when covering a subject that was both technical and “explosive”.If the media did diffuse false information, that is less due to professional insufficiency than to the combination of various factors amongst which the expert's reluctance to share information, considered embarrassing and/or troublesome, with the journalists and the public must be highlighted. This was furthered by politicians who were withholding information, worried of shaking the public confidence in the nuclear industry. Fully condemned since the 8th May 1986, this particular practice is synonymous of this “government of secrets that is characteristic of the most nuclearized country in the world”. However, it was up to journalists to finally provide the public with the access to information. By doing so it was them who reconstructed a public and democratic sphere previously jeopardized by the authorities' habit of withholding information.