Fake news

Fake news

To deceive = manipuler, tromper

Fake news aim at manipulating and deceiving the reader or viewer. Reality is changed on purpose (= exprès).

The intention / aim is to make you vote or react in a certain way.

Political parties, activists, even foreign nations use fake news as a new form of propaganda.

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On the cartoon (=dessin humoristique) we can see two people, a man and a woman. They are in the street, they are looking at their mobile phones and are probably reading their newsfeed (=fil d’actualité) on a social network. The man is complaining about the large number of fake news or misleading information online. The woman is puzzled (=perplexe) because she doesn’t know how to notice when a post, photo or video is biased (=biaisé, de parti pris, pas neutre) / to spot fake news.

People tend to use social media as their source of information / outlet, so they run the risk (=courir le risqué) of reading more fake news than in the past when they read newspapers and magazines, listened to the radio or watched TV. Traditional news media check their sources and the information they publish, it is not the case of social networks. They claim (=affirmer, prétendre) that they are not a media outlet, that they don’t have to check what people put online because their aim is to provide (=fournir) a platform for friends to chat and post information about their daily life.

Fake news and how to spot it

This document is a video from the BBC (the national British news channel and radio). It is a reliable source.

There is a person speaking during the whole video, he is a disinformation specialist, he is called Shayan Sardarizadeh. He first says that there is much misleading information on social media. It goes viral very fast, much faster than a true piece of news because it is more provocative, scandalous, or surprising, it looks more interesting.

So, we must be careful about what we read online, be sceptical (=être sceptique).

The first tip is to check the source, make sure that it is reliable (=fiable). On a social network, there is the person who shared the post or picture or video, and the person who published it.

The language used in an article should be neutral, if it is sensationalist or laudatory you should be extra careful about it. When you read a meme you should reverse check the quote (=citation) to make sure it was said by the person it is attributed to.

The second tip is to check precisely a video or picture to find out where the scene took place, if the document is new or if it first appeared online a few months or years ago.

The third tip is to be careful about ‘bots’ or algorithms which repost a lot of fake news and aim at manipulating people. That happens frequently during electoral campaigns.  These bots have suspicious accounts : their pictures have been taken from the internet, they post more than 70 times a day on a regular basis and they never publish personal information, only share posts.

The war on truth

To destabilise democracies in the USA, Canada and Europe, Russian agents created false identities and fake Facebook accounts to publish misleading information.

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