International Scientific Colloquium Journalism and platforms: Information, infomediation and fake news. Infomediation platforms (Smyrnaios, Rebillard, 2019) have become the
dominant force of a ‘reintermediation’ of information online by organising a
large variety of contents and making them available to internet users.
Information from journalists, which we would qualify here as news, finds itself
subject to exogenous imperatives which finish by influencing editorial
decisions on information medias (Bell, Owen, 2017). This ‘platformisation’ of
information online has coincided with an acceleration of the circulation of
non-journalistic information besides/news/, from satire to disinformation,
which increases the offer of contents proposed to internet users. In this open
environment where journalistic productions, disinformation, click traps,
infotainment and satire live together, journalism needs to rethink itself.
The aim of this conference is to explore new journalistic practices in
relation to “fake news” at the heart of environments dominated by platforms. By
“fake news”, and because the polysemy of the term has sometimes contributed to its
instrumentalisation, we mean more precisely ‘information problems’ (Wardle,
Derakhsan, 2019) in all their diversity.
As such, the conference will consider the question of fact-checking and
the way it has been repositioned by criticising “fake news” (Bigot, 2019).
Fact-checking has been called upon during electoral campaigns and is becoming
increasingly part of a close relationship of collaboration and dependence
between editors and web platforms which should be brought into question
(Smyrnaios, Chauvet, Marty, 2017; Alloing, Vanderbiest, 2018). Over and above
the current political situation, “fake news” on the subjects of health, the
environment and even clickbait presenting false promises and strange
revelations, questions the expert status of specialist journalists as well as
other concerned parties.
Research Questions
- At the information source: media education in the face of the platforms
- Fighting against “fake news”, a reaffirmation of journalism?
- Political journalism and health journalism: the challenge of “fake news” to specialised journalists
- Reception of false information and platforms: a reinforcement of cognitive biais?
At the information source: media education in the face of the platforms
“I saw it on Facebook”. This unequivocal statement from Reuters
Institute (Kalogeropoulos, Newman, 2017) demonstrates the way digital
environments have changed our relationship to information. The intermediary, in
this case Facebook, is more powerful than traditional media as a source of
memorised information, opening the door wide to “fake news” by rendering the
different sources of information interchangeable. This deconstruction of the
source, which journalists call upon and confront, which media use as a reliable
source of information is renewing the historic inspiration of media studies.
The necessity of a pedagogical attention to source, the one which we often
consult via the intermediary of web platforms, overlaps on to understanding the
logic of information production. The platforms also present themselves
pedagogically when they contribute to highlighting the wheat and the chaff in
all the content they host (Joux, 2018). However they are both advocates and judges, which explains why media
studies is increasingly transforming into education on web platforms. What are
the stakes created by the erasure of the source in the ecosystems where the
platforms are dominating? What are the new relationships between information
source and information as a source? What are the challenges for media studies?
Fighting against “fake news”, a reaffirmation of journalism?
Fact-checking has been experiencing an important development in publishing
since the 2000’s (Bigot, 2017). The increased visibility of “fake news” has
given it a new role since the beginning of the 2010’s. While dressing itself up
as a social mission with obvious uses, fact-checking has restated the
importance of journalism in producing news information in the public sphere. It
has also criticised the illusion that anyone can be a journalist which the ease
of internet sharing may have led us to hope for (Mathien, 2010). This
reaffirmation of specific journalistic savoir-faire is supported differently by
the platforms. Facebook, as well Google (through the CrossCheck project),
finances publishing to check certain contents, which circulate in their
ecosystem. However, this recognition of fact-checking by the platforms can be
considered as ambivalent. If it relies on the education of internet users
thanks to the visibility of journalistic work, it also corresponds to the
imposition of priorities financed by the platforms in publishing. We propose to
question these major themes here, fact-checking and its ambitions for
journalism as well as the economic and editorial relationships between the
platforms and newsrooms. Political journalism and health journalism: the
challenge of “fake news” to specialised journalists.
Representing a ‘serious symptom of political breakdown’ (Mercier, 2018),
the contemporary unfurling of “fake news” is being fed by a growing defiance to
the position of the ‘knowledgeable’ elite which journalists belong to, whether
they are ‘general’ or ‘specialist’. In two key information areas – politics and
health-, areas which are connected to major collective stakes, the question of
the transformation/adaptation of journalists’ professional practices is
particularly important. Faced with this menace, is it sufficient to generalise
the practices of fact-checking//and to correct certain problematic practices
(hurried treatments, insufficient verification, incomplete scientific
acculturation, …) to restore a curtailed legitimacy? Is turning the discursive
weapons employed by ‘post-truth’ (Dieguez, 2018) against it the best way to
renew the codes and modes of expression of specialised journalism? Is it enough
to remove the “barriers” to the exercise of the profession and organise it in a
network (Bassoni, 2015), leaning now on the practices of all the parties
concerned by the containment of “fake news” (in this case, in health, the
health authorities, scientists, carers, patients and “digital opinion
leaders”)?
Reception of false information and platforms: a reinforcement of cognitive
bias?
If the proliferation of fake news is linked to the technical and
economic conditions of information circulation, it also relies on cognitive
domains which do not always promote the truth and forms of reception attached
to plural contexts. Recognised cognitive biases frequently lead individuals to
select and believe false information to encourage consensus within a group
(Festinger, 1954) or through an economy of means (Kahneman, 2011). Social
illusionism and the illusion of truth can thus favour the propagation of false
information (Huguet, 2018). Indeed, individuals perceive “fake-news” as one of
the elements of the globally degraded universe of information, including forms
of propaganda or mediocre journalism (Nielsen et Graves, 2017). Here, the
public’s perception of “fake news” is the combination of the interests of
certain medias which publish it, politicians who contribute to it and the
platforms who allow it to be distributed. What are the characteristics of the
public’s reception of “fake news”? What type of individual or collective
sources does “fake news” call upon? How far can platforms and their business
models reinforce the cognitive biases associated to “fake news”? These
questions will be approached by considering the modalities of the public’s
reception of “fake news” through their permanence or, on the contrary, their
variation according to contexts.
How to submit
Propositions should be 6000 characters and include a short biography.
They will indicate which research theme they are most appropriate to.
Descriptions of the field of study/corpus and the research methodology are
expected.
Propositions should be sent to the following address:
jep2021@outlook.fr. The deadline is June 19th 2020
Propositions will be double blind evaluated, replies will be sent out
during September 2020.
Contact: jep2021@outlook.fr
Stephanie Lukasik for organization team stephanie.lukasik@univ-amu.fr
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