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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

Analysing fact-checking in the field of disinformation studies: for an epistemological approach

Résumé

This contribution is a theoretical account in epistemology of journalism through case studies, to tackle the problem of phenomena of disinformation in the journalistic field in Europe. Media design fact-checking tools and develop new practices to reduce the uncertainty that characterizes information, its value and its use in the democratic debate. The epistemological investigation addresses the presuppositions, approaches, methods and logical reasoning used in journalism to develop specifically quality journalism and to minimize misinformation through the example of fact-checking. We will examine two examples of fact-checking tools and practices, in order to underline their epistemological issues and assumptions. We discuss our results through a theoretical framework that integrates metajournalistic discourses (Carlson, 2016), philosophical theories (Hearns-Branaman) and media studies. These two examples of fact-checking practices are the tools proposed by the French TV media Les Observateurs de France 24 for the public and those provided by the Non-governmental organization First Draft for European information experts (journalists, researchers) during European Elections. They are part of a European media environment would be characterized by its "information disorder" (Wardle, 2018) and a loss of power of journalists and editors over the information produced (Ekström & Westlund, 2019). Some researchers evoke a “weakness of true” (Revault D'Allonnes, 2018) or a broader context of a "post-truth" era (Ferraris, 2019; Lewandowsky, Ecker, & Cook,2017). So that reliable information, competing with misinformation and disinformation, would create a situation of uncertainty in which the information consumer - the citizen- would have become well unable to distinguish the true from the false. As a result of these phenomena, the process of production of information is changing. Driven by new reception practices and encouraged by European Union public authorities, media cannot simply produce meaningful content, they must also publicly demonstrate that they produce a piece of quality information for rebuilding public trust in the media. The case of fact-checking tools is thus a symptom as well as a response to this media disorder caused by uncertainty. The fact-checking mechanisms, which are supposed to identify, reduce or even eliminate uncertainty, present two major challenges: epistemological in relation to the underlying approach, protocols, technics adopted, and roles assigned ; and political: these measures, encouraged by the public authorities, are considered essential for our democracies, as we saw during the last European elections.
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Dates et versions

hal-04507610 , version 1 (16-03-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04507610 , version 1

Citer

Angelina Toursel, Philippe Useille. Analysing fact-checking in the field of disinformation studies: for an epistemological approach. 8th European Communication Conference, Disinformation studies: perspectives to an emerging research field, ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association), Sep 2021, Braga, Portugal. ⟨hal-04507610⟩
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