Are you sure it's true? : the reception of fake news in the digital information ecosystem : between enunciative self-regulation and conversational disorders

The transformations brought about by digital technology in the circulation and consumption of information have led many public debate actors to depict the contemporary informational ecosystem as infested with fake news and social media users as gullible individuals. However, empirical findings from academic literature show that fake news occupy a negligible place in the media consumption habits of the public and that their impact on individuals' beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors remains poorly assessed. How can we explain the low propensity of social media users to consume and share fake news, given that online content is not subject to editorial control or journalistic ethics? And how can we explain the intensification of various contemporary issues, such as political polarization or vaccine hesitancy, while social media users do not seem so vulnerable to fake news? To address these questions, two reception studies were conducted among French-speaking Twitter and Facebook users. Each of these studies combines quantitative analyses of digital traces, online observations, and interviews. This hybrid methodological approach allowed for a broader examination of users' practices (both informational and conversational) within different interaction situations (online and offline) without reducing them to merely reacting to a fake news on a specific social network, while also identifying some of their socio-demographic characteristics. Three main findings emerge from this thesis. First, the sharing of fake news does not equally and indiscriminately affect all social media users but is, in fact, observable in a small group of users. These users are not characterized by being less educated or having lower cognitive skills but by being more politicized and distrustful of institutions. Although they are a minority, these users are likely to facilitate the agenda-setting of opinions supported by their political camp in the public debate due to their hyperactivity online and the vast amount of news they share. Second, social media users exposed to fake news are capable of deploying forms of critical distance, to varying degrees, depending on their position in the social space and the enunciative constraints of the interaction situations (family, professional, etc.) they find themselves in. They do this either by exercising "enunciative caution" or by expressing "stopping points," which involve intervening in the flow of a conversation to challenge the credibility of a statement. Third, these forms of critical distance observed during conversational exchanges rarely lead to genuine deliberative debates or the expression of agonistic pluralism. Instead, they often result in dialogues of the deaf among a minority of particularly active online users. Our conclusions suggest that future academic studies, as well as the public debate, should shift focus away from the sole issue of fake news to avoid neglecting other information and communication disorders, such as the manipulation of the political agenda or the brutalization of the public debate by a minority of users, and the spiral of silence mechanisms that result from them.