Exploring possible future worlds with the practice of design fiction
Speculation as a means of critical distancing from the media

Une conférence de Géraldine Wuyckens (UC Louvain)

7 décembre 2022

Conspiracy speakers’ criticality: too little or too much? A Rhetorical Reflexion on Conspiracy Theories

If the well-studied phenomenon of conspiracy theories still catches our attention, it is among other reasons because it crystallizes many aspects of our society. For example, our relationship with the media, the notion of transparency, the phenomenon of fake news, but also our ability to live together and make society. In this post, we will focus on the relationship that conspiracy speakers build within their discourses with the notion of “truth” as a value. Our hypothesis is that conspiracy speakers are too confident about this notion; instead of being critical and doubtful about events – as they seem to appear at first – they are instead too sure of being right. In this perspective we will argue that within conspiracy discourses, truth as a value is paradoxically based mostly on the character of the speaker and not on the reasoning they expose.

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Comment faire parler les silences médiatiques ?

Cette séance accorde une place à l’histoire des médias, comme perspective susceptible de nourrir le projet d’une éducation critique aux médias. Les deux intervenant·es sont en effet historien·ne contemporanéistes, habitué·es à considérer le poids des représentations médiatiques dans la construction des séquences historiques. Les médias (presse généraliste, presse spécialisée, médias audiovisuels) constituent dès lors à la fois des sources et des objets d’histoire, comme le montrent leurs différents travaux.

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