Poétique et rhétorique : formats et usages pour l’éducation aux médias

Une conférence de Marie-Ève Thérenty (U. Montpellier) et Emmanuelle Danblon (U. Bruxelles), dans le cadre du cycle « Que veut (et que peut) encore l’éducation aux médias ? ».

24 février 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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On the Rhetorical Use of “Stealth” and “Invisibility” in Pandemic Communication

Soon after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the novel coronavirus was described as a “stealth virus” because those who carry it are highly contagious before they show any signs of infection. This is indeed a major public health issue: If people are contagious well before they show any symptoms, strategies of contact tracing and containment are bound to play catch-up. However, the label of the “stealth virus” was also instrumentalized, especially in political rhetoric, to insinuate a lack of transparency of the virus itself. This post briefly explores how the label of the “stealth virus” was rhetorically weaponized for political purposes.

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