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Plagiarism in Le Soir : Has Marion Le Pen been duped by Iranian propaganda?
At the beginning of March, a crazy rumour hit the web with the help of a site plagiarising Le Soir: Macron and Saudi Arabia were riding together. Since then, European experts have been pointing the finger at Russia . So I had to investigate the rumour, which I did with the help of Brandwatch and Visibrain.
What can we say about these 3 accounts?
If you look at her posts and, above all, the account to which she belongs, you can see the same whims and the same finger-pointing at the man who is presented as Russia's ally, Le Cio:
The account also sends its bombs to Russia Today and Sputnik. I still find it hard to believe that the Russian state would send its own SKUDS to its media.
What's more, the account is in Russian. And it is very much against Wahhabism.
We can see this kind of imagine circulating:
For example, during an analysis for Libéracisme, I was able to isolate a community of robots who had written almost 17,000 tweets to 17.
The messages were as follows:
When you see the accounts followed, it's also close to the Iranian problem:
In so doing, they are playing perfectly on the reactionary paradox:
All in all, it seems as though the initiative came about by the miracle of the Holy Spirit.
d) The FN, from small networks to large ones
I'm also devilishly pleased with this case because it confirms a hypothesis established a year ago: FN politicians express themselves through their activists and ensure virility within their networks:
The FN is therefore a particularly exploitable network. It's easy to send out fakes corresponding to their framework (Islamism, Macron, etc.) only to see them tweet it all out at the speed of light, and then denounce their fake news propaganda, even though they believed it!
The user has since deleted his tweet, which may tend to prove that this may not have been his first attempt, even if there are no other tweets from this person over the entirety (more than 28 million tweets) of the presidential election. This account posts nothing more than that. Then another account gets very active and sends all this to a few people:
The accounts targeted? Mainly pro-Fillon users and media who won't fall into the trap.
The initiative comes from a certain Gabriel Blanc. Journalist.
It's interesting because this generic name, created in February 2017, which claims to be a journalist is the same technique of the next rumour-spreading account:
I then asked what they tweeted the most via Brandwatch software. For Lina Vincent, it was this:
Its mechanics are also used for other actions:
For Gabriel Blanc, there were absolutely no tweets outside of this case. They both seem to follow accounts linked to Saudi Arabia and Iran. The next day, anti-Israel accounts published the information: 
In the article, which I won't quote, they take the information from Le Soir.info and point to it as the source.
Iranian accounts then spread the information:
Curiously, at the same time, the Islamisation website published an article claiming that Jacques Attali was preparing the ground in Saudi Arabia. 
I say curiously, because there is not a lot of information linking Macron and Saudi Arabia. And here, as if by chance, they are happening at the same time:
The information will be shared mainly thanks to the help of Louis Aliot: 
In short, the Soir.info article was not shared for over two weeks. Until, all of a sudden, the article resurfaced:
I asked Pierre Bourgeois the question, as did another journalist who had come to the same conclusion as me:
And it seems that we both came up empty. This will end up alerting networks close to François Fillon:
With as the same source for the article, on a patriot community site:
Alerted by these small communities, Marion Le Pen then published the information with the link :
The number of mentions of Le Soir skyrocketed, helped by two large accounts:
The similarity with Le Soir will have confused many people:
Very quickly, Libé will disintegrate the intoxication:
And then by the decoders:
In the end, the intoxication will be propagated by the far right, but the denial, only by the press. All this can be seen in this infographic:
Once the universe had been circumscribed, I introduced all the profiles into the Visibrain panel for the presidential election. What I found in the most frequently used expressions (without taking into account external retweets) is quite interesting:
Over the past month, the most tweeted word and hashtag has been... MACRON. Not for his campaign slogan, but for other things: let's look at the first: #Fillon2017 followed by #stopMacron #Fillonprésident #Marine2017 and finally lepionmacron. So it was primarily the Fillonists who took the plunge. In terms of the most tweeted sources, it's frightening because it's mainly alternative media that we find. We can see that these are also fans of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The most shared articles are all anti-Macron:
All of the conversations in this ecosystem are symbolised around Marine Le Pen and François Fillon with Emmanuel Macron as the Punching Ball (Please note, the points symbolised may not have been expressed in the panel, but retweeted/quoted by them) :
I. Lessons learned
As the article is devilishly long, I've put the main findings at the beginning of the article. For journalists, researchers, patients and others, I've included the full analysis and survey at the end of this chapter.1. Probably not a Russian initiative. The hypothesis? Iran
The only origin we can point to on Twitter is that of the 3 accounts that spread the word when it first began What can we say about these 3 accounts?
- Gabriel Blanc (first name and generic name with a small number) is an account set up specifically against the operation. Apart from the operation, his only unmentioned tweet is one that clearly identifies Wahhabism, a concept that is little known in our country and of little importance to Russia.
- Lina Vincent (first name and generic name with a small number) is an account that also alarms Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia and Macron.
If you look at her posts and, above all, the account to which she belongs, you can see the same whims and the same finger-pointing at the man who is presented as Russia's ally, Le Cio:
The account also sends its bombs to Russia Today and Sputnik. I still find it hard to believe that the Russian state would send its own SKUDS to its media.
What's more, the account is in Russian. And it is very much against Wahhabism.
- John Smith (generic name in English): a little more clever since his tweets have since been deleted. He also has the strength to speak Arabic.
The last account comes directly from Iran. Taken together, all the clues suggest that this is more likely to be propaganda from Iran than from Russia.
We can see this kind of imagine circulating:
For example, during an analysis for Libéracisme, I was able to isolate a community of robots who had written almost 17,000 tweets to 17.
The messages were as follows:
When you see the accounts followed, it's also close to the Iranian problem:
2. A devilishly clever mechanism
Thanks to this case study, we can now attempt a hypothesis for the methodology of this type of manoeuvre: a) Identify your opponent's weaknesses In my view, Macron has two main weaknesses:- It's a young party. As a result, it will have a lot of opportunists knocking on its door. It won't be able to compartmentalise its information networks and there will be a lot of leaks, as well as internal tensions between the "old" and the "new". Between the "left" and the "right".
- As it is a young party, the only complete grey area is its financing.
In so doing, they are playing perfectly on the reactionary paradox:
All you have to do is introduce the perfect message into communities of interest to 'troll' them, and the communities opposite will react mechanically to hit the real target. As you can see from my final analysis, those who spread the Soir.Info story are Macron detractors. Playing on Hateholders is therefore a gamble of choice that I've already identified on many occasions as a marketing lever. Only, this would be the first time we've seen this in the field of propaganda.
c) The luck factor? It took more than two weeks for the mayonnaise to take hold. Either it's luck or it's the fact that the right message was sent to the right place outside Twitter. Pierre Bourgeois would have to deign to reply in relation to where he saw the message to get a response. My hypothesis is that the article ended up succeeding thanks to Facebook, thanks to a well-known technique used extensively by the satirical newspaper Nordpresse (Screnshoot carried out by Le Monde here).
All in all, it seems as though the initiative came about by the miracle of the Holy Spirit.
d) The FN, from small networks to large ones
I'm also devilishly pleased with this case because it confirms a hypothesis established a year ago: FN politicians express themselves through their activists and ensure virility within their networks:
The FN is therefore a particularly exploitable network. It's easy to send out fakes corresponding to their framework (Islamism, Macron, etc.) only to see them tweet it all out at the speed of light, and then denounce their fake news propaganda, even though they believed it!
3. A mistake by Le Soir, a sign of a lack of digital culture
If Le Soir had listened to the tweets they were receiving via the 'Via', they could have picked up the mirror site 2 weeks before the events. You will tell me that it is very difficult to monitor all the tweets that use the "via". But any media outlet can set up a very easy system. Add a search column to Tweetdeck:
- In the search criteria, enter "Via @LeSoir".
- Go to content, enter excluding and add "www.lesoir.be".
- Add an alert to be kept informed
II. The story
It all began in February, almost two weeks before. The fact is sumptuous. If Le Soir listened to the tweets they received via the 'Via', they could have picked up the mirror site 2 weeks before the events.The user has since deleted his tweet, which may tend to prove that this may not have been his first attempt, even if there are no other tweets from this person over the entirety (more than 28 million tweets) of the presidential election. This account posts nothing more than that. Then another account gets very active and sends all this to a few people:
The accounts targeted? Mainly pro-Fillon users and media who won't fall into the trap.
The initiative comes from a certain Gabriel Blanc. Journalist.
It's interesting because this generic name, created in February 2017, which claims to be a journalist is the same technique of the next rumour-spreading account:
I then asked what they tweeted the most via Brandwatch software. For Lina Vincent, it was this:
Its mechanics are also used for other actions:
For Gabriel Blanc, there were absolutely no tweets outside of this case. They both seem to follow accounts linked to Saudi Arabia and Iran. The next day, anti-Israel accounts published the information: In the article, which I won't quote, they take the information from Le Soir.info and point to it as the source.
Iranian accounts then spread the information:
Curiously, at the same time, the Islamisation website published an article claiming that Jacques Attali was preparing the ground in Saudi Arabia. I say curiously, because there is not a lot of information linking Macron and Saudi Arabia. And here, as if by chance, they are happening at the same time:
The information will be shared mainly thanks to the help of Louis Aliot:
In short, the Soir.info article was not shared for over two weeks. Until, all of a sudden, the article resurfaced:
I asked Pierre Bourgeois the question, as did another journalist who had come to the same conclusion as me:
And it seems that we both came up empty. This will end up alerting networks close to François Fillon:
With as the same source for the article, on a patriot community site:
Alerted by these small communities, Marion Le Pen then published the information with the link :
The number of mentions of Le Soir skyrocketed, helped by two large accounts:
The similarity with Le Soir will have confused many people:
Very quickly, Libé will disintegrate the intoxication:
And then by the decoders:
In the end, the intoxication will be propagated by the far right, but the denial, only by the press. All this can be seen in this infographic:
III. Analysis of the ecosystem
Aware of the fact that reading events is rather difficult, I decided to make two methodological choices:- I isolated the first part of the rumour to see the initial propagators. This is the spread up to 4pm.
- I've also isolated only those who posted the LeSoir.info link.
Once the universe had been circumscribed, I introduced all the profiles into the Visibrain panel for the presidential election. What I found in the most frequently used expressions (without taking into account external retweets) is quite interesting:
Over the past month, the most tweeted word and hashtag has been... MACRON. Not for his campaign slogan, but for other things: let's look at the first: #Fillon2017 followed by #stopMacron #Fillonprésident #Marine2017 and finally lepionmacron. So it was primarily the Fillonists who took the plunge. In terms of the most tweeted sources, it's frightening because it's mainly alternative media that we find. We can see that these are also fans of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The most shared articles are all anti-Macron:
All of the conversations in this ecosystem are symbolised around Marine Le Pen and François Fillon with Emmanuel Macron as the Punching Ball (Please note, the points symbolised may not have been expressed in the panel, but retweeted/quoted by them) :
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