Media distrust in France — an aspect of French society seen from the Yellow vests movement

Upload:13 May 2019, Last update: 28 May 2019

Media distrust of citizens is one of the topics often talked in French society. This aspect can be seen in the Yellow vests movement. In my impression, more French people do care the influence of media.

Some Yellow vests demonstrators participated in “marche sur les médias” on 27 April[1] which comes from the media distrust among French people.

Especially BFMTV whose reporters were attacked before boycotted on 7 January[2]. Before that, the reporters of BFMTV were attacked for example, in Rouen on 5 January[3].

The violences of demonstrators is not acceptable.

But in terms of media literacy of its citizens, people in French society is not obedient to mainstream media, they try to analyze information.

Mainstream media is useful to get dairy information, but it is not wise to completely trust them. The severe eyes of citizens to media facilitates the media to think about themselves. Even some TV programs of France Télévisions themselves have fact-checking parts. Many French people care the media problems like independency or arbitrariness. Among Japanese, it feels like that more people are obedient to media and just receiving information as it is. Being obedient to information is risky and easily manipulated when it happens.

More citizens in French society tend to think about the information from media, not receiving it as it is.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2019/04/27/deux-jours-apres-les-annonces-de-macron-les-gilets-jaunes-mobilises-a-paris-et-strasbourg_5455740_3224.html Accessed 13 May 2019

[2] http://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/tv/pourquoi-les-journalistes-de-bfmtv-boycottent-les-gilets-jaunes-ce-lundi-07-01-2019-7982478.php Accessed 13 May 2019

[3] http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/journalistes-agresses-par-des-gilets-jaunes-a-rouen-j-ai-eu-l-impression-qu-ils-voulaient-en-decoudre-06-01-2019-7982001.php Accessed 13 May 2019

Violences of the Yellow vests movement and media coverage

Upload: 6 May 2019, Last update: 14 May 2019

The pictures or the videos of violences are impressive for audiences. Media often covered those scenes. In fact, those violences of “casseur” happened during the demonstrations. In order to maintain the public order, police ,for example, used the LBD (le lanceur de balles de défense), then the UN requested the French government to investigate “excessive use of force”[1].

But it doesn’t mean that the Yellow vests movement consists of only the violences.

There is a civil power to speak up to the government.

The violences are not acceptable, but I don’t think it is a great idea to have negative image on demonstrations just watching the violence scenes of the demonstration.

The violences actually happened in the Yellow vests movement and I’m not saying that the violence can be justified. But when people especially far from France watch those scenes, since the scenes are impactful, people tend to have just the image of violences on the Yellow vests movement. Or even non-French media report more on the violent scenes and not assign time so much time on the context of the movement (I think this is closely related to limited time of the news part).

[1] http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/gilets-jaunes-l-onu-reclame-a-la-france-une-enquete-sur-l-usage-excessif-de-la-force-06-03-2019-8025750.php Accessed 6 May 2019

The number of demonstrators in the Yellow vests movement from the beginning to the end of April

Upload: 29 April 2019, Last update: 28 March 2023

The Act 1 of the Yellow vests movement was on 17 November 2018. Some demonstrators literally wearing yellow vests can be seen in the beginning of 2018 as well. According to an article of Libération[1], on 27 January 2018, there was a movement called “Colère” which some of demonstrators were wearing the yellow vests. The number of demonstrators of the Yellow vests movement is in the chart below.

Number of the Yellow vests demonstrators shown by the articles on the website of France info[2], Le Monde[3], and Le Figaro[4] referring to the calculations of Ministry of the Interior in the line A. On the other hand, the Yellow vests also publish the number by themselves on the Facebook page of Le Nombre Jaune[5] is in the line B.

Date	A	B
17 November 2018	282,000	–
24 November 2018	166,000	–
01 December 2018	136,000	–
08 December 2018	136,000	–
15 December 2018	66,000	–
22 December 2018	38,600	–
29 December 2018	32,000	68,110
05 January 2019	50,000	123,440
12 January 2019	84,000	159,157
19 January 2019	84,000	147,365
26 January 2019	69,000	123,151
02 February 2019	58,600	115,954
09 February 2019	51,400	118,222
16 February 2019	41,500	104,070
23 February 2019	46,000	123,087
02 March 2019	39,300	96,427
09 March 2019	28,600	90,469
16 March 2019	32,300	269,270
23 March 2019	40,500	126,246
30 March 2019	33,700	105,084
06 April 2019	22,300	73,289
13 April 2019	31,000	91,276
20 April 2019	27,900	98,182
27 April 2019	23,600	60,711

There’s a huge gap between calculations of two sides. More than 5 months have passed since the beginning. But the anger of the Yellow vests doesn’t end the movement.

The number of demonstrators listed on 16 March 2019 includes the number of climate movement.

[1] https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/12/14/comment-les-gilets-jaunes-sont-nes-en-janvier-sur-un-rond-point-de-dordogne_1697685 Accessed 28 April 2019

[2] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/transports/gilets-jaunes/gilets-jaunes-comment-a-evolue-la-mobilisation-le-samedi-depuis-le-debut-du-mouvement_3149459.html Accessed 29 April 2019

[4]http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/gilets-jaunes-ce-qu-il-faut-retenir-de-la-journee-du-16-mars-20190317 Accessed 12 May 2019

[5] https://www.facebook.com/lenombrejaune/ Accessed 29 April 2019

Arbitrariness of information — Media, Japan, and France

Upload: 22 April 2019, Last update: 23 April 2019

Arbitrariness of information is what people need to be aware. In particular, when we watch TV news, TV news are made artificially means that it has arbitrariness of information. Some information is buried behind what is spoken. This is a not surprising fact since we cannot convey the exactly same situation to others. First, the perception of what has happened is different in every person and it is going to be conveyed via a medium to others. It’s sure that certain amount of information cannot be transferred. What important is that whether people are aware of the arbitrariness.

As some say that history is his + story, history is arbitrarily combined and built up to some extent. There’s huge amount of information which people didn’t choose, got buried in history and cannot be seen at present.

Compared with France, it feels like many Japanese still receive information as it is and do not care the arbitrariness of information. I know some people do care it, but I have an impression that the number of people aware of arbitrariness of information is quite lower. For example in France, more people have less trust in media. The media defiance of the public is often talked.

We should not see information as it is and should be careful of arbitrariness of information. Especially mainstream media are often influenced by pressure directly or indirectly, we need to get information from as many sources as possible.

Academic institution and Educational institution – Learning

Upload: 20 April 2019, Last update: 8 June 2019

I think that we should develop academic institution which is different from educational institution. Even though some of learners like to learn, education has some negative parts to them.

In educational institutions, students are literally educated, but learning voluntarily should be emphasized more than being educated.

Contrary to educational institutions, academic institutions prepare the studying environment for students and students will be more motivated to learn. Moreover, they encourage the development of personalities of each student and are not obsessed with stereotypes. As it is often said that the lifespan is now 100 years and people need to continue to learn, they focus on learning.

Joi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab says “what you need to learn is how to learn” while explaining in the principle of “Learning over Education” in TED talk[1]. I think if we could have some academic institutions, it helps people to get motivated to learn.

Academic institutions gives many opportunities to students to be motivated. Self-motivated learners will continue to learn even after graduation. This kind of institutions should be put more emphasis.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsjTVGIw4z8 2:08-. Accessed 20 April 2019