Episode 1: The discovery of address books
On Wednesday 26 May 2021, I was certainly not the only one to watch, in prime time, at 8:18 pm to be precise, the hour-and-a-half report “Quand le doute vire au complot” by RTBF’s “Investigation” team[1]. Unlike most viewers, I watched it mainly from an angle other than its content, which shamelessly lumped together critics of the health measures with beliefs as far-fetched as reptilians and the flat earth, or even antisemitism.
What interested me first and foremost that evening were the experts taking part in the documentary. I had sensed that they would come from what is called an address book. As far as Belgium is concerned, I already had a name in mind: Prof. Olivier Klein of the ULB[2]. I had followed him, among other academics, during my research on communication strategies in the context of the current crisis. Bingo! Right from the introduction of the RTBF investigation, the general public is presented with Prof. Klein as an expert, out of nowhere. So why is this so important?
Lack of time
Anyone who looks into media theory and media criticism cannot ignore two prestigious names: the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu[3], and the American linguist and activist Noam Chomsky[4]. Both of them devoted critical attention to the figure of “the expert” in their work and their activism. Bourdieu was, admittedly, referring to the television of the 1990s, but the same observations can be transposed to the internet age: certain conditions are increasingly imposed on journalism because of the technological constraints of television. One of them has to do with time and urgency. This time pressure plays a role in the competition with other media when it comes to delivering a scoop faster than the others. But it also leads to fundamental reductions in thought processes: demonstrations, for example, require reflection, which takes time.
Commonplaces
The media therefore need people who are capable not only of “thinking” under the constraint of speed, but also of thriving on it: the fast thinkers. The barely veiled allusion to the term fast food and what is associated with it is a kind of academic wink. These convenient “experts” always have an answer for everything, and however new a phenomenon may be, they immediately know what it is all about. In reality, these fast thinkers obviously do not think any faster than anyone else: in a short space of time (whether through the brevity of their appearance or the immediate analysis of a phenomenon) they are in fact communicating other information, which is the object of our research.
Having no time to explain something new that viewers obviously do not yet know, they can only reach, via shortcuts, what has long been established in our collective imagination and can be called upon at will: commonplaces. Of course, the public acquires no new knowledge in this way, since it is essentially non-communication or empty communication.
Nothing new, true or false, is communicated. In short, what they say confirms what we already know or think we know.
Institutional indoctrination
The repeated use of address books of “experts”, available in the same way as the commonplaces they produce, saves the media even more time. The same people always speak on the same subjects. And through repetition this narrows the space for expressing opinions, in short, for what can be said, more and more, until it leads to a single way of thinking. This is what Chomsky calls the “cult of expertise”: an ideological tool that serves to replace, control and, ultimately, prevent institutional analysis and criticism (the preserve of critical social sciences and journalism) on the basis of authorised and authoritarian expertise emanating from those very institutions. The interest of the experts, which merges with their conditions of existence, is thus also guaranteed.
Chomsky goes so far as to call this institutional indoctrination. This process allows itself a semblance of openness and controversy through minimal deviations within a narrowly delimited space of thought, so as to make sure that it is not dismissed outright as state propaganda. The repetitive patterns in the form of address books or networks are more than mere coincidences: they emanate from a system in order to serve its interests, consciously or unconsciously.
The investigation
Over the past few months I have investigated one such network of “experts”: the Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories in Europe or COMPACT[5], of which Prof. Olivier Klein is a member[6], alongside some 150 other international academics. COMPACT bears the official acronym “CA15101” (“COST Action 15101”) and was funded by the European Commission to the tune of around €675,000[7] and its economic value was estimated at €124 million[8] by the COST Association[9]. The latter was created in 1971 by the governments of the 19 EU countries of the time together with the European Commission. The Commission granted it a budget of €300 million for the period from 2014 to 2020 (under the European Union’s “Horizon 2020” research programme)[10]
In return for services rendered, the European Commission included on its official website, among its official recommendations in the fight against covid-19, the results[11] of Prof. Butter’s COMPACT research group[12], [13] and explicitly thanks him (just before the documents section) for his contributions to the “fight against disinformation” and against “conspiracy theories”[14]. But what exactly is his role, in the end?
To be continued…
By Colin Meier, independent citizen journalist and BAM!’s correspondent for Germany
[1] https://www.rtbf.be/auvio/detail_investigation?id=2773404
[2] https://cescup.ulb.be/member/olivier-klein/
[3] Bourdieu, P. (2008 [1996]): Sur la télévision. Raisons d’agir. Paris. 29-32.
[4] Chomsky, N. (2008): The Essential Chomsky. Bodley Head. London. 164p.
[5] https://conspiracytheories.eu/
[6] https://conspiracytheories.eu/member/prof-olivier-klein/
[7] https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA15101/#downloads: see the document “Second Progress Report”, p. 16. This amount includes neither the costs of the action’s first meeting nor those of the action’s final dissemination work, which may amount to up to €10,000 more (see COST Vademecum, p. 42). The actual grant awarded to this specific action could therefore amount to nearly €690,000 to €700,000.
[8] https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA15101/#downloads: see the document “Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)”, p. 2. The economic value of €124 million is one of the highest (second place, to be exact) among the actions whose funding was accepted in 2015.
[9] https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA15101/#tabs|Name:overview
[10]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2015/571312/EPRS_IDA%282015%29571312_EN.pdf: see p. 30.
[11] https://conspiracytheories.eu/_wpx/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COMPACT_Guide-2.pdf
[12] https://conspiracytheories.eu/member/prof-dr-michael-butter/
[13] https://uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/philosophische-fakultaet/fachbereiche/neuphilologie/englisches-seminar/sections/american-studies/faculty-staff/prof-dr-michael-butter/
[14] https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/fighting-disinformation/identifying-conspiracy-theories_en#documents: A curious slip, but one that is potentially revealing for the rest of the investigation, is that the European Commission thanks Prof. Butter, vice-chair of COMPACT, but not his colleague, co-author and chair of COMPACT, Prof. Knight.
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