The great fear that led to the French Revolution was caused by a fake news epidemic

by Andrea
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The great fear that led to the French Revolution was caused by a fake news epidemic

The great fear that led to the French Revolution was caused by a fake news epidemic

“Freedom guiding the people” by Eugène Delacroix

The period of panic and agitation in France known as the great fear was triggered by deliberately widespread rumors, which “infected” city after city, concluded a new study, which used methods of epidemiology taken from pandemic manuals.

In 1789, rumors spread like a virus throughout France: robbers would be attacking villagesdestroy harvests and terrorize peasants, mobilized by nobles who tried to repress political agitation.

None of this was true.

But the resulting panic and instability, known as the Great fearthey helped feed the French Revolution – and triggered a debate that still divides historians today.

There will have been a deliberate effort To advance the revolution through these rumors? Or they will have spontaneousmotivated by genuine terror?

In a new study, scientists have now resorted to Epidemiology Methods to solve the longtime puzzle.

Based on historical records and in models developed to monitor epidemicsthe investigators concluded that the spread of fear had roots rational, not just emotional.

“We have been able to identify logic behind the spread of great fear,” says Antoine ParentEconomist at Paris University 8 and co-author of the study, published on Wednesday in the magazine.

Use data to objectively measure events social is the new paradigm in the study of human dynamics, ”he says Walter Quattrociocchicomputer scientist specializing in complex systems at Sapienza University of Rome, which has studied the spread of online misinformation, which was not involved in the study.

“Our study focuses on Something we can measure; It’s scienceIt is not just speculation, ”says Parent.

Revolutionary rumors

The conspiracy rumors that circulated through France in July and August 1789 led peasants to invade castles and destroying ownership records – documents that, in some places, were crucial to the masters’ authority over the land.

These events were among the Most striking moments of the first days of French Revolution, a movement that abolished the monarchyHe ended feudalism and transformed the country’s political system.

Parent, whose work consists of applying the analysis of complex systems to the study of history, met his co -authors – the physicist Stefano Zapperi and the pathologist Caterina the doorboth from the University of Milan, Italy – in a conference.

When you told you about your project of Investigate the propagation of rumors During the great fear, La Porta came up with an idea: “I said: ‘because we don’t use the techniques we apply In the study of epidemics?’”.

As the basis of his analysis, the authors resorted to a 1932 book by the French historian Georges Lefebvrewhich brought together letters and other documents that showed how rumors moved from one place to another, and also used historical road maps to identify the possible routes of dissemination.

With this information, they created a detailed map of the movement of stories, from city to city. We treat it as a transmission network of an epidemic“Explicit Zapper.

Then the team applied a mathematical model developed to study Propagation of pathogenic agentsanalyzing the speed with which alarmist stories spread, the paths they followed, and the localities most likely to be ‘Infected’ by these rumors.

Become viral

The researchers concluded that the great fear began with a phase of rapid dissemination of rumors, which then sold out a few days After reaching the peak – a standard similar to that of viral epidemics.

From the data, they estimated the Basic Reproduction Numbera metric used by epidemiologists to indicate how many people, on average, in a totally susceptible population, will be infected by each person infected.

In this case, The basic number of reproduction was 2. Any value above 1 means that a epidemic will tend to grow exponentially until it reaches its peak.

As social, economic and political characteristics Of the localities most vulnerable to the reception of rumors reveal the logic of dissemination, the authors argue.

For example, Susceptibility was greater in the provinces where the destruction of land records would undermine land ownership by the feudal lords than in the regions where this was not found.

This suggests that The propagation of fear was directed in a deliberate way to areas where the destruction of the records would have more significant consequences.

As villages with higher literacy rates also revealed more likely to live the great fear than the least educated communities, Contrary to the vision that rumors were scattered mainly by unknown peasants moved by emotion.

Despite praising the rigor of the study, Quattrociocchi questions the application of an epidemiological model to the dissemination of rumors. “Being infected is just a Probability issue”, He says, while the transmission of rumors can be deliberate.

The authors respond that the study considers the transmission of information from city ​​in city, and not from person in person. “A city is composed of thousands of people, and If a city is ‘infected’ by a rumorthis becomes a probabilistic event which can be studied through epidemiological models, ”concludes Zapperi.

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