Disinformation discourse as boundary work in journalism. A comparison between South Africa and France

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has proved fertile ground for disinformation, confronting journalists with several challenges. Not only have they faced an unprecedented flood of fabricated stories, but they also had to report about a crisis while experiencing it themselves. This study analyses how journalists made sense of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing the perceptions of journalists in South Africa and France, countries which are in the Global South and Global North, respectively, offers a new lens to the study of journalistic discourse and its functions in relation to the context it emerges from. Based on in-depth interviews with journalists in South Africa and France, this study argues that while journalistic discourses present many similarities when making sense of pandemic-related disinformation, they follow different patterns when discussing and affirming their professional authority in the face of this phenomenon.