Several armed people with French flag driving police van.

France is already like a GTA Online server.

Context

Fact

2023. The protests in France began after a 17-year-old named Nahel was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Nanterre on June 27, 2023. The protests focused on police practices and relations between law enforcement and residents of suburban areas. Some protests included clashes and property damage. The government increased police presence and called for order.  

This image and other misleading posts that went viral in the context of the protests, such as videos of amputations, loose animals, or store looting, aimed to portray the protesters as violent and uncontrollable. Specifically, the disinformation targeted the Muslim community and the victim of the killing, Nahel. The narrative surrounding this disinformation sought to demonize the protesters, portraying them as lawless and linked to chaos, while also fueling anti-Muslim sentiment. The goal was to shift public perception and delegitimize the protests by associating them with extreme acts of violence and disorder. This tactic is commonly used to create fear, division, and distract from the real issues at the heart of the protests, such as police brutality and systemic discrimination.  

Manipulation

As a result of the protests, this image was shared as if it were real, but in fact, the photo is neither real nor current. It is a still taken from the film Athena, released on Netflix on September 23, 2022. The image is being circulated alongside the message "France is already a GTA Online server."  

Teaching part

Teaching objective: To deduce the reasons for misinformation from the analysis of the following photographic source within a social media post.   

Knowledge 1: By presenting a fictional image as real, it can influence how people perceive the situation. It can reinforce stereotypes or push certain political or ideological messages about law enforcement, marginalized communities, or social unrest. The post has reached over 1.9 M views.   

Knowledge 2: Photographic source analysis within a social media post + specify if the analysis is from a photo taken out of context, manipulated or using IA. 

False context.  

Remember: 

Digital sources are pieces of online content that help us understand and verify events. Just like historical sources, they can be classified based on their connection to reality: 

• Primary sources: original images or videos captured at the time of an event, such as a photo taken on a smartphone, live-stream footage, or an unedited security camera recording. 

• Secondary sources: images or videos that have been edited, modified, or republished. These could be news articles that crop or change a photo, AI-enhanced versions of real images, or deepfakes that alter someone’s appearance. 

• Synthetic sources: images or videos that are completely created by artificial intelligence or digital editing with no connection to real events. These include AI-generated people, fake landscapes, or entirely fictional news images. 

When analysing images on social media, we must remember that they don’t exist in isolation—they come with captions, hashtags, likes, and shares that influence how we interpret them. The same image can be framed in different ways to change its meaning, sometimes to mislead or spread false information. That’s why it’s important to check not just the image itself, but also its context, who shared it, and how it’s being used before trusting it. 

Evaluation criteria: Deduce the reasons for misinformation by analysing the image and its context within the social media post. 

Instructions for the activity

1. Context: Now that you have understood the connection between disinformation and the way images are used to shape narratives, consider the context of the digital image: Where was it published? What event or situation does it claim to represent? Who are the key figures or elements in the image? Starting point. 

2. Start of activity: Observe the image individually, and once analyzed, answer the questions to identify key aspects related to its source, authenticity, and use. Focus on both the image itself and how it is presented within its digital environment. Initial phase. 

Several armed people with a French flag driving a police van.  

In order to answer some of the following questions, you will have to do a reverse image search.  

Development of activity. Once you have observed this image, fill in the second part of the worksheet with your group, which allows you to understand a little about the context of it. Development Phase  

Activity development. Now try to deduce with all the information you have collected so far to understand how and why this source has been manipulated. Final phase  

Closing. Organize your speech based on evidence collected to argue your opinion in relation to what you have learned.  

Instruction for the teacher
Several armed people with a French flag driving a police van.  

Solution

Explanation - the fact check process

To verify if the image is real, we can start by doing a reverse image search using tools like Google Images or TinEye. This allows us to see where the image has appeared online before. In this case, we can search the image and find that it was actually taken from the movie Athena, released on Netflix in September 2022, not from the 2023 protests in France. 

Original photography: 

A frame from the movie Athena, we can see it in the trailer [min 1:25]