The members of parliament stared in horror as Mathilde Panot, leader of the France Unbowed party, held up a test tube full of bed bugs. The insects, she claimed, were "proliferatingGrowing or expanding rapidly. in all daily living spaces: hospitals, schools, workplaces, retirement homes, prisons, trains and even cinemas." Between 2017 and 2022, the number of places affected had risen from 200,000 to 1,200,000.  

The "plague" of bed bugs has caused consternationA feeling of shock or confusion. It derives from a Latin verb meaning to alarm or dismay.. There is anxiety that tourists will avoid the country, with severe consequences for next year's Paris Olympics.

Bedbugs certainly exist in France. But according to Aldo Massaglia, who runs a Paris pest-control company,¹ there has been no dramatic rise in cases:

"We've been in the business for more than a decade and we've always been called to hotels, schools and cinemas," he says. "People need to calm down."

Now it has been revealed that fake articles about the situation have been spread on social media - and French intelligence agents suspect that Russia is responsible.

The articles look as if they have come from respected news outlets. One, apparently from a newspaper called La Montagne, claims that because of sanctions on Russia the chemicals needed to combat the problem are unobtainable. But La Montagne never published any such article.

Articles falsely attributed to two other papers claim that Ukrainian refugees brought the bedbugs with them.

There is nothing new about such deception. But today, says Dr Melissa Zimdars, a media expert, "We're in a crescendoThe most intense or loudest moment. of mis- and disinformation."² According to the American Psychological Association, people often share it on social media in order to keep in with their social circle.

The Hawaii wildfires in August spawned a host of invented stories on social media. It was claimed that 2,000 children had gone missing on the island of Maui, and that 15 were later found locked in cages in a warehouse. In fact 97 people went missing, only one of whom was a child.

In September, after heavy rain ended the Burning Man festival in NevadaA state in the USA. Las Vegas is in Nevada. , reports appeared that there had been an outbreak of the deadly disease EbolaA highly infectious disease causing internal and external bleeding. A vaccine against it has recently been developed. at the site. They said that a national emergency had been declared, and people who had been at the festival should not leave their homes.

This was supported by a "screenshot" of a document from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. But the screenshot was a fake, and the reports had no basis in fact. 

Another malicious story concerned the death of Barack ObamaThe Democrat US president between 2008 and 2016.'s personal chef, Tafari Campbell, who was found drowned in July. When Obama was subsequently photographed with sticking plasters on two of his fingers, it was suggested that he had injured them while murdering Campbell.

But Obama has been photographed with sticking plasters on his fingers for years, because he often gets blisters from playing golf. And a coroner found that there was nothing suspicious about Campbell's death.  

Yes: The rise of social media and deep-fakeAn artificial image or video (a series of images) generated by a special kind of machine learning called "deep" learning (hence the name). technology have made it incredibly easy to spread. By promoting a story like the French bedbug one, enemies can do serious damage to a country's economy.  

No: There have been terrible examples throughout history. During the American Revolution, the US statesman Benjamin Franklin published a fabricated report of atrocities to discredit his British enemies.

Or... It may be, but efforts to counter it are becoming more effective too. Organisations like Associated Press, Full Fact and Bellingcat are bringing enormously sophisticated methods to the fight.