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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Vomiting athletes, fake Macron and boxing row: Russian disinformation targets Paris Olympics

From fake images of Emmanuel Macron to stories of vomiting athletes and online hate campaigns against competitors, the Paris Olympics has seen a huge uptick in fake news, much of which appears to be linked to Russia.

Published: 7 August 2024 17:24 CEST
Vomiting athletes, fake Macron and boxing row: Russian disinformation targets Paris Olympics
Athletes jump into the water to compete in the swimming race in the Seine, during the mixed relay triathlon, at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Photo by MARTIN BUREAU / POOL / AFP

It was predicted in advance, but the Paris Olympics have already seen a number of examples of ‘fake news’, with experts believing that many of the accounts spreading the false information have direct links to Russia.

The Paris 2024 Games are now in their second week and so far, things seem to be going fairly well – nothing is perfect of course and there have been some problems but many of the elements that people were most worried about in advance, such as the Opening Ceremony on the River Seine, have passed off well. 

But that hasn’t stopped an avalanche of online disinformation claiming that the event is a disaster.

Here’s a look at some of the most high profile.

Fake Macron 

A viral video released in advance of the Games shows an actor playing French president Emmanuel Macron denouncing the Games, standing against a backdrop of rats and rubbish.

While Paris does indeed have rats and sometimes (usually during strikes by waste collectors) piles of trash can be seen, in this case the video is fake and Macron has been nothing but enthusiastic about the Games – especially as they have provided a ‘truce’ in a very awkward political situation.

The video quickly went viral and AI translations made it available in 13 languages – at least 30,000 social media accounts with Kremlin links helped to boost and share the film.

Vomiting athletes

One of the biggest gambles of the Games was holding the open-water swimming events in the newly cleaned up River Seine (a hugely ambitious €1.4 billion project that aims to make the river a long-term swimming spot for locals).

In the end it was touch-and-go and the men’s triathlon had to be postponed by 24 hours because of poor water quality, but the triathlon events did indeed go ahead.

Soon after, however, a fake front page of the French newspaper Libération began to circulate showing an athlete throwing up after completing their river swim and claiming that 25 athletes had fallen ill – the newspaper has confirmed that it has no connection to the images and has not run any such story.

A fake front page of the French newspaper Libération

A Belgian triathlete who fell ill after her event – and was incorrectly reported to have been hospitalised – has since confirmed on her Instagram page that she had contracted a virus and not E.coli, as had been rumoured.

This is not the first time fake news articles have been circulated – others having to do with bedbugs in Paris were shared in 2023.

US Metro warning 

A fake video widely shared online claimed that the CIA was warning Americans against using the Paris Metro, saying: “The terrorism threat level in the Paris metro has reached its peak. CIA experts along with the U.S. embassy in France are urging American citizens to avoid the Paris metro during the 2024 Olympics.”

In fact the US State Department is issuing the same travel advice to Americans as it has since the start of the year, warning of possible terror attacks, demonstrations that can sometimes turn violent and property crime such as pickpocketing.

There is no mention of not using the Metro and the only Olympics-related advice issued to Americans warned of possible road closures due to the Olympics security zones in Paris, warning Americans to check whether they would need a QR code to enter restricted areas.

The CIA does not routinely issue travel advice, this would normally be the province of the State Department or the US Embassy in Paris.

Algerian female boxer gender test 

This was a real event, but Russian-linked social media accounts seized on the controversy, stoking the divide and adding completely baseless claims that boxer Imane Khelif is transgender.

The Algerian boxer found herself at the centre of a social media storm after it was revealed that the International Boxing Association had barred her and the Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting from competing in 2023 over a ‘failed gender test’.

The IBA itself has since been barred from the Olympics. It remains unclear what the eligibility tests consisted of and IBA officials have not offered further clarification, citing medical confidentiality.

The International Olympic Committee is running Paris boxing events. The IOC president Thomas Bach has defended Khelif and Lin, stating that they have met eligibility criteria and that they were born and raised as women, and have passports saying that.

Nevertheless, claims about Khelif being genetically male or transgender were quickly circulated online, often by accounts with links to Russian disinformation organisations (although they were also circulated by real people including author JK Rowling and US presidential candidate Donald Trump).

At one point, Twitter users were posting about the boxer tens of thousands of times per hour, according to an analysis by PeakMetrics, a cyber firm that tracks online narratives.

The IBA itself has a Russian president who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and its biggest sponsor is the state energy company Gazprom.

The organisation doubled down on its claims about Khelif being genetically male in a chaotic press conference in which president Umar Kremlev also attacked the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, but provided no further details on the tests that were used to disqualify the two women.

Organised disinformation 

Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of NewsGuard, a firm that analyses online misinformation, told Associated Press that his company has tracked dozens of examples of disinformation targeting the Paris Games.

He told AP that Russia’s disinformation campaign targeting the Olympics stands out for its technical skill, adding: “What’s different now is that they are perhaps the most advanced users of generative AI models for malign purposes: fake videos, fake music, fake websites.”

France is no stranger to Russian disinformation campaigns, and several experts had warned that these were likely to get worse during the Olympics – from which Russia is banned from competing. A handful of Russian athletes have been allowed to compete as neutral athletes.

In the run-up to the Games France saw an uptick in online disinformation, as well as on-the-ground actions believed to be linked to Russia such as anti-Semitic graffiti created in Paris.

ANALYSIS How serious is Russian interference and disinformation in France?

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  1. It would be more helpful indeed responsible of The Local, to make this kind of story shareable beyond members. This kind of information is important in the public arena / public domain. And the basic information of the story is NOT exclusive to The Local.

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PARIS

Paris and Milan: Closest in the world to becoming ’15-minute cities’

Paris and Milan are among the cities closest to reaching the urban planning goal of being a "15-minute city," while car-dependent metropolises in the United States and elsewhere lag behind, a worldwide analysis said on Monday.

Published: 16 September 2024 17:29 CEST
Paris and Milan: Closest in the world to becoming '15-minute cities'

In fact, the central areas of many cities already meet the definition of a 15 minute-city, which means that residents are within a quarter-hour walk or bike ride from everything they need to a lead a good life, the analysis found.

But even within a city, there are often stark differences between the wealthy inner cities and the urban sprawl on their outskirts, according to the Italian researchers behind the new study.

The concept of the 15-minute city gained traction during the Covid pandemic, when lockdowns put more focus on local neighbourhoods.

It has since been embraced by dozens of mayors around the world — and become the target of conspiracy theorists online.

For the new study, published in the journal Nature Cities, the researchers built an online database looking at roughly 10,000 cities globally.

They used open source data to map out how far of a walk or cycle residents were from different services, including shops, restaurants, education, exercise and healthcare.

“A lot of people already live in a 15-minute city,” study co-author Hygor Piaget Monteiro Melo told AFP.

But it depends on where you look within a city, he said, because of the inequality in access to services between the centre and periphery.

No ‘utopia’

What is clear, the researchers noted, is that population density is a crucial factor — if enough people are living close enough to each other, it is much easier for them to have easy access to services.

This meant that somewhat smaller yet relatively dense cities such as Italy’s Milan or Spain’s Barcelona scored well on their map, which was made available online.

When it came to the biggest cities, “Paris is an outlier,” lead study author Matteo Bruno told AFP.

The mayor of Paris embraced the concept in 2020, and a “considerable fraction” of the city is below the 15-minute mark, the study said.

Some European cities have a head start because they were built centuries ago at a time before cars — when basically all towns had to be 15-minute cities, the researchers said.

Cities built more recently with cars specifically in mind — particularly in the United States — fared far less well on the map.

Atlanta in particular stood out as being a long way from being a 15-minute city. Future Olympic host Los Angeles also lagged behind most others for walkability, as did several Chinese cities including Chongqing.

But when it comes to cities, there are always trade-offs — and there is no single right answer, the researchers said.

“The 15-minute city is often presented as a utopia — it’s not,” Bruno said.

Americans in sprawled-out cities usually have their own houses and backyards, while Europeans in densely populated cities tend to live in apartments, illustrating the important role played by culture, Bruno said.

And central parts of US cities such as New York, San Francisco and Milwaukee were under the 15-minute threshold.

“Manhattan is definitely one of the most 15-minute places ever in the world,” said Bruno, a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome.

‘Conspiracy mongers’

There has been confusion about the concept in the past, the researchers lamented.

For example, “traffic has nothing to do with the 15-minute city,” Bruno said.

In fact, slow traffic could indicate an area is more pedestrian friendly, he added.

Yet it was new “low-traffic zones” in the UK that turned the ire of conspiracy theorists towards 15-minute city proponents.

Confusing the two ideas, online groups including vaccine and climate sceptics falsely claimed that 15-minute cities were part of a secret plot to restrict the movement of citizens.

The Italian researchers, who have themselves been targeted by “Twitter haters,” emphasised that nothing about the 15-minute city concept involves confining anyone.

Researcher Carlos Moreno, a high-profile proponent of 15-minute cities who has advised Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, was also “attacked by the worldwide conspiracy mongers,” he told AFP.

Moreno welcomed the new study, praising how the idea had swiftly become a topic of interest for researchers around the world.

Just last week, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing head of the greater Paris Ile-de-France area, presented a plan for a 20-minute region, he pointed out.

Bruno said that the 15-minute metric is just one element in the “recipe” that makes a good city.

Other parts of the recipe include tackling inequality and segregation, improving public transport, reducing traffic and so on, he said.

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