It’s hard to contain misinformation once enough people believe it. A conspiracy theory spreads exponentially regardless of its accuracy, making it that much more likely to translate into real violence. According to a study published August 27 in the journal Nature, these situations can (and should) be geographically mapped with the same models that epidemiologists use to track diseases. And as an example, researchers turned to one of history’s most famous moments of misinformation.
What was the Great Fear of 1789?
The Great Fear of 1789 was a major chapter in the French Revolution and a defining moment in modern history. Between July 20 and August 6, peasants across France mobilized at a stunning speed following untrue rumors of an aristocratic plot to intentionally starve out much of the population.
Initial reports claimed that armed militias burned hundreds of wealthy landowners’ homes and manors. However, subsequent evidence shows that in most cases, rioters simply left letters declaring the dissolution of feudal privileges. The violence was never indiscriminate, and less than 20 people are believed to have died during the uprisings. On August 4, the situation culminated when the National Assembly officially retracted feudal rights. This bold action helped energize the wider French Revolution, and laid the groundwork for the expansion of democratic governance.
A mountain of primary sources
But how did the conspiracy theory spread across a nation roughly the size of Texas in only a matter of days, long before telegraphs? According to statistical modeler Stefano Zapperi, it requires viewing the Great Fear as a public health situation. He recounts first learning of the idea of using public health measurements to map historical events after meeting pathologist Caterina La Porta.
“Caterina, given her scientific background, immediately realised that the problem could be approached using epidemiological tools,” Zapperi tells Popular Science. “We then created an interdisciplinary collaboration involving economics, history, medicine and physics to solve the problem.”
It may seem difficult, if not impossible, to study a viral idea’s infectious spread centuries after the fact. However, Zapperi and his colleagues had a major advantage: mountains of primary sources.
“Almost 100 years ago, the historian George Lefebvre collected all the existing evidence about the Great Fear, carefully summarizing all the archival records with precise dates and locations for each event, recorded in letters and accounts written at the time of the events,” explains Zapperi.
After geographically charting these accounts, the team traced the rumor spreading as it expanded across France. The information was so detailed that researchers managed to estimate that the Great Fear spread about 28 miles every 24 hours along the country’s road networks. Around 40 percent of these locations were also near a postal station, further underscoring the importance of written communications at the time.
They then combined this information with demographic and economic data such as literacy rates, wheat prices, and land ownership. They found that the locations most likely to host Great Fear uprisings were densely populated, more literate towns that featured average income levels but higher wheat prices. Villages where land ownership required a lord to possess legal papers denoting their claim also increased the possibility of an uprising.
Echoes of the past heard today
With this combined data, Zapperi’s team say the Great Fear’s spread followed an infectious disease’s trajectory—infecting quickly and peaking on July 30 before rapidly dissipating.
But while the Great Fear’s underlying “fear” was completely unfounded, the conditions that fomented it were very much real. Aristocrats may never have planned to cull the population by withholding resources, but it was the peasants that were truly enduring untenable conditions.
“Our work showed that the Great Fear was not an irrational event driven by emotions, but rather the result of a rational response to the socio-economic conditions present at the time,” says Zapperi. “The bottom line is that the extreme levels of inequality and injustice experienced in 18th century France triggered large scale movements ultimately leading to a more just society.”
Compared with 236 years ago, today’s misinformation landscape is almost unrecognizable. The digital era is simultaneously more interconnected and chaotic than at any other point in human history. But to Zapperi, this makes both the Great Fear and his team’s epidemiological approach all the more salient.
“The Great Fear provides a vivid example of the role the spreading of rumors has in driving political changes that might be relevant today,” he says. “Today information and misinformation can spread much faster than in the past. But still today, the pattern of transmission often relies on face-to-face exchanges, especially when the rumors give rise to a physical riot.”
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