Les medias occidentaux face à la crise militaire russo-ukrainienne: quel impact en Afrique de la sémantique d’ « aggression? »

Abstract

During his African tour at the end of July 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron repeatedly criticised Africa's hypocritical attitude towards the armed crisis in Ukraine. For the French president, African neutrality is not an either/or, but a thinly veiled support, which allows Russia to escape the Western political strategy of diplomatic isolation. This strategy relies mainly on the strength of the media as a megaphone for the Western reading of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict. It puts forward the idea of aggression or invasion. This article examines this communication of war deployed through elements of language that draw on the notion of aggression, and its impact in distant lands such as Africa. The text posits that in this Western war of opinion control, political reality actually precedes the voice of their media.  Based on the theory of behaviouralism, this article shows that war communication and its results depend entirely on the political consideration of the direct and indirect belligerents by the recipients. In other words, opinions on the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine are not made or broken by the media's reporting or treatment of the news, but by the political reputation that the target audience has long built up about the various belligerents.