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Manipulation of information and post-truth: what are we afraid of? The debate on "post-truth" or fake news is often confusing: What phenomena are we talking about exactly? Is it a characteristic of our times, to the point that some speak of an "era" of post-truth? Beyond the diagnosis, we generally evoke this couple, post-truth and fake news, as something that should be worried about. But what exactly are we afraid of? Relativism? The disappearance of facts or truth? Or manipulation? The conference will offer elements of analysis of this question and the answers that could be provided. Mathias Girel is a philosopher, lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (PSL), Director of the Cavaillès Center (USR République des savoirs) and Director of the Center for Archives in Philosophy, History and Publishing of Sciences (CAPHES). He conducts research on pragmatism and American philosophy, and on issues related to provoked doubt and instrumentalized ignorance. He edited and prefaced the French version of R. Proctor's book Golden Holocaust. The Tobacco Conspiracy (2014) and published Science and Territories of Ignorance (Quae, December 2017).