The nineteenth century saw an explosion of mass media as well as an expansion of colonial states. These two processes mutually influenced each other, and at the intersection lay a thin layer of individuals who could gain inordinate power to influence global information flows. This article follows the career of one such individual, Messaoud Djebari, an Algerian man who generated several controversies by fabricating information first in Tunisia in 1881, and then across West Africa and France in 1892–5. Djebari’s case suggests that some men trained to act as colonial intermediaries could end up playing important roles in shaping the circulation of information well beyond their territory of origin. Colonial informants were defined less by their role within a given colonial territory than by an ability to portray themselves as conduits to valuable information inaccessible to Europeans, irrespective of the location. Beyond the colonial context, this calls our attention to a particular practice of information manipulation characteristic of this age: the art of making oneself into a conduit by passing off one’s opinions as somebody else’s information.

中文翻译：

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大众媒体和殖民地线人：Messaoud Djebari 和法兰西帝国，1880-1901

十九世纪见证了大众媒体的爆炸式增长以及殖民国家的扩张。这两个过程相互影响，在交叉点上存在着一层薄薄的个人，他们可以获得过度的权力来影响全球信息流。本文讲述了这样一个人 Messaoud Djebari 的职业生涯，他是一名阿尔及利亚人，他首先于 1881 年在突尼斯伪造信息，然后于 1892-5 年跨越西非和法国，从而引发了数次争议。Djebari 的案例表明，一些受过训练以充当殖民中间人的人最终可能在塑造信息流通方面发挥重要作用，远远超出其原籍地。殖民地线人的定义与其在给定殖民地领土内的角色不同，不如说是通过将自己描绘成欧洲人无法获得的有价值信息的渠道的能力，无论其位于何处。除了殖民背景之外，这让我们关注这个时代特有的信息操纵实践：通过将自己的意见作为他人的信息传递而使自己成为管道的艺术。