Ressources documentaires autour des télécommunications

Auteurs indexés : Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb ; Jean-Christophe Vilatte. Source : hal-01806629, version 1.

La notion de public n’a cessé d’être débattue par les sciences humaines et sociales depuis que ces dernières s’en sont emparées pour en faire un objet d’étude et de recherches. Cependant, très tôt, la notion de public a été dénoncée comme relevant d’un artefact conduisant à des représentations réductrices d’une réalité complexe. Hormis quelques articles pertinents et dossiers thématiques, le terme de « public », entendu au singulier, a été dissous depuis une quinzaine d’années dans son pluriel, dans une relative indifférence, et sans que la réflexion sur cette évolution ne réveille quelque appétit à la questionner. Or, l’emploi du pluriel, sur lequel les analystes du présent dossier semblent s’accorder, traduit une vision dynamique, la pluralité du phénomène, son hétérogénéité, la diversité ressentie, mais également un certain malaise quant à la manipulation du concept, lié à son instabilité. Parler de public(s) consiste souvent à légitimer, mais aussi, dans le même temps, à dénoncer cette catégorie comme étant poreuse, instable, fuyante, arbitraire, équivoque, qui se dérobe à la fois d’un point de vue épistémologique, méthodologique, mais aussi matériel. Fiévreusement discuté, le terme est toutefois sans cesse restauré et convoqué, et apparaît comme indispensable pour nourrir les recherches en Sciences de l’information et de la communication, et contribuant à structurer le champ des études de réception. Aujourd’hui, la définition de « public(s) » repose davantage sur un consensus que sur une définition unilatéralement opératoire. Il est également admis que le côté volontiers cacophonique des débats sur le(s) publics n’est pas forcément lié aux propositions définitionnelles apparemment contradictoires, mais plutôt au fait que ces dernières portent sur des objets et terrains hétérogènes autorisant l’usage de déclinaisons davantage opératoires en fonction de la « spécificité » de leurs publics. C’est en inventant, finalement, une démarche propre, inter- ou transdisciplinaire que les sciences de l’information et de la communication abordent cet objet, en tentant de confronter, de comparer, et de discuter si la question de(des) publics est réductible ou pas aux modèles des sciences sociales ayant permis, jusqu’ici, de penser les collectifs d’individus et leurs modalités d’engagement dans l’action, mais également de se penser en tant que communauté. Ainsi, si les recherches en SIC ont d’abord cherché à définir les publics à travers les caractéristiques des objets auxquels des individus pouvaient éprouver un attachement, d’autres approches, comme la sociologie des publics, ont revisité les modèles de stratification sociale et des prédispositions, tandis que les perspectives cognitives et psychosociales faisaient de même avec les réactions et phénomènes de perception. Appréhender les pratiques dites « populaires » comme une culture en soi, a permis, à d’autres, de cerner tous les publics dans leur complexité et de se débarrasser de certains cadres normalisateurs qui pouvaient conduire à interroger les nouvelles catégorisations des publics. Les perspectives modernes, sinon postmodernes, sur l’autonomie de l’individu, liées à l’évolution des dispositifs sociotechniques de consommation et du niveau global d’éducation à l’échelle mondiale ont, à leur tour, contribué à bousculer les points de vue traditionnellement portés jusqu’ici sur la question des publics. Tandis que certains chercheurs ont examiné les diverses formes d’identité entre objets et publics, comme en témoigne la montée en puissance du paradigme de l’expertise du jugement dans les recherches sur les publics, d’autres ont exploré la question des liens sociaux. L’observation de nouvelles formes de collectifs sur Internet conduit à faire dialoguer des concepts tels que ceux de publics, d’usagers, de communautés, de collectifs, ou encore d’audiences, concepts issus initialement de recherches distinctes (approches de la réception, sociologie des usages, etc.), brouillant ainsi encore davantage leurs frontières. Les manifestations scientifiques organisées sur le sujet des publics par les unités de recherche en Sciences de l’information et de la communication1 témoignent, pour autant, de l’intérêt renouvelé pour une thématique de recherche toujours féconde lorsqu’elle interroge des objets ou des pratiques (presse, télévision, pratiques culturelles et de sortie, festivals, pratiques domestiques et/ou marchandes, outils numériques et mobiles, réseaux sociaux, médias numériques, etc.). Chaque objet, chaque pratique culturelle ou médiatique, a contribué à développer des méthodes d’approche et des outils de mesure quantitatifs et/ou qualitatifs, puisant dans les travaux pionniers consacrés à la question de la réception qui ont marqué les sciences sociales des cinquante dernières années. L’ambition de ce dossier est moins de proposer une conception systématique du (des) public(s) en sciences de l’information et de la communication que de fournir une vue d’ensemble — de manière moins contradictoire que complémentaire — de ces différentes approches et de la façon dont ces dernières ont nourri un concept central des recherches dans cette discipline. Sans prétendre à l’exhaustivité, car il présenterait alors des lacunes, ce dossier entend, avant tout, montrer la richesse heuristique de cette entrée de recherche, en retracer l’évolution, et donner au lecteur quelques fils directeurs pour s’y orienter. Au risque de conférer à ce dossier un caractère parfois inégal, nous avons fait le choix de retenir des contributions couvrant un large spectre de terrains dans lesquels les SIC possèdent une « culture » de la recherche sur les publics (télévision, radio, transmédia, musées), mais aussi d’autres, moins arpentés (livre de poche, festivals) qui sont autant d’espaces de réflexion où les questions de méthode pour approcher les publics se posent avec une acuité tout aussi vive que dans les premiers. [...]

Auteurs indexés : Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb ; Jean-Christophe Vilatte. Source : hal-01806629, version 1.

The concept of "public" has been continuously debated by the humanities and social sciences since they adopted it as a subject of study and research. However, very early on, the notion of public was criticized as an artifact leading to reductive representations of a complex reality. Aside from some relevant articles and thematic dossiers, the term "public," understood in the singular, has been dissolved into its plural form for about fifteen years, in relative indifference, without any reflection on this evolution rekindling an appetite to question it. However, the use of the plural, on which the analysts of the present dossier seem to agree, reflects a dynamic vision, the plurality of the phenomenon, its heterogeneity, the perceived diversity, but also a certain discomfort regarding the manipulation of the concept, related to its instability. Speaking of public(s) often involves legitimizing, but also, at the same time, denouncing this category as porous, unstable, elusive, arbitrary, ambiguous, which eludes epistemological, methodological, as well as material perspectives. Feverishly debated, the term is nevertheless constantly restored and invoked, and appears indispensable for feeding research in Information and Communication Sciences, contributing to structuring the field of reception studies. Today, the definition of "public(s)" relies more on consensus than on a unilaterally operative definition. It is also acknowledged that the often cacophonous nature of debates about public(s) is not necessarily related to seemingly contradictory definitional proposals, but rather to the fact that these proposals address heterogeneous objects and terrains, allowing for more operational variations based on the "specificity" of their publics. It is ultimately by inventing their own, inter- or transdisciplinary approach that Information and Communication Sciences address this object, attempting to confront, compare, and discuss whether the question of public(s) is reducible or not to social science models that have so far allowed for the consideration of groups of individuals and their modes of engagement in action, but also of themselves as communities. Thus, while research in ICS (Information and Communication Sciences) initially sought to define publics through the characteristics of the objects to which individuals could feel attached, other approaches, such as the sociology of publics, have revisited models of social stratification and predispositions, while cognitive and psychosocial perspectives have similarly addressed reactions and perception phenomena. Understanding so-called "popular" practices as a culture in themselves has allowed others to grasp all publics in their complexity and to shed certain normative frameworks that could lead to questioning new categorizations of publics. Modern, if not postmodern, perspectives on individual autonomy, linked to the evolution of sociotechnical consumption devices and the global level of education worldwide, have, in turn, contributed to shaking up the traditionally held views on the question of publics. While some researchers have examined the various forms of identity between objects and publics, as evidenced by the rise of the judgment expertise paradigm in public research, others have explored the question of social ties. The observation of new forms of collectives on the Internet leads to a dialogue between concepts such as publics, users, communities, collectives, or even audiences, concepts initially arising from distinct research (reception approaches, sociology of usage, etc.), further blurring their boundaries. Scientific events organized on the subject of publics by research units in Information and Communication Sciences1 testify, however, to the renewed interest in a research theme that remains fertile when it examines objects or practices (press, television, cultural and leisure practices, festivals, domestic and/or commercial practices, digital and mobile tools, social networks, digital media, etc.). Each object, each cultural or media practice, has contributed to developing quantitative and/or qualitative approach methods and measurement tools, drawing on pioneering work dedicated to reception questions that have marked social sciences over the past fifty years. The ambition of this dossier is less to propose a systematic conception of public(s) in Information and Communication Sciences than to provide an overview — in a less contradictory than complementary manner — of these different approaches and how they have nourished a central concept in research within this discipline. Without claiming exhaustiveness, as it would then present gaps, this dossier intends, above all, to demonstrate the heuristic richness of this research entry, to trace its evolution, and to give the reader some guiding threads to navigate it. At the risk of giving this dossier an occasionally uneven character, we have chosen to include contributions covering a broad spectrum of fields in which ICS possess a "culture" of public research (television, radio, transmedia, museums), but also others, less explored (paperbacks, festivals), which are as much spaces for reflection where methodological questions to approach publics arise with the same acute intensity as in the former. We spared the reader an introductory dossier that would trace the genealogy of this ancient research tradition in ICS, to which Céline Ségur diligently devoted herself through a documented contribution on the genesis of television public studies and their subsequent conceptual evolutions, which we know had a determining influence on structuring the ICS field. As the author rightly recalls, in this disciplinary domain, the terminologies "audience," "reception," "influence," even "televiewers," have been alternately used to qualify research on "those who watch television." They corresponded to approaches that were certainly related, often complementary, but not always differentiated, before the use of the term "publics" became established, with the contours of a relatively precise approach method, one that focuses on identified, active, and more or less circumscribed collectives. The other virtue of Céline Ségur’s text comes from its interest in how this meaning became consensual in ICS, more precisely how the handling of this object by a discipline, namely ICS, influenced the very concept of "public," contributing to its academic positioning and construction as a research object. This epistemological question remains, moreover, in the background of all the contributions selected for this dossier, which obviously account for the heterogeneity of approaches to this object, but also, to our surprise, for the decentralization of the focal points of reflection in public studies. Thus, at least two contributions highlight, support, or discuss the "grey literature" produced by the literary publishing sector and that of film distribution, each in their own way, underscoring the conceptual ambiguities, the plasticity of reader or spectator categorizations as long as the approach context allows the use of sub-categorizations for practical, economic, or statistical, if not political, reasons, as one of the contributions points out. First is Hélène Laurichesse’s text on research on cinema spectators, in which the author highlights the paradox between the abundance and the precision of statistical data produced on public both by the CNC services, the Ministry of Culture (DEPS), and by film distribution and exploitation industries, and their "non-practical" purpose for researchers as they still segment publics according to different distribution channels following the media chronology (cinema halls, TV, VoD, Internet, etc.). For Hélène Laurichesse, this tradition hardly allows accounting for today’s "convergence" logics theorized by Henry Jenkins' model, whose reflection serves as the guiding thread for the entire article. Hélène Laurichesse concludes by encouraging the cross-methods approach to account for the diversity of forms of consumption and transmission of cinematic culture and its main sociotechnical mediation objects, films. Willian Eduardo Righini de Souza also shows, in his contribution "Publics of the paperback in the construction of the discourse on cultural democratization in Brazil," how, in a country where the literacy rate remains low, the ideology of democratizing reading among the popular class publics has been imposed through publishing professionals offering paperback book collections for sale. De Souza highlights a national paradox that consists in thinking that the paperback is the main tool of public policies to fight illiteracy in Brazil insofar as a) it would objectively address, due to its extremely low access price, the least educated belonging to the popular classes, and b) it would allow them easier access to the "classics" of literature, usually published as paperbacks. It is in this conceptual ambiguity, where the idea of mediation is vainly sought, that, according to the author, lies the interest in working with this object as a research field since Brazilian ministerial statistics alternately mobilize the categories of "readers" or "non-readers," which (in)voluntarily allows the use of these thought schemas and, consequently, the legitimization of public reading policies. Finally, just as Olivier Thévenin points out, in his contribution, that the time factor is a variable to consider when measuring individuals' attachments to their leisure activities, Willian Eduardo Righini de Souza emphasizes that publics emerging from book mediation devices (notably in the prison system) are once again confronted with the effects of this time factor (and the competition of other cultural offerings) and that this is undoubtedly a research avenue to explore to better understand the attachment dynamics of reading publics in the Global South. Two other contributions of this dossier highlight, profitably, the regimes of historicity of research on publics in fields as diverse as the Usenet network of Web pioneers in the 1990s and museology of the same period. Thus, Camille Paloque-Berges, in "The imagination of the 'general public' at the turn of the Web (1993-1997)," shows how "expert" users involved in the development of the Internet contributed to shaping the ideal type of new publics on networks, whether they are "participatory publics" or the "general public" of media network consumers. This genetic approach rightly raises the question of a mediation specific to the transmission of technical knowledge about and regarding the Internet by situating the observation in a key moment of the technological, political, and economic transition of the Internet (1993-1997). Based on the study of discussions of groups of computer scientists on Usenet, the ancestor of social networks, and their interactions with novices in technical knowledge about network usage, Camille Paloque-Berges identifies three figures of the mediation of network computing knowledge that illustrate a series of crises generated by critical awareness that marked the landscape of communication networks around the notion, but also the fear, of what was then called the next "general public" of the Internet. Historically situated in the same reference period, the 1990s, Nathanaël Wadbled’s article, "The paradigm of publics in 1990s museology," poses a similar question. He shows how, within museums, the consideration of the public evolved, in a particular museological trend commonly called "museum education." Since the late 19th century, American museums have indeed been concerned with knowing the composition of their public, understanding what visitors were seeking and what their interests were. This concern with the public partly stems from the educational role recognized for this institution. However, the author only begins his study from the 1990s, showing how a true paradigm shift occurred during this period in the conception of museology researchers, moving from a rational model centered on intervention (based on a program) with a public to a model emphasizing the visitor's singular "experience" within a context, free of their learning choices. In this change, the visitor's place in the museum and their status are completely modified, as is the approach to the notion of public (public versus publics or visitors). However, this evolution is deemed insufficient by the author, as it is still too marked by the dialectic between thought-of public(s) and real public(s) when it comes to approaching museum publics. This question of the imaginary constructions of media publics echoes through two other contributions of this dossier addressing two distinct fields: those of Damien Malinas and Raphael Roth on festival publics, and those of Nozha Smati and Pascal Ricaud on radio publics. In their article "Festival attendees as publics in ICS. A semiotic-anthropology of communication flags and emblems of the Vieilles Charrues festival," Damien Malinas and Raphaël Roth present the results of a survey on the semiotics of flags and emblems created by the publics of the Vieilles Charrues festival in Brittany. This action research uses the tools of semiotics and communication anthropology, a choice that imposed itself on the investigators to approach festival practices and analyze the use of these totemic forms that contribute to the musical experience at festivals. Through the rituals profitably described in this contribution, the portrait of a participating public attached to iconic forms of rallying emerges, whose interpretation employs both heraldry and semiotics. Beyond the original epistemological perspective of the project, this viewpoint also serves to question the interest of a semiotic anthropology communication to observe festival practices in information and communication sciences. After the Breton festivals, Nozha Smati and Pascal Ricaud continue this reflection by taking their field to the Parisian newsroom of RFI. Through the discourses of Radio France Internationale journalists, and using a comprehensive approach, their contribution proposes to analyze the new modes of relationship and representation of publics by radio professionals using digital social networks to communicate with their listeners. Between directives from Parisian newsrooms of the "France Médias Monde" group (France 24, RFI, and Monte-Carlo Doualiya), broadcasting from Paris to five continents in 14 different languages, the diversity of listeners’ expectations due to technological equipment inequalities and internet access, this article allows us to perceive the tensions at work in a profession seeking new communication avenues. In trying to apprehend the mutations and adaptations of the profession to the new digital and relational environment of social networks, the article poses the question of the evolution of radio public figures, also questioning the meaning given to the connections, interactions, and representations of publics constructed by the journalists encountered in this survey. Olivier Thévenin finally offers, through a dense contribution, "Publics, mass media and cultural participation; three interdependent concepts," a more specific analysis of the relationships between media and cultural (consumption) practices. This article proposes a literature review of the notion of "public," showing that it mainly refers to a provisional status and that one should consider "crossed dynamics" and "the relational dimension of media, cultural, and leisure activities as interdependent" to approach it. Tracing clearly the genealogy of these ideas since the 1940s, the author restitutes the reality of a rich research field, showing how the focus of work on the public has progressively shifted in a context of profound evolution and mutation, the latter affecting the forms of relationships with media, culture, and leisure. Olivier Thévenin, in a critical approach to the question, shows both the interest, but also the limitations and especially the missed opportunities of the different research currents that have focused on media, cultural, and leisure publics over the past eight decades. He highlights the necessity, today, to take into account the question of sociabilities in research addressing publics, but also the need to consider individuals' relationship to time utility, more precisely "the diversified logics of a relationship to time that testify to both the diversity of experiences and paths of access to culture." This last variable appears to him as a promising approach in Information and Communication Sciences for the coming years. Last but not least, after having outlined through the different contributions of this dossier the collective dynamics of participation, a cryptic-titled article concludes this dossier by returning — while inviting us to remember it — to the original constitutive element of the public: the individual. Three entries are summoned here: the individual, automated digital prescription, and works. Indeed, there is not an online platform that hasn’t developed, today, a prescription system that aims to automatically recommend to every viewer a film, a series, or a show based on choices they have already made. But what is this new relationship we are proposed to maintain with "recommended" works by a collective of anonymous publics said to resemble us but whom we do not know? How do the very notions of "spectator" and "public" redefine themselves based on our shared choices? Even when managed by a prescription software, every recommendation remains a sociological "construction" based on algorithms specific to each individual’s cultural path. Automated recommendation systems have built a virtual social community so fine in its individualized choices that publics would ultimately recognize themselves only slightly. Would this mean opposing taste communities to technological solutionism, the sociology of publics to a chimera "sociology of the spectator"? Relying on the contributions of reception socio-anthropology which he has drawn from his work, but also on his privileged position as observer in his capacity as President of the High Council for Artistic and Cultural Education, this is the reflection that Emmanuel Ethis proposes to share in this dossier of RFSIC. Taking the counter-side of the ambient new positivism that sees in automated recommendation a new mode of public prescription, more modern than Libé, Arte, or Télérama, more in tune with its time than simple word-of-mouth in the queue or in front of cinema posters, it is, for Emmanuel Ethis, because he is an obvious and convenient "social respondent" that the computer algorithm so easily substitutes for the conversational space of sharing works between individuals. Relying on the new "The Journal of an Obsession" by the English novelist Jonathan Coe2, in which Coe recounts, year after year, his obsession with Billy Wilder’s film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Emmanuel Ethis shows that there remain obsessive works that we render irreducible to any mechanical prescription, and in light of which we build the vast majority of our spectator career. Thus, by returning to the individual and their attachment relationship to cultural objects, this RFSIC dossier is temporarily closed, not without having allowed the different authors to debate, confront viewpoints, make us think of new avenues, and allow us, if not to propose a unilaterally operative definition of publics, at least to verify that the current definitional porosity of the term "publics" constitutes, in sum, a heuristic value that is still not discredited in ICS, and it is undoubtedly this that makes it its main appeal.