Contenu du sommaire : Le XXe siècle saisi par la communication

On the origins and evolution of information and communication sciences
This article offers a review of the Information and Communication Sciences (ICS), from the institutional perspective and from the point of view of scientific trends in the discipline. This inevitably incomplete synthesis attempts to bring out the lines of force connecting interdisciplinary thinking and theoretical hybridisation, the underpinning role of training and research, and the gradual institutionalisation that have been the hallmarks of progress in the discipline and of the dense and sometimes difficult process of its construction. Obviously, this is not an article on the history of a sciences or sciences, but rather a particular perspective that aims to contextualise the emergence and the maturing of ICS in France, through their relationships with other disciplines but also from a broader perspective.

Theories on influence in communication : North American and French perspectives
In this article, the author offers a discussion on the circulation of knowledge and concepts between the United States and France. She focuses on and describes theories and ideas in psychosociology that are of particular relevance in the field of communication. She underlines the weakness, in French research on communication, of the psychosociology tradition compared to other theoretical branches that have become more institutionalised. She also offers an analysis of the categorisation of sociopsycho-communicational theories, which she divides into two main theoretical groups that involve the subject as a category. Finally, she refers to fields and topic areas that pertain to crucial social issues, such as health, the environment, education and the concept of citizenship.

How modern historical events are manufactured
Rather than taking an outside view, today's mass media are fully involved in shaping the very nature of the events they communicate. More and more, events exist only through the media. To exist, an event has to be known and, increasingly, the media are the means whereby people find out about events. First came the press, then radio, which played such a vital role in the Second World War, when listening to Radio Londres was an act of resistance in itself. Since the advent of television, the media's central role in the manufacture of events has constantly expanded. Man's first steps on the moon became an event of global dimensions thanks to television's live broadcasting of the images. The Internet has further strengthened this trend, to the point where historical events and the media broadcasting them have become entirely consubstantial.

Command, control, communication : management of information cybernetic systems
Cybernetics emerged in the post-war period from a desire to formalise complexity. This new discipline created both the tools and the means for society, the economy and culture to develop, but also for deciphering and understanding large complex systems. The formal model conceived by the fathers of cybernetics is still the basis for the construction of today's large and critical systems of information and communication. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, this model has continued to govern a whole range of technological, socio-economic and cultural sectors.

« Networks are everything ! » : highs and lows of a much-wooed concept
Communication has come to seem unthinkable without online networks. Briefly tracing back the long history of networks, this article shows that the different meanings that the idea of networks acquired during its use up to the 19th century (scientific concept, socio-technical object, sociological notion, vector of ideology) are still recognised today. Through the 20th century, these meanings shifted as the idea of networks was absorbed into different but coexisting programmes and traditions, becoming interweaved and sometimes even telescoping. Today's widespread use and success of the network idea therefore comes at a price : that of an everpresent possibility of confusion as challenging as any study that addresses it : the multiple and proliferating empirical realities it now covers, its interwoven uses and purposes and the global issues raised by its ubiquity all prompt multidisciplinary approaches that are both necessary and perilous. Its trajectory reveals the ambient technical determinism as well as the tendency to reduce communication to a set of means and media, to the detriment of the anthropological foundations that make communication possible or not.

Scientific journals and copyright : open access as a game changer
Open access has become a game-changer in the world of scientific publishing. The goal is to promote the sharing of knowledge, which implies free online access to scientific publications to facilitate their use. Open access systems emerged in response to the practice among some publishers of taking digital communication as a pretext to increase subscription rates for their print journals. A great many laws have been enacted in different countries to allow open access to develop. This article seeks to identify the role of copyright in this new situation.

Cultural diversity, identity dynamics and relationships with others
How should we envision the role and the significance of the right to be different, of policies recognising that right and of communitarian beliefs ? How relevant are approaches based on cultural relativism ? How can a balance be found between respect for individual rights and collective forms of expression ? In addressing these questions, all of which assume careful consideration of relationships with others and the dynamics of identity, the “transactional” perspective can be extremely fruitful.

The Francophone idea, from a common language to a common sphere of political negotiation
What does the Francophone idea - la Francophonie - really mean ? This article tries to show how a language such as French can give rise to political ideas that in turn begin to generate unique spheres of negotiation that need to be analysed and understood. The aim of this article is to clarify the Francophone idea, to identify the multi-sectoral and multi-scalar components of the Francophone “community” and to report on current debates in this unique sphere of negotiation and exchanges.

Mediation and the meaning of commitment
Although political communication and propaganda have long been considered as one and the same, there are grounds for a reassessment this commonplace observation to envisage communication as the symbolic dimension of matters political, and as the means of developing the codes and languages that are essential in forging links between politicians, the existence of a public sphere and the expression of identities. The expression of identity as conveyed by politicians is at once the essence and the substance of public debates, and it is through their communication practice that politicians represent their commitments, articulating as they do so the real dimension of their relationship with power, the imaginary dimension of their goals and the symbolic dimension of their representation. Political communication and commitment cannot exist outside the sphere of public debate. Debates then take shape in four different but interconnected ways : expressions of the identity of those taking part, attempts to secure the support of others, exclusion of those who disagree with the discourse and aesthetic sublimation of the political goal. These multiple forms of public debate endow political commitments with a genuinely democratic dimension by grounding them in the demos logic of shared political identity.

Controversy in public debates
With the arrival of scientific and technical controversies into the public sphere, questions arise on the way democratic debate is organised. This phenomenon accelerated considerably in the 20th century with the advent of the techno-sciences. In situations of controversy, who should be entitled to speak ? According to what criteria ? How are opposing arguments presented, and how do we arbitrate between exponents of very different values with very different interests ? This article discusses how controversy and public debate are linked, starting from the two main acceptations of the latter term (debate in the media sphere ; an instrument of participatory democracy in scientific and technical topic areas).

A communicationnal perspective on sports
Communication on sports often comes down to the use of tools that shape the structure of their commercial dimension. This calls for a paradigm shift away from the instrumental approach to communication and events-based approach to sports, to allow sports, sports as showbiz and their mass-mediatised treatment to be considered as invested with a communicational purpose where the aim is to reach an audience, and which sets itself a certain goal. This can then be addressed through different perspectives, economic, political, sociological, historical or anthropological. Each prism will shed light on the communication that occurs, but that communication will in turn refract, unanalysed, through each prism. Here, then, lies the crux of a potentially interdisciplinary approach, and the aim of an analysis that is both epistemological and heuristic.

The communicating individual
In the 19th century, the individual became the object of a great deal of study in the social sciences, humanities and biological sciences. The individual is often viewed in relation to social or political issues or the living world, but attracts little interest from the information and communication sciences. In our 21st century context, at a time when human beings are establishing their relationships with the world through information, both personal and public, we believe that to preserve the individual from being reduced to the status of a mere purveyor of information for the information farm, the communicating individual can be defined on the basis of psychological, mental, sociological and biological references that are rooted in the 20th century.

Leisure and leisure activities
Life in society seems to alternate between “work” and “leisure” as if our very existence were a combination of the two in variable proportions depending on one's age and the time of year. For example, children have more leisure time than school time, while for adults in mid-career, assuming they are not hit by unemployment, work takes up far more time than leisure, until the proportions are reversed when they retire. In these different cases, leisure time is seen as a differential : it is what is left over after work, necessary sleep and the time taken up by all the “things that have to be done” in our daily lives.

Language and communication
Language and linguistic studies, vigorously promoted by Saussure as both model and launch-pad for social science studies first, and subsequently for communication disciplines, have been losing ground with the advance of the critique of logocentrism. Led by C. S. Peirce, this critique moves into pragmatics, then progressively into general media-related factors that are more capable than speech alone of accounting for Claude Lévi-Strauss's symbolic effectiveness.

The language of “spin”, a key to our contemporary world“Spin”, a contemporary English term for a type of language that George Orwell coined as “newspeak” or “doublespeak”, echoes the French expression langue de bois, which made its appearance in the French media during the Solidarność movement in Poland in the early 1980s. But today, this obfuscatory form of language is by no means the exclusive preserve of totalitarian regimes. It is all-pervasive in political speech-making in contemporary democracies and among diplomats, in the media, in the world of “communication” and marketing, and in advertising. It has become central to our contemporary world. Three aspects are addressed here. First, from the historical and geopolitical angle, we show that “spin”, or langue de bois, does not have the same significance in the former communist bloc as in democratic regimes. Secondly, while the French term langue de bois covers multiple meanings and situations, other languages, such as English, use specific expressions in each case ; finally, we delve beyond the simplistic view of right and wrong where, on the one hand, the truth must always be spoken and no real democracy can exist without it, and on the other hand, the language of “spin” with its many permutations is purely a sinister emanation from an Orwellian world.

Inner-city culture and language and the Web
In the early years of the 21st century, the Internet became the dominant means of conveying “inner-city” culture and language beyond the many places where they emerge. Words and expressions from what is known as “contemporary inner-city French” (français contemporain des cités or FCC) are now frequent on websites, forums, chat-rooms and blogs, but also on social networks. This is actually producing a cultural shift and there is every indication that the process will continue, given the role played by contemporary digital media.

The changing fortunes of the intellectual
After rising into public prominence with the Dreyfus affair, the figure of the intellectual saw considerable changes in its fortunes through the 20th century. From the post WW1 period up to recent decades, the role of intellectuals was hotly debated and, eventually, their standing was substantially diminished. There are many causes accounting for the process that has thrown their edifying role in matters pertaining to the intellect into doubt. One of those identified here is the development of the media, which has contributed to the inexorable decline of the intellectual, most blatantly reflected in the fact that intellectuals are now being consigned to the museum of history.

Changing communication patterns in 20th century catholic christianism
Religion is both structured and nourished by the communication on which it is founded and through which it is publicised. Catholicism in the 20th century saw major communicational changes, stemming from the redefinition of its aesthetics, liturgy and discourse in Vatican II, from its appropriation of the media, from its discovery of multiple opinions among Catholics and from its stated intention of developing a new “social” conception of communication. Thus was Catholicism, in its turn, conquered by communication, to which it has contributed new concepts and thinking.

Staging communication in psychoanalysis and in film
The 20th century's extraordinary cinematographic output was the fruit of thinking by authors, of social and hsitorical contexts, of the determination of film producers and of public desires. Films emerged from new theories ; theories engendered new films : two fields echoing each others' creativeness. In this article, we show that films and their spectators, as addressed by 20th century texts nourished by psychoanalysis, were in fact staging human communication. Here is the infans, the human child who has not yet acquired language and is indistinguishable from its human surroundings, and who appears in adult form in cinema's identity games. Here also is that shadowy zone that underlies all the thoughts that help us keep up a distance, a separation created by the symbolic. It is the recognition of this fundamental and inaccessible distance, operating along with language and fantasy, that in turn brings recognition of the other, and of communication. The strength of psychoanalysis is to show the importance of uncommunication. The cinema simulates these states of being as it stages them through the interplay between sight and seeing.

The impact of communication in understanding a document
The communicational approach that developed in the 20th century was applied to analyse and understand the role and the function of documents. The logic they obeyed was then threefold : they were centripetal, accessible and physical. The 21st century brought new perspectives, with documents considered from cognitive and anthropological angles, in which they are basically seen as a space and a pretext for communication.

The second information system revolution : towards digital constructivism
Stressing the proliferation of information and communication technologies, this article discusses their influence on people and contemporary society. From a consideration of the deviant forms associated with these technological innovations, we set out the principles of the “digital constructivism” applied in the design of knowledge projects in professional contexts in order to discuss possibilities for stable and permanent post-revolution information systems where activity-centred information and communication systems are the goal to be achieved.

Communication as heritage
Although pre-digital communication has become part of our heritage, the so-called “Born Digital Heritage” defined by UNESCO in 2003 appears to be expanding its contours and boundaries and increasing the number of players involved by including more trivial forms and banal components. This article attempts to show how the 20th century laid the groundwork for this development, which is symptomatic of today's increasing interest in communication as an object.

Uncommunication, the breath of life of communication
Uncommunication, according to D. Wolton, is communication's horizon. This idea signals a radical break with the cybernetics paradigm that has nourished communication studies for so long. But in this article, we try to show that uncommunication, far from destroying communication, is what breathes life into it. First, we explain exactly what we mean by communication and uncommunication, before discussing the main theoretical contributions on uncommunication. Finally, we show that uncommunication is not the dramatically envisaged horizon of communication, but the spice that gives it life.

Scientific findings on cultural practices and communication processes
The study of systems of communication (in both material and ideological terms) and their relationships with the processes of social cohesion and development demands an understanding of the profound changes in practice, usage and knowledge that occurred in the latter half of the 20th century. It also has to address the relevance of scientific criteria applied to social phenomena that involve desires, expectations, imagination and symbolic forms. This paper looks into the information/communication couple and its relationship with symbolic phenomena and, on the other hand, the division between Culture and Science. My hypothesis is that culture and communication are two facets of the same configuration.

The social media as regulators of collective emotion
According to Durkheim, when people are faced with a significant emotional event, they feel a fundamental anthropological need to communicate and experience their emotions collectively, and to refer to a supra-ordinate collective consciousness. We show that when an extraordinary social and media event takes place, the social media take on the role of a “virtual collective consciousness” by regulating strong collective emotions. This appears be directly involved in the co-construction of new socially shared meaning. Based on an unusually striking socio-emotional phenomenon (the death of Michael Jackson), we describe five processes involved in regulating negative collective emotions. The regulating process appears to differ according to people's identities, and to be directly involved in the co-construction of a new meaning shared by all. It also seems to take effect more rapidly when group identities are involved. When identity is more individual, on the other hand, the social media appear to promote more negative emotional ruminations.