Contenu du sommaire : Les non-usagers des TIC

This article brings together some of the earliest work on non-use of the internet. The first part is largely conceptual, and was first presented in 1999 at the height of the first dot-com boom when expectations about the internet and fears about the digital divide were both at their height. The authors demonstrate how non-use could be a voluntary choice and may not always be the result of nor lead to social exclusion. The second part is based on empirical research about how middle-aged and older people find health information and the reasons why they do or do not use the internet in that process. The article invites to think about recent work about non-use and future theoretical and empirical research directions.

In the past few years, a large number of works in social sciences has been carried out with a special interest in the “digital divide” related to Internet. As part of this issue, the research dealing with “late-adopters”, “non-users” and “drop-outs” is however much more restricted, at least in French research. Thus, we suggest to revisit the concept of “non-use” from the recognition theory developed by Axel Honneth. We will question, from empirical materials, the possibility of considering non-uses as forms of response to the recognition ideology carried by the “information society” mythology.

On the grounds of the objective of this special journal issue to focus on qualitative approaches in the analysis of ICTs' non-users, I report on the views of internet users and non-users in Greece regarding the main reasons lying behind their decision to adopt the internet or not. The aim is to answer the question: « What are the main forces driving people in Greece to adopt ICTs like the internet or not? ». The methodology is focus groups, which have constituted the final phase of a mixed three-phased empirical study and have specifically followed up the second phase, a large-scale quantitative survey. The research finds that the parameters of « need », « learning » and « Incentives » are the driving forces of non-adoption of the internet in Greece. These parameters must be seen in an everyday life context, as they are intimately associated with internet non-users' everyday lives and their priorities in life, thus challenging arguments about exclusion and lack of access. On the other hand, users have chosen to use the internet either willingly or under pressure. In the latter case, they limit their usage severely, while they justify « resistant » attitudes towards the internet on the basis of their circumstances, priorities and values in life. The article also makes some methodological comments concerning the ways in which the focus groups enrich, strengthen or weaken the findings that the preceding quantitative survey offered.

Noting the existence of restricted uses or non-uses of ICTs in social workers in the frame of previous research, the authors undertook a qualitative study relating to professionals of education and advice in social field (educators for special needs, educators for young children, marital and family advisers) to understand the reasons of uses limitation of computer tools and particularly of the internet. Beyond a simple juxtaposition of causes, analysis shows how certain interactions between various factors are built : needs, skills, representations, values and context. This cross approach appears to be heuristic because it offers new keys of comprehension about complexity of limited use or non-use situations.

In order to explore forms of non-usage of the mobile telephone, this article undertakes two challenges. On the one hand, overcoming a currently reductionist perspective on non-users, which keeps focusing on their deficits; on the other hand, replacing the dichotomy « usage/non-usage» by a continuum between usage and non-usage. The article reveals that the differences between various forms of usage (including limited or partial usage) are often more important than those between usage and non-usage. These findings are based on a comparison of two approaches (quantitative and qualitative), two samples and two different populations (German and French) emerging from two different empirical investigations. Whereas this attempt is certainly bold, – the confrontation suffering from obvious limitations –, it ultimately also permits a more refined understanding of usage.

Patrick Charaudeau defines himself as a semiologist and a researcher in Discourse Analysis. It is as such that he intervenes here. As a matter of fact he defines, on a tone which is not polemical, what conditions are necessary for the interdisciplinarity to come true. Two linguists – Dominique Maingueneau and Roselyne Koren – and a researcher in sciences of information and communication – Sylvie Leleu-Merviel – answer him, each specifying what cover the interdisciplinary and disciplinary notions, the first two by abounding – with some nuances – in the direction of Patrick Charaudeau's propositions, the last one by putting them in to the test of the scientific construction.

The propositions of Patrick Charaudeau (2010 : 195-222) put forward in his text « For a "focalized" interdisciplinarity in the human and social sciences » are confronted with the work of Mioara Mugur-Schächter who explicates and organizes the origins and structure of the whole volume of conceptualized content, notably concerning scientific knowledge. Starting from the infra-conceptual, which is presented as a magma of indistinct perceptives, the constructive process of representations transforms the perceived into meaningful entities. Tried and tested procedures of legitimating allows a normalization of sense making that leads to meaning making, i.e. negotiated and shared sense making, detached from its context, communicable, teachable, able to circulate and is thus established as a social object. In showing how concepts, operations, factual data, a semantic symbolic and a syntax that ensure communicability are interwoven, the established « descriptional canon » highlights the different components of a « horizon of relevance » that different disciplines should share if they are to construct spaces of « focalized » interdisciplinarity.

This article comments on an article by Patrick Charaudeau which has been published in Questions de communication : “Towards a focused interdisciplinarity in Human and Social Sciences”. My review is not polemic, for I agree with the main thesis of Patrick Charaudeau's article. After summerizing the key ideas of his text, I discuss a few topics which seem to me not developed enough or were not dealt with by Patrick Charaudeau. I discuss especially the peculiar condition of Discourse Analysis, which is interdisciplinary by nature, and the problems that the definition of “ disciplinary fields ” (for example linguistics or education sciences) raises. I highlight the diversity of these fields and the heterogeneity of their components. This discussion is illustrated by the case of the field of literary studies.

Established on a rather narrow and open to outside influence territory, Belgium's French-speaking broadcasting has faced, during the political campaign of 2004, the rise of two programs, whose composition was brand-new: Destination élections and Pour qui voter? Knowing that the political genre of the programs makes no doubt as far as their – legally and ethically supervised – broadcasting is concerned; these programs nevertheless question the traditional contrast between the (said) «classic» political formats and the new ones. As a matter of fact, they arise in a global process of audiovisual restyling, which occurs more at the external level of the viewers, than at the verbal interaction level, between the partners of diegesis.

Contemporary television series, especially us series, have changed the relation between the world and fiction. Series do not strengthen the link between the two universes, the so called « realistic » way, but they create their own level of reality : « a fictional reality ». In this paper, we used Roland Barthes's device of the « effect of reality » in order to describe the nature of contemporary series. We analyzed e.r generic and way of filming as an example of the confusion about the nature of fiction. The innovation of contemporary us series is based on this interrelation between the fiction and the world of facts and news. It requires a model of reception based on an inquiry about the nature of the program by the viewer more than a decoding process.

In this text, we aim at considering in a same analytical framework (following François Cooren's perspective) what motivates actors and what do they motivate. Besides, we specify Anthony Giddens' concept of reflexivity in his social structuration theory as a limited process. And we consider interaction as a place/moment of expression and actualisation more or less conventional of «taken for granted». Thus we will question interaction as a work of presentification and mobilization of conventions, and as a conventionalisation and routinisation process. To cap it all, we will characterize the link between reflexive limitation and language, and emphasize the fact that actors using «more or less taken for granted» tend to employ reification as a way to express themselves, while embodying thoughts, principles, rules… and thus contributing to their circulation.