Contenu du sommaire : Les pouvoirs éditoriaux de Google

This study aims to understand the Egyptian revolutionary process during which the demonstrators are exploiting the power of the revolutionary discourse represented by the revolutionary slogans chanted or written. This discourse is characterized by the language transgression led by humour and code switching between standard Arabic and colloquial Arabic. Thus, during these popular uprisings that have occurred in Egypt between 2011 and 2013, the humour based primarily on the irony, contributes in the identification of the main demands of the Egyptians. On the other hand, the code switching reflects the change in the relationship between the masses, now in high position and the ruling system, in the low position.

For twenty years, web search engines have gained a considerable place in our information landscape. Search engine optimization has become a full-fledged activity. Facing protests against their editorial policies, search engines sheltered for a long time behind neutrality, even objectivity, supposedly resulting from a computerized processing. Many controversies push them to clarify their policies. What do instructions that they give to webmasters tell about these policies? In Google and Bing instructions, we can find some differences in their positioning. Moreover, less interest has been brought to delinking. The ruling of the European court of justice in 2014, so-called “right to be forgotten”, gives an opportunity to take a look at it. The answers given by search engines to the ruling underline some aspects of their editorial policies. All this together invites to reconceptualize the notion of editorialization.

The internet is dominated by a small number of players, the GAFAM, that share common characteristics: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are US-based but globalized through their activities, strongly financialized and carriers of the "Californian Ideology”; they form a global oligopoly against the public interest. The article explains how the GAFAM rely on neo-liberal hegemony and on the evolution of the global economy (technological convergence, financialization, deregulation) to extend their grip on the Internet and generate exceptional profitability. Subsequently it analyses the integration strategies implemented by GAFAM operating both a vertical and horizontal concentration in order to control the totality of the software and hardware infrastructure necessary for the delivery of content and services to Internet users.

As soon as a publisher wants its content to be as visible as possible, chances are high that its way of doing will be influenced by Google's information hierarchizing method. However and paradoxically it happens that this influence will not always serve Google's interests (as a firm). This is what we highlight, before explaining how the search engine's designers mitigate the effects of this counter-intuitive influence by impacting content in a way that could be favourable to them via the publication of guidelines and recommendations destined to publishers. They reinforce this policy by including sanctions or at least threaten to sanction what they deem “spammy” behaviours. Finally, we will demonstrate that the so-called “normative effects”, fathered by the strain between the algorithm, the discourse and ethic rules don't only influence content, but also the search engine itself.

For some Google executives and some practitioners of the web, the Google search engine measures the reputation of web sources. But does this engine actually evaluates the reputation? In this article we examine the different information processing methods of this search engine by four prisms: documentary (reputation indicators in the interface), algorithms (technical and mathematical models used), emotional (treatment of opinions expressed online and their effects on users) and managerial (speeches of web professionals on the use of the search engine). To do this, we offer a critical analysis of various features of the engine through the prism of the concept of reputation, and through speeches of professional users on the issue.

Through careful observation of Analytics Academy, Adwords Academy and Youtube Creators Academy, this article critically reflects on the way Google shapes the evolution of professional communication. The socio-semiotic analysis demonstrates a sophisticated program including training, evaluation and certification, which goes far beyond the primary goal of facilitating the use of a software. Not only is the firm slowly tightening its grip on skills, knowledge, norms and values in the communications sector, but it is also facilitating their diffusion in a wide variety of social and organisational contexts, consistently blurring the boundaries between experts and lay people, professionals and amateurs.