Contenu du sommaire : La médiatisation de l'information scientifique. Le cas de la météo

Science, politics and general public. Mass media treatment of global climate change in France. Uncertainties surrounding global climate change exacerbate the dual nature of medias : information-producers and opinion-makers. This paper aims to point out the differences between three French medias vis-à-vis this double position : a daily national newspaper (Le Figaro), a scientific TV show on climate (E=M6) and a magazine devoted to environmental problems (ReporTerre). Each media has its own definition of scientific outcomes about global climate change. Besides, each media advocates on the intimate links each media proposes between the formulation of debates, the attribution of responsibilities and the definition of public participation.

Socio-politic response to scientific message on weather warming up. News about climatic changes are messages, in the strong sense of the term, which generate reactions in and beyond the scientific community which produces them and even at the very heart of the political sphere. This information can provoke reactions, actions and influence practices and representations. In this article we propose to look at (in the Canadian context) the behaviour of the actors concerned by the mediatization of the climatic changes.

Climatic change : about evolution of the message in the Quebec press (1989-1995) The vocabulary of articles published in the Quebec press, particularly between 1989 and 1993, are the object of a lexicographic analysis. The doublets or key words which are found associated in each article are analysed and regrouped into principal constituent groups. The message which is conveyed gives a fragmented and biased idea of climatology. The idea of the variability of regional climates and of cultural adaptation when faced with climatic extremes are smothered by ideas of an ineluctable heating of the earth's climate leading necessarily to dangerous consequences. The catastrophism of the beginning of the period seems however to have given place to political rather than scientific doubts over the years.

Windy day forecast... Weather forecast in media communication. If the weather forecasts have become so important in the media it is because, apart from news about rain and good weather, their is a whole territorial logic, a whole "media space" logic implicit in their meteorology discourse. And what if the weather forecasts were to be at the origin of a new "theory of climates" ?

Maps, view and conceptions of the world. Based on cognitive view of weather maps This paper argues that, by means of the mass-media, weather maps and weather reports have an important cognitive, social and ideological function. They convey standpoints and views of the world in an implicit but nevertheless clear way. This holds also for reports on phenomena caused by the weather, like floods and other disasters. A process of geographical and social evaluation leads to the thematic selection which is essentially grounded on the two facts that social life is deeply embedded in place, space and landscape, and that weather influences the form of our personal and social life. Therefore spatial and meteorological information are intrinsic factors of the collective mental maps which contribute to the formation and confirmation of geographical, cultural and political identities.

Weather forecast peri-narratives on radio-TV : a narrative intervention into the discursive mode. Over and above their value as scientific statement and their aim of popularization, the radio and television weather forecasts may also disclose other worlds where narrative elements take the place of discourse. And so we get the appearance of a certain kind of specific narrative, which we will call "peri-narrative" whose contents complete, contradict and sometimes sublimate the common discursive elements of the meteorological message and together with it may even tend to build up a new vision of the world and a link with the passing of time.

Microlanguage approach of a natural catastrophe. This article examines the styles and structures of news in the Swiss French language press (king at the inundation of Brigue, in Valais in September 24th, 1993). The second aim of this paper is to redefine the criteria involved for a text to be telling a story, rather than recounting events or actions.

The weather in everyday conversation : ritual and thematic aspects. The aim of this contribution is to describe how exchanges about the weather function in everyday conversation. A survey of the interactionist conceptions in "meteorological exchange" shows that, most of the time, only a few of its aspects are taken into account (i.e. the phatic communion, the "safe topic", the silence avoiding constraint). In such conceptions the meteorological exchange is considered to be purely ritual. The analysis carried out is based on a corpus of authentic exchanges. It leads to a typology of the ritual uses of these exchanges. But it shows in addition, that the weather topic must be dealt with as a "set of themes" which description is essential in order to account for the speakers' tendency to talk about it.

The making of weather information. As regards the collection of the data they use and its treatment, the weather forecast and the media devoted to information work with similar modes of organization and similar theoretical approaches. The increasing demand for meteorological information generates a fast-developing market. For the institutions involved, these new circumstances have changed the nature of the issues at stake. Meteo-France's status as a public service is brought into question. As for the media, the problem they have to solve is how to produce a weather forecast constantly improved on which will stand out from its direct competitors (other newspapers for instance) and its indirect competitors (newspapers, radio and television).

Constructivist epistemologies. A new beginning. 2) Constructivism in progress The contemporary developments of inter and transdisciplinary knowledge do not find in the classical "positivist and realist epistemologies" developed since the XlXth century, the foundations which will secure their scientific legitimacy. Thus one understands the resurgence of alternative epistemological paradigm -which "construct" themselves in the exercise of "an internal critique of the foundations" -towards which more and more scientific research tends to incline. The contemporary genesis of the epistemological convention of constructivisms reveals this process : it occurs in all the sciences and in all cultures, but mainly in Europe (Piaget, Barel, Morin...) and North America (Bateson, Von Foerster, Simon...). The legitimacy of the "phenomenological hypothesis" in the interpretation of the "observing system" leads progressively to identify the complexification of the Paradigm of Constructivism.