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Jean Stoetzel : The presidential election and the polls. The primary function of public opinion surveys at election times is not to provide a basis for forecasts, but to clarify the otherwise opaque results of the election. The outcome of the 5th of December vote was made possible (1) by a general and parallel decrease of the satisfaction with de Gaulle in all political categories (2) and by a shift of a fraction of the Gaullist supporters first toward indecision, later to opposition (mostly right ? centrist : Lecanuet) (3) during the campaign, there was but little increase in the left (Mitterrand) voting strength. The outcome of the run-off election (19th of December) is explained by two-thirds of the Lecanuet voters going back to de Gaulle, and more than four-fifth of the extreme right voters joining Mitterrand for strategic reasons. More generally, the poll data also show the importance of saliency, the role of the campaign, and establish the possibility of devising an empirical graded order of socio-demographic factors much in the guise of Paul Lazarsfeld's index of political predisposition.

Pierre Naville : Audio-visual instrumentation and sociological research. The author notes that classical sociological investigations, at least in France, employ an instrumentation linked to the use of language, be it spoken or written words or mathematics. To set a problem, to set up an experiment, to explain, are processes going from words and figures to words and figures. Why, except for ethnologists and geographs, is the visual and sound image absent from the instrumentation ? The fixed or moving image may be used as illustration, or educationally or as an object of study. Its use as a research instrument necessitates to define its role as a specific sign and symbol, that is as a data creating instrument. This role can be passive or active. The technical evolution tending to extend the optical and sound world to the detriment of the « typographic » world, incites sociologists to have at their diposal a set of tools appropriate to an optical and sound instrumentation in the course of the research.

Jean Cazeneuve and Robert Pages : University television and reactions to change in educational communication. Recent technical innovations are transforming the crafstmanlike relations between educator and student by instigating effects, which are familiar during the mechanisation of a profession : collectivisation and division of labour, hierarchisation, problems of coordination and conflict. A preliminary inquiry, reveals these tendencies with regard to the installation of closed-circuit television (in Universities) and makes apparent, in addition to the transitional effects of this innovation, some effects, probably more permanent, on the professors and students as regards a change in the set of didactic communication means. The tendency towards a change seems more definite when the unilateral character of a televised course is not compensated by other teacher-student interactions. The study of the attitudes suggests a variable, which is perhaps even more important : the regulation of the transforming action by assumptions as to the necessary scope and the degree of cohesion of the action's field of application. Thus, radical subjects prone the futility of segmentary technical reforms, whilst the problem of the educational « dialogue » in parti- cular would suppose reforms of a more systematic nature. One can speak here of a cognitive calibration of action.

Manga Bekombo : Brazzaville at Congolese television time. The inauguration of the Congolese television gave us the opportunity to witness the confrontation of two civilizations : one, called traditional, the other characterised as modern. The passing from a traditional technique (percussion) to a scientific technique of mass communication (Radio-television) requires an effort of adaptation on the part of the Congolese autochtone. Television, stripped of its proper science, is integrated into a magic system, traditional, in the sense that it allows a sort of dialogue between an absent person and yourself (audience) ; the communication it ensures is not only a message, but also that of a witch, whose power extends at a distance over its subject. The image and the sound are situated in a conflict where words are practically always the loosers : with the flow of images, the autochtone tells his own tale. But the conflict between the image and its supporting commentary ceases as soon as the set image-sound evokes the spectator's own life. This confirms the widespread idea that a common knowledge is necessary between the message sender and the receiver.

Renaud Sainsaulieu : Underpriviledged social classes and television. Some hypothesis. Can television constitute for the strata of population which has not benefited by a long educational training a sort of cultural make-up process ? If culture is the access to works of art usually reserved to a social and intellectual elite, television does not constitute a permanent museum ? theatre ? concert house, open to all. The results of a pilot-study on a television audience of workers and farmers show however that television entertains, informs, and allows a better participation to local life, gives a new outlook on the world, and, in the long run, leads to a training of critical judgment. These positive points are counterbalanced by strong resistances typical of worker and farmer groups. However if culture is considered in its larger acceptation, television effects a slow cultural transformation of local and familial groups.

Georges Auclair : Murder, incest and enigma. A comparative press study. The author compares the different ways the episodes of the same news items are related in the « thrill press ». The method employed is mainly structural : the headlines are analysed as « constituant unities » the varied possible combinations of which are regarded as producing, at the connotation level, various significations. It reveals, at least for the chosen news, that the French press is divided into two main connotation systems : one giving the preference to the functions and their concatenation, and which seems to have an « intellectual » or detective predominance ; the other emphasizes « action » and « roles » and seems to have an « affective » predominance ? tragic or melodramatic ; this last system characterises more specifically the popular type press. The relative importance of an information inside the brief-news column does not vary, so to speak, from one newspaper to another, whether it belongs to the serious type or to the popular type press. To account for the somewhat anthropological evidence, which has been brought out, the notion of « connotativity» is used, meaning the amount of connotation an event has. This notion could eventually be the link between semiology and sociography.