Read the original french version (English translation by Irina Kalderon, French original version by Léda Mansour)

Coordination: Léda Mansour, University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France

This issue hosts special case studies on the web, analyzing and describing unusual and new phenomena in order to grasp the transformations of societies. The choice of the web as a place for the perception of transformations is strongly linked to its capacity to represent a field of research filled with pluralistic, diverse and sometimes opposing sources in sociological terms.

Indeed, the literature in information and communication sciences and in the sociology of digital uses has highlighted one of the novelties of the Internet and subsequently of the interactive web: the creation of a space of expression belonging to all different voices without any restriction, hence creating an effect of democracy (Cardon D., 2010).

If previously, the emphasis on the web was on co-presence, of supposedly different practices and discourses (institutional vs. non-institutional discourse, official and legitimate speech vs. unrecognized public speech), we can now shift our attention to a dilution of these distinctions, and cease looking at what is called “public opinion online” or “popular online culture”, in addition to “online public space”, but rather on the encompassing – though general – name of “digital cultures” (Rinck F. & Mansour L. 2013 & Mansour L. 2016). Thus, this issue focuses on words and uses in the web, starting from the absence of any leveling or, at the very least, the Goffmanian idea of ​​bringing together supposedly different universes and discourses, the web being the space for collective discussions in particular – whether popular, elite, public, private, visible or not, distributed and / or fragmented (Goffman E., 1974 & 1963).
The numerous digital experiences of Internet users, such as the creation of an interactive blog, the use of social networks or the creation of a collective work, allow us to think of the web as a single social tissue including a plurality and not the other way around, that is, the leveling and difference that would be the pillars of the web. For this reason, we are interested in this issue in experiences and special cases on the web.

Our interest in particular cases goes hand in hand with a preference for rare, unusual and new phenomena. The study of singular cases makes it possible to perceive and analyze the micro-transformations of societies (Ginzburg C., 1976 & 1989).

Micro-transformations can account for the continuous movement of change, avoiding thinking spatially in “stops”, “moments”, “stages”, “events” or in a series of events often analyzed in terms of their regularity or of their causality (such events, such cases produce a particular type of change where everything seems already given, foreseen). We encourage studies that identify and describe new and exceptional uses, words and perspectives on standards, frequencies, and the usual (Bergson H., 1938 & 1941).

These transformations operate in societies. Thus, the notion of “context” reflects the choice of society studied, without contextualization encroaching on the analysis itself – the description of the context of a particular society could, sometimes and unfavorably, bring to relativist interpretations.

In the web, the places of the perceived micro-transformations of this or that society are varied and infinite:

• analysis of one or more Facebook pages,
  · analysis of a single hashtag, many hashtags in a particular setting,
  · the naming of one or more hypertext links in a specific context,
  · study of one or more Stories on Snapchat and elsewhere,
  · study of a collective creation on Fanfiction and elsewhere,
  · analysis of chat room,
  · analysis of one or more dating sites,
  · study of micro phenomena inside a site or blogs of any type,
  · study of the rubrics in a site, comments and / or recommendations in specific sites,
  · study of specific practices in Twitter or any other site, blog, social network and forum of discussion and creation
  · …

Themes are freely varied; all approaches in the Humanities and Social Sciences are welcome.

References:

Bergson Henri, 1938 (1911), « La perception du changement » in La pensée et le mouvant. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

Bergson Henri, 1941 (1907), L’Évolution créatrice. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

Cardon Dominique, 2010, La Démocratie Internet. Promesses et limites. Éditions Seuil, Paris

Ginzburg Carlo, 2014 (1976), Le Fromage et les vers. Flammarion/Aubier, Paris

Ginzburg Carlo, 1989 (1986), Mythes, emblèmes, traces. Morphologie et histoire. Flammarion/Verdier, Paris

Goffman Erving, 1974, Les rites d’interaction. Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris

Goffman Erving, 1975 (1963), Stigmate, les usages sociaux des handicaps. Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris

Mansour Léda, 2016, « Pratiques de personnalisation sur le réseau social Facebook », actes du 1er colloque International GERmédias Minorities and Medias, Coord. Catherine Ghosn et Belgin Bilge, ISC Business School, Éditions IARSIC & ESSACHESS, les Arcs, France

Rinck Fanny & Mansour Léda, 2013, « La littératie à l’ère numérique : le copier-coller chez les étudiants », in Linguagem em (dis)curso, écriture et discours, vol. 13, no 3, F. Komesu et L. Tenani (coord.), Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, Brésil

Important Dates

Contributions are to be sent to Léda Mansour (ledamansour@hotmail.com) and to French Journal for Media Research (frenchjournalformediaresearch@gmail.com) before the 1^st of March, 2018. They will be evaluated by a double-blind peer review committee.

• Submission of the full article: 1 March 2018
  · Notification of results: 1 May 2018
  · Submission of the article in final form: 1 June 2018
  · Online publication: June-July 2018

Instructions for authors

The article must have a maximum of 11,000 words. It must imperatively follow the instructions to the authors of the review: http://frenchjournalformediaresearch.com/index.php?id=222

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