C.1. The example of digital platforms and changes at work

Let us take the subject on which we are working in the context of funded research, namely the places and roles of new intermediation services in the changes in culture and media in the digital age¹. Thanks to the creation of digital platforms, these new services offer new forms of intermediation (web-based services, no advertising, premium services, low-cost subscriptions, etc.) that compete with “traditional” distributors of information and cultural products. These new services, often resulting from the communication industries (IT, telecommunications, the Web), rely on financial capacities much greater than those of the cultural industries to obtain exclusive broadcasting rights on cultural products (Latournerie 2001; Benhamou and Farchy 2014). In addition, some of them have little or no tax liability or specific regulatory framework to follow, while traditional distributors contribute to the financing of television production and must take into account legislative and regulatory requirements, such as the 1991 Canadian Broadcasting Act (Sénécal and George 2018). But what roles do these platforms play in the current transformations of culture and media?

A first analysis shows that their place is much more significant downstream than upstream of cultural sectors (Ménard 2014). They are mainly present in the distribution/circulation of products. Above all, they seek to structure the formation of the social uses of ICTs and related cultural practices. To do this, they create platforms, new media forms, which offer various modes of referencing/recommendation, some of which are quite traditional (based on the categories: “new”, “popular”, “award-winning”) and others more “innovative” (algorithms and preferences such as “you have already loved…”). However, these new players tend to also be present in the production sector, at least in the audiovisual sector. For example, the “scarecrow”, Netflix, promised to invest C$500 million in Canada over five years, compared to the $8 billion invested worldwide since 2009 (Claus 2017). But while it is certain that the control of broadcasting rights is absolutely central to ensuring that these platforms can offer a wide and diversified supply, it is less clear, in the long term, what the scale of investment in audiovisual creation will be.

In addition, there is often talk of “digital culture” surrounding young people. This notion refers to the development of practices related to the devices we are interested in. Nevertheless, the concept of digital culture is highly criticized, as it would continue to hide significant inequalities that would still be based on more traditional relationships (class, gender and race) (Octobre 2014). On the one hand, it is clear that the new digital activities are mainly carried out by “young people”. The generation variable is therefore relevant when considering cultural practices related to the platforms of interest (Thoër et al. 2016). On the other hand, these “young people” continue at times to have relationships with more traditional audiovisual content, for example thanks to the television set, in a family context. But what about when they become adults, when they are financially independent, when they live together as a couple or when they have children? It seems impossible to know now. Only the realization of new research that gives a certain place to the “long term” will make it possible to move forward.

C.2. The importance of the “long term” in research

However, since the 1980s, the communication sciences and, beyond that, all social sciences have been marked by the importance of research that is micro, banal and everyday. On this subject, Georges Balandier wrote in 1983:

“The most important (perhaps) thing in the vogue that multiplies expensive researches on everyday life is the recent movement of minds that has made the subject appear again in the face of structures and systems, quality in the face of quantity, experience in the face of the instituted. This strong trend affects much more than just the social sciences field, but it mainly affects it. From this point of view, it is not without interest to note that the sociology of everyday life (considering the relationship of the individual to lasting, repeated social impositions) successfully joins two of the disciplines celebrated over the last twenty years, social, cultural and historical anthropology (considering the relationship with the ‘other’) and psychoanalysis (dealing with the relationship between the individual and their own history). In all three cases, the subject’s point of view is privileged – not necessarily an exceptional subject, but rather the ‘ordinary’ or ‘banal’” (p. 8).

This tendency to focus on the banal and the ordinary in research has certainly been relevant insofar as it has provided evidence that challenges analyses that are too tinged with structuralism and that too often focus on the most important institutions in our societies. But didn’t these choices also lead to a focus on the short term, or even on a certain “presentism”? So isn’t there a great risk of seeing something new everywhere, for example in an age called the digital age? Wouldn’t each sociotechnical innovation tend to drive out the previous ones? And, on a more theoretical level, wouldn’t communication sciences be even more subject to this trend than other social science disciplines, while Gaëtan Tremblay (1998) reminds us that “the history of communicational thinking is […] marked, oriented, at each of its stages, by technological advances” (p. 178)? This is before adding: “Like it or not, it must be noted that the technical factor is at the heart of the emergence and development of communication sciences” (p. 178). On the contrary, it seems to us that integrating the “long term” into research, as Armand Mattelart (1989, 1994, 1999) has done throughout his career, would greatly help us to consider the possible cultural, economic, political, social and technical changes related to digital technology.

Choosing such an option would also make it possible to rethink existing power relations when it comes to culture and communication. Admittedly, Big Data can be considered as the means that would – finally! – allow us to “reveal” consumers’ preferences both in terms of taste in news topics and music, and in terms of literature or even television series. In addition, the communicative socio-technical devices grouped for a decade around the term “Web 2.0” are sometimes considered as new media that are likely to challenge traditional inequalities within cultural industries by giving part of the power back to the users of DICTs. While these analyses are interesting, they are nevertheless limited.

In fact, systematically and simultaneously emphasizing the short term and the micro in research often means ignoring socio-historical contexts, omitting the central place of capitalism and its forms in societies, and neglecting the power relations between social actors (Mattelart 2014). Thus, most Big Data is collected by companies that are highly dominant in their respective markets – whether it is Google (search for information and other services on the Web), Facebook (a digital social network with a “generalist” vocation), Amazon (online commerce), etc. They are analyzed by algorithms of which very little is known. These same companies have also benefited greatly from the various spin-offs (advertising revenues, data accumulation, provision of free content, etc.) resulting from the many activities of DICT users, highlighted since the 2000s, with the term “participatory Web” (Bouquillion and Matthews 2010), to reach the size they are now and the dominant position they enjoy (Smyrnaios 2017).

As in the past, in an era that we could call “pre-digital”, audiences are not passive. This has been well documented in a number of studies over the decades, at least since Richard Hoggart’s 1957 book The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life. However, as Ien Ang (1990) says, the cultural studies researcher working on these issues sometimes tends to become an “eloquent champion, the advocate of a consumer-centered cultural democracy. The public’s activity can be proven, and the millions of ways in which it uses and interprets the media can be cited” (p. 247). With the multiplication of communicational socio-technical devices, the analysis of the culturalist researcher seems more relevant than ever, as the very modalities of the activity of receivers have diversified greatly over the decades, to the point where there are now more and more creators of content. Nevertheless, Ang (1990) added that, from the study of activity, it was impossible to conclude that there had been an increase in the power of the public, which seems to us to be an important clarification, whereas the cultural and communication industries have not been “dissolved in the digital age”. On the contrary, the processes of industrialization and commodification still seem to be penetrating the culture, information and communication sectors more and more. This does not mean that there are no practices that resist in one way or another against the persistent domination of capitalism.

We will return to these issues in Volume 2 of this book. In particular, it will discuss different types of information production and social mobilization based on the development of uses of ICTs for socio-political purposes.

To be continued…