DS0802 - Dimensions sociales du tournant numérique

Popular logics for digital culture – POPLOG

POPLOG: popular logics for digital culture

This project starts from the observation that we know little about the specificities of relation to internet in popular classes. There are many studies on the uses of digital technology, but they are primarily interested in innovative uses of urban, youth, and graduates. There are many researches on popular classes, but they did not question the transformations induced by the digititalization of culture and the development of electronic communication.

To study popular logics for digital culture

This project aims at providing an empirical description of social logic of internet appropriation in low educated populations living outside major urban areas.<br /><br />It revolves around three major research areas: sociability, knowledge, culture.<br /><br />It is based on moral values specific to popular classes to analyze the insertion of digital technology in the daily life: the devaluation of written communication and enhancement of the face to face, reluctance to personal practices for the benefit of collective practices, priority given to the family in the relational economy, the sealing of the borders between private and professional worlds, the development of ethical and practical knowledge, the organization of local networks to sustain leisure activities.<br />

Research Task 1: care employees
50 interviews (43 women, 7 men) were conducted with carers and hospital service agents in three different departments (Rhône, Dordogne and Orne). Furthermore, an analysis of 50 Facebook accounts collected as part of the ALGOPOL investigation is ongoing.


Research Task 2: Digital culture in traditional households
An ethnography was conducted in Normandy in a rural area within a single family. The allies, friends, colleagues were met, and allowed to produce materials about 15 members of that social network. On the other side,16 interviews with childminders in Brest and the region has been made. They are transcribed and are being analyzed.


Research Task 3: Digital culture in agriculture
Three fiedworks are underway in the Maine-et-Loire department.
- Informative interviews with officials of the occupation (chamber of agriculture and trade unions) as well as training actors and farm advisories.
- A study with farmers and their agricultural partner (s) focused on the question of generational difference resulting in different digital uses particularly in relation management exploitation. To date, 21 interviews were conducted.
-A Documentary film is being prepared: taking a close perspective with the work of Latour, this documentary takes as its starting point technological innovation - in this case the milking robots - and is interested to all the players involved in this type of technology (veterinarians, software developers and big data analysts, AI technicians, etc.).

-There is a strong integration and ritualization of internet uses in daily life and a very frequent use of online shopping
- The first field elements collected show particularly interesting transformations in the relationship to knowledge: it is sensitive for children school work but more broadly for everything related to research information on line in the private or professional field.
- In terms of family sociability, there is a double movement: on one side the electronic forms of communication double face to face visits with members of the close family, parents and children. On the other, there is a strong development of exchanges between the members of the extended family on Facebook. Communication with strangers is very rare or restricted to very specific topics and is frequently followed by a transition to a relationship face-to-face.
- As for farmers, the deployment of digital technology - which occupy a very wide range of activities, surveillance drones to the full automation of tasks such as milking, or assistance by algorithms - is done at accelerated speed: we see emerge the complete transformation of skills and repertoires of action, including decisions through tools oriented towards prediction.

- Numerous scientific exchanges with three other ANR projects on close themes: ALGOPOL, CLASPOP, CAPACITY

In preparation :
A book about the study of carers
A special issue of a general sociology journal
A special issue of a journal specialized on communication (Réseaux)
Several english articles

2 articles submitted to peer-reviewed journals
2 papers in international conferences
4 papers in national conferences
2 conference to a larger public

We know little about the specific characteristics of the working classes' relationship to digital technology. There has been extensive research on the uses of digital technology but, with some exceptions, it has focused primarily on the innovative uses of young, educated city-dwellers. Many studies have been done on working classes but they have paid very little attention to the transformations induced by the digitization of culture and the development of electronic communication. The project is located at the articulation of two processes: the reconfiguration of working classes -characterized by greater social heterogeneity-, and the democratization of the internet - during the last few years in France, individuals with a low level of education partially caught up equipment. This project intends to empirically document the way in which these "forgotten" audiences have grasped – or not – certain opportunities opened by the digitization of culture and the development of electronic communication. Far from analyses in terms of lack and absence, we’ll follow the principle that Hoggart defended, that there are certain values peculiar to these social classes, which might explain why certain uses are appropriated while others tend to be neglected because deemed to be irrelevant to daily life : the devaluation of written communication and the enhancement of face to face, reluctance to personal practice in favor of collective practices the priority granted to maintaining family cohesion , maintenance of an impervious boundary between professional and private worlds , the valorisation of practical skills, the organization of sustainable local sociability around certain leisure activities , etc. We will assume that digital uses are apropriated -or not- depending on their relevance to these values while at the same time might make them evolve, accentuating some process of cultural decompartmentalization already at work.
The project focuses on three research areas: communication and sociability , knowledge and skills , culture and hobbies. It mobilizes three research teams of sociologists specialists either of media and new technologies, or educational issues in popular settings. The research will be designed according to a principle of monographs with a localized approach mobilizing qualitative and ethnographic methods . Our aim is obviously not to claim to exhaustively cover all uses of digital culture in the working classes. Instead, the project is designed to analyse the social logics of appropriation of cultural opportunities opened up by digital technology in a few carefully targeted groups that have as yet been studied very little, if at all. Our priority will be the inhabitants of residential areas situated outside large cities, and particularly rural and semi-rural populations. Our attention will primarily be on occupational sub-groups on whom we have very little information regarding their uses of digital technology such as employees in the sector of personal services, small farmers and farm workers, low qualified agents of public services.
The research will take place over three years , with regular coordination mobilizing researchers associated with the project and will culminate in a final international conference , "The uses of digital literacy : Hoggart 2017" .

Project coordination

Dominique Pasquier (Institut Mines Télécom)

The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.

Partner

CAPHI Centre Atlantique de Philosophie
Télécom ParisTech LTCI Institut Mines Télécom
UBO, LABERS Université de Bretagne Occidentale, LABoratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches en Sociologie EA 3149

Help of the ANR 195,775 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project: September 2014 - 36 Months

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