The digitization of public debate, which has accelerated in recent years, has considerably altered the way in which information is produced and consumed, the forms of political communication and therefore also the rules of political competition as a whole. In times of peace as in times of war, the creation and control of narratives, i.e. the “framing” of current events, is a long-standing component of international relations, but it has been transformed in this context.
As a result of attempts at foreign interference in public debate and electoral competition, as seen recently in Romania, or disinformation campaigns deployed in theaters of war, particularly during external operations such as in Mali, this digitization of public debate has led public authorities to conceive and operationalize the “semantic layer” of cyberspace as a new space of conflictuality.
These new forms of influence and interference, however, because they are grafted onto the structures of our political systems and their transformations (growing inequalities, reactionary mobilizations…), can only be fully understood using the classic tools for studying these political systems. What does political sociology have to contribute to our understanding of these unprecedented phenomena? How do these phenomena in turn modify the conceptual tools of this sociology? How can we scientifically apprehend the problem of “information warfare” put forward by the press and public authorities? How are state practices of computerized influence control developed? How do the national and international dimensions of the digitization of public debate and its effects on our political systems fit together? What roles do journalists, major corporations and government agencies play in managing these challenges?
The third year of this seminar will explore in greater depth how sociological tools can shed light on these phenomena and the public policy initiatives to which they give rise, based on recent empirical cases. The workshop is based on an empirical research approach and collective surveys. In groups of two or three, participants will choose a survey theme related to these issues, and develop a research question and a survey strategy to answer it. The final objective (which is also one of the assessment modalities) is to write a research paper reporting on the results of the empirical investigation.
Maïlys Mangin (MCF in political science at Toulouse Capitole, CIENS associate researcher)
3 ECTS, 6 sessions of 2h
Thursday 4pm-6pm, 29 rue d’Ulm: January 22 and 29 in salle Djebar; from February 5 in salle Langevin.