Le journalisme face au web : Reconfiguration des pratiques et des représentations dans les rédactions belges francophones (original) (raw)

In a comprehensive approach, this research focuses on the evolution of the practices and the journalistic representations in a multimedia environment. It is based on an ethnographic method including 56 days of observation and the analysis of 101 semi-directive interviews of journalists and press professionals. These interviews were collected in 11 belgian newsrooms : Le Soir, La Libre Belgique / La Dernière Heure, Les Éditions de l’Avenir, Sudpresse, Le Vif/L’Express, 7sur7, L’Écho, la RTBF, RTL, Belga and BFM Today. We have applied a thematic analysis (Paillé & Mucchieli, 2003) to this empirical data that we coded thanks to the software Nvivo 8. This research is structured in 4 parts. As the first one states the research method, the second one proposes an inventory of the online journalism’s situation in the french-speaking part of Belgium. It explains the kind of relationships these webjournalists maintain inside their professional group. A third part deals with the way in which the new professional environment changes the journalistic practices of sourcing, news gathering, fact checking, writing and moderation of the participative spaces. The last part tackles the issue of the reconfiguration of the journalistic representations. It is, among others things, about the social role of the journalists and about the impact of the managerial strategies (integration, implication, economical) on these representations. The issue of the representations regarding online journalism is covered thanks to a more quantitative approach of inter-group comparison that we consider as exploratory because it is made up not of statistical analysis but of descriptive counts. This thesis shows, among other things, that the journalists, online or offline, are particularly critical towards their profession and their own practices. We interpret the intensity of this critical activity by referring to the conceptual frame established by L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello (1999). This research wishes to highlight the role of this auto-criticism in the unceasing recomposition of the profession. Over several newsrooms’ reorganizations, the management may use these critics expressed by the journalists in order to establish a situation that will be judged as more equitable by the involved journalists. This is the case of the strategy established at L’Écho which integrates the online journalists into the symbolically valuated tasks of the profession. The auto-criticism also allows journalists to continuously adjust their discursive identity, to auto-justify their imperfect practices in a dialogical process while perpetually reaffirming the reasons of their engagement towards the profession.