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Based on fieldwork on the construction of the public issue of paternity leave among citizen movements (feminist associations and fathers’ activism) and the semio-discursive analysis of media representations, this article shows how fieldwork can contribute to information and communication science, and more particularly to the field of research relating to media, public space, and controversies. We reveal to what extent close-proximity fieldwork allows researchers to consolidate the analysis of communicational phenomena by which public arenas are organized and constructed, namely in three different ways: by raising the question of importance, and by pluralizing and giving substance to the realities encountered.