Soulages, Jean-Claude <br/><br/>
Critical reference points for a renewed understanding of the media and its publics 

 -  2024.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> The arrival of digital technology in the field of information profoundly disrupted the universe of the media in less than two decades. It has led to questioning the notion of public and the media, as the public is no longer the sluggish audience of panels and polls; it has become an active participant, as the internet has considerably transformed its status. One of the first consequences of these disruptions relates to the partial disappearance of the institutions, mechanisms, and mediators who managed and assured the link between the citizen, the political and public sphere, and first and foremost the journalistic field. On the side of supports, there are now platforms which can assure this link and sometimes, almost on their own, the algorithms of robots. On the side of content and speakers, the coronation of the amateur or the expert, on the basis of the practice of the blogging, omnipresent in the editions of some “pure players,” is now obvious. Online newspapers have been transformed into a moving text based on a new practice of consumption, interrogation, and checking of information, an indexed and tracked practice in which the public, consciously or unwittingly, takes part, working towards the visibility and the hierarchy of the event, but also in the monetization of the new cognitive capitalism.