Boutaud, Jean-Jacques

On Construire l’événement. Les médias et l’accident de Three Mile Island by Eliseo Véron - 2023.


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‪Without seeking mimetism with the media, Construire l’événement has the impact of a title and will be a landmark analysis of the discourse of information and the construction of multiple realities through an “event”. It is a field study of a specific case: the nuclear “accident” at Three Mile Island, in the United States, on 28 March 1979. The study is limpid in its construction, in three times, three chronological sequences, to the point that some see it as a “textbook case” of qualitative media analysis. Others are concerned, on the contrary, about the overabundance of concepts pertaining to a theoretical metalanguage that is not really presented or commented on throughout the pages. To avoid an overly frontal approach to the book, it is proposed to situate Construire l’événement in relation to the foundations of Eliseo Veron’s socio-semiotic theory ; then to take a closer look at the very construction of this model of study on the discourse of information ; and finally to discuss the sometimes too direct link between Construire l’événement and constructivism, without even measuring the place of Charles S. Peirce and of the ternary in E. Veron’s so productive thinking, with regard to the social construction of meaning.‪