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Concepts to Conceive 21st Century Society Set

coordinated by

Valérie Larroche and Olivier Dupont

Volume 1

Mediation

A Concept for Information and Communication Sciences

Jacqueline Deschamps

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Preface

The set “Concepts to Conceive 21st Century Society” is a state of the art study of the latest theoretical developments by researchers in Information and Communication Sciences (ICS)1. The authors of the set have put forward an interplay of concepts employed in the ICS community. These concepts are also used in other disciplines related to the humanities and social sciences (history, sociology, economics, linguistics, psychology, etc.) and, in addition, often fitting in line with the concerns of science and technology researchers (ergonomics, AI, data analysis, etc.).

In this set, we aim to highlight the theoretical approaches used in ICS, which is often regarded as a cross-disciplinary field from a deliberately conceptual point of view. We thought that this was the right choice to supplement the different epistemological works that have already been carried out in the field.

To describe more in detail the perspective adopted in each of these works, we should point out that it represents the point of view of researchers in ICS with a didactic aim and an epistemological focus. We will start by considering ICS as an academic discipline that contributes to the creation and dissemination of knowledge related to information and communication.

Thus, our theoretical reflection will be based on the analysis of a series of concepts widely used by the ICS community, and we will aim to make it accessible to humanities and social sciences students, as well as useful for teachers and researchers in several fields, and for professionals who wish to consider their practices. This interplay of concepts allows us to conceive 21st-Century society in its social and technological aspects. It also helps shed light on human and technological relations and interactions.

So far, this set of books is expected to include a dozen works, each of which presents one of the following concepts, which are widely used in ICS: power, discourse, mediation, dispositive [dispositif], memory and transmission, belief, knowledge, exchange, public/private, representation, writing and aesthetics.

Each work in this set shares the same structure. A first part, called “Epistemological Foundations”, summarizes and allows us to compare the theories that over time have made it possible to review the concept in question.

A second part, called “Mobilizing the Concept of Mediation in Information and Communication Sciences”, presents recent problems in ICS which involve the concept, with the aim of establishing the topic researched or analyzing it. This organization of the content allows us to get rid of the restrictive meanings that concepts may take on in the public or professional sphere, or even in various disciplines.

The first four works examine, in turn, the concepts of power, discourse, mediation and the dispositive. Therefore, we can find in these first texts two concepts with a substantial historical dimension, i.e. power and discourse, and two other concepts that have emerged in recent history, i.e. mediation and the dispositive.

These works result from a collective reflection. Regular meetings among the different authors have made it possible to write the four texts collaboratively, even if each author takes responsibility for the work he or she has signed. The content of these works also constitutes the foundations of a course in ICS epistemology that has been offered in several types of education for the past 10 years or so. Thus, it has been tested before an audience of students of different levels.

Some authors have already been asked to write about the other concepts. The series coordinators will ensure that these authors follow the logic of the set and the structure of the first four works.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Valérie Larroche, Olivier Dupont and Jean-Paul Metzger, who have made it possible to write this work. Thank you for your trust and involvement, as well as the wealth of our exchanges. Even if I take full responsibility for this text, I regard you as co-authors.

I would also like to thank the proofreaders of my manuscript for their apposite remarks.

Jacqueline DESCHAMPS

November 2018

Introduction

To respect the logic of the series “Concepts to Conceive 21st Century Society”, this work is divided into two separate parts. The first is dedicated to the epistemological foundations of mediation. It clarifies the concept of mediation, independently of the disciplines in which the concept is used, by comparing the theories that over time have made it possible to establish and then reassess it. The second part is based on the present-day issues in Information and Communication Sciences (ICS) that involve the concept of mediation, with the aim of establishing the topics to be researched and analyzing them.

As a concept employed in different fields, mediation is a very old practice that is re-emerging today to meet the needs of the modern world, and whose conceptualization, which is overall recent, is taking root. Mediation is a practice that involves two parties, who are sometimes very different, and a third party who helps them come to an agreement. The relation between them may be conflictual or not, and the third party’s power depends only on the authority granted by these two parties.

In the first part of this work, following the analysis of the concept of mediation per se, its origins, mediation in its professional dimensions and the relations of mediation and peace, the presentation of the epistemological foundations of mediation is organized into three chapters:

In the second part of this work, we investigate the way in which researchers in ICS conceive the different approaches to the concept. Mediation cannot be reduced to the resolution of conflicts; instead, it is part of a replacement and construction process, and this is how ICS see this concept.

This part is structured around five points:

The concept of mediation belongs to a field of research that is firmly at the center of ICS, but it also simultaneously brings together researchers from other fields. If the issue of mediation returns insistently to the center of present-day debates, it is probably because it expresses our need to deal in a new way with the questions related to the psyche, culture and our environment.

PART 1
Epistemological Foundations

Introduction to Part 1

“When, in a thousand years’ time, in the year 3000, historians study the end of the twentieth century and the year 2000, when the supercomputers they rely on, which can carry out calculations down to the last zero, scan all the texts of our period, from big books to the last magazine or newspaper, they will undoubtedly find that a word has taken over in particular the last ten years of our life. A word that is made to fit every occasion, which became magical before our very eyes: mediation” (Six and Mussaud 2002, p. 13).

A flourishing concept of mediation has become a fashionable phenomenon, which is cited in several fields. It even seems a sort of panacea that can solve conflicts of all kinds and on every level (family, society, international, etc.). Mediation, which is generally reduced to a technique, represents first of all the emergence of a new course of action that governs the relationships between individuals, but also, and more generally, the relationships between the state and civil society.

However, we quite often use the term of mediation without properly considering its stakes and foundations.

Mediation is not a vague notion, and it benefits from a rigorous definition, but it suffers from a use that is too lax. Thus, we will see in the first part of this work that the concept of mediation relies on specific elements that deserve specific attention.

PART 2
Mobilizing the Concept of Mediation in Information and Communication Sciences

Introduction to Part 2

We have previously seen that the different meanings of the term mediation, at the junction of such disparate fields as the media, culture, the law and society, give it a somewhat hybrid status that leads us to regard it as a universal concept. The emergence of the concept in Information and Communication Sciences (ICS) corresponds to its appearance in all the humanities and social sciences.

In ICS, it is employed in research on cultural mediation, documentary mediation and in the context of business communication. These are the themes that we will tackle in the second part of this work by relying essentially on the situation of ICS in the Francophone world.

If we take a brief and cursory look at ICS research laboratories in France, we can see that the term “mediation” appears in the names of several of them. These include the “Communication, savoirs, médiations et organisation” (COSMOS) laboratories (“Communication, knowledge, mediation, and organization” (CKMO)), as well as the “L’image, les médiations et le sensible en informationcommunication” (LSMIC) laboratories (“Image, mediations, and the visible in information-communication” (IMVIC)), both affiliated with the University of Burgundy; the team Médiations en information et communication spécialisées” (MICS) (“Mediations in specialized information and communication” (MSIC)), which belongs to the “Laboratoire d’études et de recherches appliquées en sciences sociales” (LERASS) in Toulouse ( “Laboratory for the study and applied research in social sciences” (LSARSS)); the “Médiation, communication, information, art” (MICA) laboratory (“Mediation, communication, information, art” (MICA)) affiliated with the University of Bordeaux; the “Milieux, médias, médiation” (I3M) laboratory (“Milieus, media, mediation” (I3M)), part of the Nice Sophia Antipolis University and the University of Toulon; or the “Centre de recherche sur les mediations” (CREM) (“Research Center on Mediations” (RECM)), part of the University of Lorraine and the University of Upper Alsace, which bring together teachers, several of whom work in ICS. Let us also mention the GERIICO Specialized Workshop (“Groupe d’études et de recherche interdisciplinaire en information et communication” or “Study and Cross-disciplinary Research Group in Information and Communication”) affiliated with the University of Lille, which dedicated the period between 2011 and 2012 to mediation in information and communication; the University of Grenoble, which dedicated the 2010 issue of the online journal Enjeux de l’information et de la communication to mediation(s), as well as the journal Médiation et Information MEI, which is completely dedicated to the concept we are studying. The interest of ICS in mediation can also be seen in conferences such as La médiation en question: réflexions d’archivistes, bibliothécaires et documentalistes (ADBS, “Association des professionels de l’information et de la documentation” (IRMPA, “Information and Resource Management Professionals Association”), part of the ABF, “Association des bibliothécaires de France” (AFL, “the Association of French Librarians”); Metz 2006), or Dispositifs de médiation (I3M Laboratory and SFSIC, 2008).

During the conference of the “Société française des sciences de l’information et de la communication” (SFSIC; “French Society of Information and Communication Sciences” (FSICS)) in 2014, the “Conférence permanente des directeurs de laboratoires de sciences de l’information et de la communication” (CpdirSIC; “Permanent Conference of Information and Communication Sciences Laboratory Directors” (pCdirICS)), at the initiative of its president, Jacques Walter, began creating a map of ICS that aimed to identify the topics researched in French laboratories in order to sketch the outlines of the field with more precision. The analysis of the institutional sites and research units reveals that the keywords that recur most often may be represented by a compass. Thus, when we try to analyze a research program, we notice that it is situated at the junction of several fields and that we can adjust the compass and see then something that is expressed nearly automatically. The compass indicates that the issues concerning mediation are at the center of the research field (Gallot 2014).

We will see in the second part of this book that the concept of mediation contributes to the cross-disciplinary nature of ICS. According to Patrick Chareaudeau, “what matters in crossdisciplinarity is seeing to which extent a concept born and developed in a field is reused and redefined in another […] to which extent a field resorts to another to interpret its results…” (Chareaudeau 2010, p. 195). This is in line with what Isabelle Stengers calls nomad concepts, namely concepts that belong to a subject and are borrowed by another (Stengers 1987). For example, the concept of force comes from physics, but it is also employed in sociology, when we say that a social field is crossed by several forces. Nevertheless, while some concepts seem to cross the borders of certain fields, we can compare their uses without attempting at all costs to establish a potential origin.

Thus, ICS is substantially supported by concepts imported from different fields. In the second part, we will highlight this permeability to other fields by studying the meanings of the concept of mediation specific to ICS.