From televised media space to internet hypermedia: How much room is there for the opinions of ordinary people?

Abstract

How much room is there for the opinions of ordinary people in the media? Is there a difference between the space allotted in televised media and the Internet as forums for voicing opinions? Is the web of webs conducive to more inclusive public participation in mediatized debates on social issues? To answer these questions, this study considered two types of corpuses. The first is composed of famous French televised debates on social issues that have been broadcast since 1958-such as Ça se discute, La Marche du siècle, Du fer dans les épinards, Les Dossiers de l’écran-for which one of the key questions is whether there were implicit selection criteria for the guests who participated. The second corpus concerns the Internet media space (60 news sites, web TV sites, blogs on current affairs and content platforms). A first conclusion concerns an underrepresentation of occupations and socio-professional categories (OCS) of “employees” and “workers” in news programs. Another result deals with the space occupied today by an audience of ordinary people in the mass media forum and in the new online media space. In the latter there is little presence due to media censorship, social self-censorship and political censorship.