The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which the linguistic signs used by adolescents in electronic mail (email) differ from those used in traditional written language. The study was conducted in French, a language with a deep orthography that has strict, addressee-dependent rules for using second person personal pronouns (unfamiliar and familiar forms). Data was collected from 80 adolescents ages 12 to 15 in a natural situation where they had to introduce themselves by email to two addressees, a same-age peer and a teacher. The adolescents were divided into two groups (expert / non-expert) according to their expertise in computer-mediated communication. The results showed that for adolescents, email constitutes a written-language register of its own. Moreover, in terms of adaptation to the addressee (pronoun use), the email register seems to follow the pragmatic rules of traditional spoken and written interaction. The observed differences between the CMC experts and non-experts suggest that the email communication register is acquired gradually.

Discussion forum is an emblematic computer-mediated communication tool. It is one of the oldest CMC tool and it is characterized by several paradoxical features, which can be observed in internet-mediated communication in general. This paper aims to define precisely this CMC tool and to show its interest for CMC Studies. Then it will be shown that communicative exchanges in forums can be analyzed through three paradoxes: they belong to interpersonal and mass media communication, they can be at the same time intimate and impersonal, they correspond at the same time to digital writing and standard written French. These analyses will be illustrated by examples from three prototypical French-speaking discussion forums: Doctissimo, Ados.fr and Fr.rec.boissons.vins.

Rooted in a synthetic overview of a few phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches, this article tries to show their relevance as a means to revisit, ten years afterwards, the main hypotheses of a Ph.D thesis studying French as it is encountered on chat channels. This re-evaluation is based upon the work of three researchers developing different theories in the fields of the human sciences and linguistics. These works can concern more widely researches on electronic communication. In conclusion are sketched the principal consequences of this new stance, which can be considered as orientations for oncoming research.

This article describes the sud4science project (www.sud4science.org). Firstly, the authors present the acquisition phase of both SMS data and questionnaire data. Secondly, they explain anonymisation techniques, transcoding and optional annotation phases. Finally, they propose preliminary (socio-) linguistic analyses of scriptural usage of SMS writing, and they also indicate those that are planned in the foreseeable future.

This paper shows that Twitter discourses can't be analyzed out of their ecosystem. They are native online writings, which constitute hybrid materials incorporating a technological dimension, and they must be observed in their environment, through the users-speakers points of views. We first present the epistemological framework of the study, within a postdualist perspective which allows to lead a symmetrical linguistics, that is to say a way of considering nonhuman materialities and agentivity in discourse elaboration, especially technological. Then we expose our theoretical frame and methodological choices grounded on the concepts of techno-discursiveness as ambient affiliation, searchable talk and produsage. At last we examine the tweet as a specific techno-discursive form, and the hashtag as a techno-form which strongly organizes discursiveness on the micro-blogging network.

Unlike consensual models of self-exposure that are prevalent on social networks sites, some Facebook users think of their profiles as a space devoted to provocation where they can claim their uniqueness and display their dissimilarity by transgressing the norms others comply with. Self-assertion is all the more dependent on questioning from others since transgression only makes sense under the gaze of a witness. The recognition expected by the user indeed hinges on the observer's gaze and his/her judgment, so that the user's provocative attitude is part of his/her strategy for building self-esteem. Based on the analysis of a concrete case, the article questions the real profits that can be gained by exposing oneself while it is a potential threat to one's image; it also questions how the individual assesses the risks incurred in his/her communicative modalities.

ICT/mobile phone technology has an impact on the various spheres of society. Because these devices have become smaller and smaller and therefore easy to carry, new utilizations as well as new comportments have cropped up, such as a symbiotic relationship with the object, the development of multi-tasking, the interpenetration process that takes place between public, private and professional spheres ... Thus these phenomena can be studied from different perspectives. In this article, we will try to understand how ICT mobile phones－acting as object-mediators between social actors－question social relationships and participate in their dynamics. To do this, we will cross an object type (ICT mobile) and one type of relationship (the couple) all in a communicative context. This microsociological approach should allow us to answer the following question: how can the use of ICT mobile phones within the couple help us to examine the interactional process especially as it provides a new place to writing?

This contribution studies the seniors' practices in relation with Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DICT) and gendered identities that are built through these practices. We make the hypothesis that Sex is a determining factor and that Gender structures practices as well as representations. The authors congujate sociological and semiotic approaches upon two fields: firstly, two groups of persons over 60 years, which one has followed a training to DICT, secondly, the Social Networking Service (SNS) Quintonic. The study reveals that beyond gender divisions, the seniors' practices make sense in the system of Gender－which distributes centers of interests between men and women－, participating in the construction of gendered identities. Furthermore, the SNS, because of their expressive dimensions, allow gender norms' interpretations. These interpretations question gendered identities.

With over 1,500 candidate lists that ran for the election for a Constituent Assembly held on 23 November 2011, it was difficult for independent registered lists to distinguish themselves from political parties as the latter were more rooted in the Tunisian political landscape. Whereas most candidates resorted to, among others, traditional approaches to canvass the country, the “Doustourna” network pinned all his hopes on the Net to promote its program. With a view to participatory democracy “Doustourna” put forward a draft constitution for online assessment. The aim was to make citizens actively participate in public affairs. Due to lack of funds and marginalization on the part of traditional media, “Doustourna” mainly campaigned on social networks to be heard and mobilize public opinion.

This essay examines Walter Benjamin's engagement with the early European avant-garde movements, notably Surrealism and the Russian film movement, from the perspective of media aesthetics. The essay shows how Benjamin tries to distance himself epistemologically and politically from the tradition of aesthetic modernism and to find critical motifs for the formation of the new collective public in the biomechanical approach to the cinematic experience. I argue that key analytical concepts in his discussion of film, such as the optical unconscious, tactility, and distraction, can only be grasped if we relocate the notion of technological innervation at the center of Benjamin's account of the intersection of media, space, and human sensorium. In so doing, I aim to draw out some theoretical implications of Benjamin's alternative model to the bourgeois public sphere and the phantasmagoric nature of urban culture for the further development of critical media studies in an age of new media.