How will the researcher behave when he decides to invest a field? What will be its starting point? How should he observe his object? The exercise is not easy and every researcher, every student, knows at this stage that he cannot ignore this questioning. If the writing work will give substance and consistency to the action in a second step, the confirmed or apprentice researcher must first ask himself about the posture to adopt because he has the heavy responsibility of establishing the theoretical base upstream on which he will build the rest of his research.

The Habermas' model of “rational reconstructions” represents the main thread of the surveys about the structures of the lifeworld (culture, society and personality) and their respective functions (cultural reproductions, social integrations and socialization). For this propose, the dialectics between “symbolic representation” of the structures subordinated to all worlds of life (internal relationships) and the “material reproduction” of the social systems in their complex (external relationships between social systems and environment) has to be considered. This model finds an application, above all, in the theory of the social evolution, starting from the reconstruction of the necessary conditions for a phylogenesis of the socio-cultural life forms (the “hominization”) until an analysis of the development of social formations, which Habermas subdivides into primitive, traditional, modern and contemporary.

The paper investigates factors commonly associated with “post-truth” political PR via social media: viral communication, fake news, and social bots, applied to the 2017 French presidential elections. Empirical research sheds light on these problematic notions and examines the social and technical dynamics of online political deliberation, to better understand their implications for political PR. Relatively little “fake” information featured among the most popular retweets during this period. The expression of opinions, humour and irony, as well as denunciations of fakes and scandals, appear more likely to spread “virally”. Some social bot activity was detected, but this is increasingly hard to distinguish. Implications for communications include insights into the types of contents likely to spread virally, if other conditions (e.g. network structure and visibility) are fulfilled. The study is original in linking virality and message contents, in the methodology of bot detection, and in bringing together three factors generally treated separately. It provides insights to researchers and political PR professionals.

The purpose of this article is to shed a philosophical light on the nature of the living, and to do so on the nature of the various vital operations, the symbolic and sensory embodiments of which will be studied. That phenomenology will be firstly done from a general point of view: what is life? what is a vital act, a vital operation? But that general definition being an abstraction made from the diversity of reality, we will also consider that diversity, i.e. acts such as development, sensible knowledge, intellectual knowledge, inclination and transmission. That approach is part of a general context in which many reflections are carried out about what a “living machine” could be. Furthermore, a context in which emerging hypotheses make connections between vital characteristics on the one hand, and confidence and attachment to objects on the other hand. That invites us to question the nature and diversity of vital operations, as well as their tangible characteristics.

A constant in the whole Universe: “the Golden Number”. It is the basis of the artistic evolution which leads to beauty, and formulates its parameters. All these parameters generate a grammar, which will also have a determining impact on social reality. Can one escape the influence of the Golden Number ? The notion of Territory will open up avenues to transform differences into complementarities. This will lead us to the development of implementation rituals.

This short study attempts to address the internal meaning of a famous painting by Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory (1931), using theoretical and methodological tools developed by the “School of Paris” semiotics. Thus, we move from the hierarchical description of the plane of expression (from percepts to formants), to the progressive organization of the form of the content through a semanticization of all the units identified in the previous phases of the analysis. This makes it possible to set up the deep semantics specific to this work and the values it carries during the semiosis process. Thus, the meaning of this statement (visual text) is gradually revealed through a less naive reading of this major work of art history which is at the core of broader cultural concerns both for the artist and all readers: the conceptualization of time through various prisms, both plastic and semantic.

The paper aims to reveal how a semiotic idea of collateral experience and observation makes it possible to experience cinema by means of metaphoric knowing through interpreting activity. Thus, the audience as interpreting agent activates the semiosis of cinema in the quest for meaning. Metaphor as a grounding vehicle characterized by a twofold mode in the expressive and the symbolic allows one to transform the cinema image on the screen into diagram-icon for a communicative act.

Smart cities are ideal cities with emphasis on functionality, efficiency, and convenience. On the other hand, smart cities are constantly reproducing ‘spaces of governance' under the influence of neoliberalism. The smart city control approach is to reduce social costs by maximizing the effect with minimal capital. It is highly likely that all smart cities will be implemented as technology-oriented cities that emphasize only big data and artificial intelligence-oriented efficiency. In other words, smart cities have resulted in a holistic crisis at the anthropological level, including human identity, cultural and ethical levels. This study aims to re-examine smart cities and local cultural values in the so-called paradigm shift due to COVID-19 and establish the concept of smart cultural cities for regional cultural development. Therefore, this study focused on European cities and domestic historical cities as a case study of smart cultural cities. These discussions mean that smart cultural urban research and realization should be carried out through interdisciplinary research that considers technology, culture and policy aspects together. In addition, local citizens themselves will have to become main agent of smart cultural cities, resisting governance. Michel de Certeau once said that the everyday space itself is a work of art and a “place of practice”. These studies will provide the potential for complementary relationships between smart cities and cultures and the direction of related research.