Emmanuel Marty

Does the Long Tail apply to online news? A quantitative study of French-speaking news websites

The multiplicity of news available on the web is frequently presented as a positive factor leading to pluralism. The web is expected to offer a wider range of content than offline media, as the Long Tail theory more largely suggests. But such an assumption has to be proved by empirical evidence. The research presented in this article aims at testing this hypothesis through a transdisciplinary quantitative study based on a sample of several thousands of articles drawn from different categories of French-speaking websites. In fact, the editorial identification of topical issues and the lexicometric analysis of the headlines both suggest a more complex situation. The spectrum of issues that websites deal with is simultaneously characterized by diversity as well as high concentration on a few major and redundant issues. These results highlight the necessity to question the ideal of pluralism that the web is supposed to embody.

Les médias et l'opinion- Eléments théoriques et méthodologiques pour une analyse du débat sur l'identité nationale

The Media and Public Opinion - Theoretical and Methodological Analysis of the Debate on National Identity: This article deals with the “great debate on national identity” initiated by the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Mutually-Supportive Development in the winter of 2009-2010. Using the theory of framing (Bateson, 1972; Entman, 1993; Chong and Druckman, 2007), it seeks to identify the relationship between permeability and public debate as it is shown on the Web and the media coverage of the latter. To do this, a crossed lexicometric analysis of two corpora was done: on one hand, the 18,240 contributions posted on the dedicated ministerial site; on the other, the 1,436 press articles published from 25 October to 2 December 2009. A descending hierarchical classification was done with the Iramuteq software and identified, by their lexicon, places of permeability between personal and media frameworks in the apprehension of the debate, but also the specific universes of discourse to one or other corpora. We present them here in a detailed manner while proposing explanatory approaches of their dynamics.

Internet users’ participation and news framing: The Strauss-Kahn case–related Live Blog at Le Monde.fr

This article analyses Internet users’ participation and the ways in which it is framed by journalists, with a particular focus on the Live Blog format. It provides a case study of the online media coverage of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York in May 2011, by the highly respected media Le Monde.fr. A lexicometric (statistical) and discourse (qualitative) analysis of two sets of corpora (Corpus 1 being composed of all the comments submitted by Internet users throughout the live blogging process and Corpus 2 of the few which were finally published on the Live Blog) will highlight the nature and the various forms of audience participation as well as the ways in which they are framed by journalists. The article aims to investigate the representativeness of the published messages and the participative audience profile which journalists foreground within this media space of multiple voices.