Perverted uses of digital networks: when journalists and communicators get entangled! An analysis of the paradoxical process of re-feudalization related to the evolution of contemporary capitalism worldwide
Résumé
The increasing commercialization of media had led Jürgen Habermas to speak in
terms of a "re-feudalisation" of the public sphere and a substitution of the principle of
integration by the principle of publicity from increasingly powerful interest groups. Since
then, the author corrected his analysis: a communicative power can also influence the
administrative power and oppose mainstream media manipulation.
However, recent analyzes now take up the concept of "re-feudalization", in another
way. It could be used to signify the social transformation underway, leading to the
establishment of "neo-feudal" privileges for the wealthy classes, while the lower social
categories are confronted with exclusion and return to forced labor. These paradoxical
situations also explain why, for certain other social actors in the intermediate
categories, the fear of declassification - felt or real - justified the development of
perverse strategies to eliminate competitors, for example women, in the larbour market
work.
In this chapter, the analysis is applied to the recent cases in France of tweeting
harassment, carried out by journalists and communicators, some of them consecrated
as VIP, and all of them organized in packs around The ligue du Lol (Laughing Out Loud
League). For several years since 2009, their favorite targets have been confreres and
especially sisters. Some of them were already fragile. But others were considered as
potential stronger competitors likely to uptage them, either to the entry into the
profession, either for promotions to team responsibilities, or even to editorial direction.
Significantly, the explanatory perspective proved to be absent in the mainstream media
reconstitutions of the event by the corporation, suddendly plunged unwillingly into the
position of the ”sprayed sprinkler”.
Moreover, the vicious dynamic particularly worked for the members of the pack, thanks
to their own feeling of impunity that Twitter, like other GAFAM (Google, Amazon,
Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), protected against the injunctions from public authorities
to declassify the secrecy of correspondence. In the name of freedom of expression
and respect of privacy for the first, as actors of digital journalism! In the name of
liberalism, for the second, as hyperpuishing groups of the information technology
sector, taking advantage of more and more profitable and competitive investments, as
contents providers.
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)