Design and analysis of heuristic system in an informational and communicational environment.
Penser la conception et l’analyse de dispositifs info-communicationnels
Résumé
This report tracks down the long evolution of my perception of digital tools. Originally anchored in a strictly algorithmic vision of a software conception it evolved towards an information and communication dispositive .
I defended my doctoral thesis in 1994. I analyzed in this thesis the role of possessive determiners in automatic indexing.
I have to admit that my vision of projects was at that time reduced to the way I could precisely intervened on an algorithm.
It is only in 1997 when I started to teach as a Senior Lecturer in Lyon 3 IUT's department of Information and communication that my representation of what is a project broadened to a more collective and collaborative approach.
In particular, the phase of auditing the situation in project management led me to extend the way I considered my representation of automatic indexation to the actors involved whether they were back-office users or final beneficiaries of the service.
Progressively, as I took into account the points of view of the various stakeholders, the tools’ analysis became far more complex . At this point I started to think in terms of informational and communicational dispositive.
Both the publication of a literature review on the concept of dispositive (Larroche, 2018) and this original graduation essay presented for the Habilitation provided a framework that enabled me to define from a scientific point of view the information and communication system.
The dispositive is one of the main Michel Foucault's concepts, In this work I give another interpretation of a dispositive inasmuch that I extend it to a context of distributed action on different scenes of activities. In doing so I use the notion of frame of action which implies the normative and strategic aspects of Foucault's dispositive. These norms and arrangements, constituents of a frame of action, have to be actualized on activities' scenes.
Furthermore, on activities' scene, the frame of action is affected by documents, tools, discourses, norms, that circulate among the participants. Their interpretation contributes to a collective action's representation. The values espoused by individuals and their behaviors are influenced by this framework but on the other side individuals adapt it to their own needs.
The concept of dispositive consists of an intertwining of different working activities scenes. Each scene provides its own frame of action, its own activities and its own players.
To qualify as informational and communicational a dispositive stresses the role of documents and interactions. I use the word frame of action to refer to action's representations, coordinated interactions which produce social norms and conventions.
It's through this framework that we chose to study cooperation's chains and the meaning of collective action.
This meaning is different from one scene to another as it relies on what is going on in a particular scene of action. Using the word "scene" underlines human activities’ presence. In each scene, humans act and participate in cooperation's chains through collaboration. They are considered both as subjects, as they have intellectual consciousness, ethics, enunciating skills and as figure as they are able to adopt different roles depending on what is happening in this activities scene.
What links all the different scenes is collective action. All activities, taking place in each scene, participate in this distributed action.
I took a special interest in coordination of activities scenes within a dispositive. This includes scenes that link actors who are present hic et nunc, but who may also be part of a frame of action in other scenes. Application’s interfaces I studied brought together professionals that weren't used to work together.
Researches on information retrieval tools, in particular on Open data portals through an ANR's contract (OpenSensingcity) conducted from 2014 to 2018 within an interdisciplinary team, highlights my interests for semiotic analysis and the confrontation of points of view, especially between designers and users.
I focused on activities scenes where data producers meet data users i.e. future beneficiaries of the platform. Sometimes interface designers hold meetings with the latest before modeling their expectations and needs on the platform. Future operational users working on the platform join this group of actors as they ensure the link first between producers and interface and then between interface and final users.
These intermediation scenes are important as they are at the heart of the interweaving of activity scenes and of my conception of the dispositive.
I also worked on this form of mediation, using other service portals such as recruitment platforms.
They mainly support relations between mediated parties, through mechanisms enabling them to act as trusted third parties.
Studied as a dispositive such platforms recaptures a certain organizational thickness.
I would like to stress here that focusing on dispositive implies an imbrication of activities scenes, as some of them have a mediating posture to ensure the articulation with others scenes.
These interfaces in producing credible knowledge play a key role as trusted third parties in complex environments.
Aside from these information retrieval tools, I studied other forms of support and mediation.
For instance, I reflected on the process of creating a degree in Digital Marketing (opened in 2009) reconsidering it as an informational and communicational dispositive. Specifically I focused on collaborative design activities scenes bringing together professionals, lecturer-researchers and educational engineers. Since 2007, they contribute interactively to the educational scale model.
Later on, this bachelor's degree became a common concern as professionals facilitate marketing digital experts' recruitment for teaching and for the recruitment of work-study students.
In addition to my professional autobiography, I develop in the original document a method qualified as a dispositive method in order to examine collective actions within organizations.
This method aims to assist the searcher's analysis who explores collective actions.
It highlights distributed action’s representations of the different stakeholders.
The first step is to produce a corpus of discourses consisting of face-to-face qualitative interviews, field notes, semiotic analysis of interfaces and so forth. Quotations reflecting the different types of relationship (alliances, resistances, conflicts or power games) will then be extracted from this corpus.
The data model proposed for annotating these discourses will lead to the development of a search engine specialized in quotes extraction. In this case the quotes will be related to collective actions. The design involves interdisciplinary contributions, where engineers, researchers in digital humanities, social, informational and communicational sciences and informatics should collaborate on the development of a user interface. This interface should meet more adequately the needs of researchers analyzing collective action.
Finally, taken as a whole, my analysis is built on a specific material and contextual set. They confront different viewpoints whether they come from operational, managers or designers and they modelize a frame of action. The later evolves according to real activity and events that generate changes.
By qualifying this method with the adjective dispositive I want to insist on the association of technical, human, organizational, informational and communicational concerns. This approach is useful to combine strategical considerations from a macro level (i.e. relative to the frame of action) and ones localized at micro level.
In my professional autobiography I also present the ongoing project of an epistemological overview of concepts in the field of information and communication sciences in France.
Pedagogical and managerial objectives are combined with epistemological and extend mediation and intermediation questionings.
This project, started 25 years ago, has of course evolved both in the form and in the setting up and running of the team.
In the present work, this evolution is seen from the activities scenes point of view. Managerial activities, sessions that could be define as maieutic, are analyzed in order to highlights phases of change.
In particular a noticeable change occurred after the first four publications of the « Concepts to conceive 21st Century Society » set . This set, published by Iste Editions, was coordinated by Olivier Dupont and I. At this point, new teacher-researchers joined the initial team to collaborate on this conceptual work. These two events modified considerably the team management. It was also at this moment that the project was given more exposure through seminars.
The twelve concepts chosen by the team are considered as main entries to Information and Communication Sciences. They act as benchmarks in this field. In time we will develop an application enabling one to navigate between the different concepts.
To sum up my position I could use the Acronym of a Canadian periodical : COSSI (which stands in French for Communication, Organisation, Société du Savoir et Information) to underline the interdisciplinary scope of concepts I use.
As a conclusion I want to emphasize that my decision to undertake this accreditation (Habilitation à diriger des Recherches), ten years before retirement, is based on three reasons : obviously my desire to supervise PHD students, to legitimate the research work I accomplished for 20 years, and to invest in research on socially responsible issues.
Although I didn't get involved in research projects linked to commons goods, a strong taste for collaborative work and for collegial decision making brought me to reflect on this concept through a research funded by the French Research Agency (ANR) et later, more specifically on editorial commons (Larroche, Fauchié, 2021) .
In strongly believe that Commons are linked to both an aspiration and a vision of the « Vivre ensemble », as such they will lead my future researches' projects to a more political approach. If, as a director of a degree at the IUT Lyon 3, I got acquainted with Digital Marketing actors, it is through the move to another scholar position at Enssib that clearly enabled me to invest on research issues closer to public services, culture and commons.
Ce dossier retrace mon cheminement dans la perception d'un projet de
conception logicielle au cours de mon expérience scientifique. J'ai démarré ma
thèse en participant à la conception d'un système d'indexation automatique. Je
n'avais alors qu'une vue limitée liée à mon intervention très précise sur l'algorithme.
C'est par les enseignements dans un département d'information communication
d'un Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT) que la notion de projet a pris une
dimension plus collective et collaborative. L'analyse et la conception d'autres outils
de recherche d'information dans le secteur de l'open data et du recrutement m'ont
permis de mettre l'accent sur le cadre de fonctionnement, puis petit à petit
d'ajouter la prise en compte du cadre d'usage. C'est ainsi que j'ai construit un
objet de recherche que j'ai nommé dispositif info-communicationnel.
La publication d'une synthèse documentaire sur le concept dispositif associée
au travail original présenté dans ce dossier m'a permis de me positionner sur un
sens bien précis du dispositif que je définis ainsi : le dispositif est composé d'une imbrication de scènes d'activités, comportant chacune leur propre cadre d'action,
leurs propres activités et leurs propres acteurs. Ce que je désigne par cadre
d'action est analogue au monde d'Howard Becker. En effet, sa notion renvoie à des
actions et des interactions coordonnées qui produisent un ensemble de normes et
de conventions. Son monde est caractérisé par des chaînes de coopération que
nous avons choisies d'observer à partir de scènes d'activités. Le lien qui unit
l'ensemble des scènes est l'action collective, les activités réalisées dans chaque
scène participant à cette action distribuée.
Dans une scène d'activités, le cadre d'action, représenté par des documents,
des outils, des discours, des normes, présents sur la scène participent à la
représentation de l'action collective et influencent la représentation des acteurs qui y travaillent. Ces derniers adaptent ce cadre à leurs activités, participant à la
transformation dudit cadre d'action.
Une vision dispositive implique donc une vision évolutive dans le temps, la prise
en compte d'acteurs en activités qui agissent pour participer à une action collective
tout en se construisant en tant que sujet.
Pour ce dossier d'HDR, j'associe au dispositif le qualificatif info-communicationnel car je me suis intéressée à des environnements de conception qui envisagent entre autres la conception de moteur de recherche où les préoccupations articulent la mise à disposition de données ou d'informations pour qu'un usager puisse les intégrer à ses propres activités rédactionnelles.
Le document original développe cette vision du dispositif pour l'appliquer à
l'analyse de l'action collective dans les organisations par la conception d'une
méthode d'accompagnement à l'analyse d'un chercheur. Le repérage de citations
illustratives, de relations d'alliance, de relations de résistance, de jeux de pouvoir,
la mise en avant de la coréférence dans le discours des énonciateurs facilitent la
confrontation des représentations des acteurs de l'action collective distribuée. La
méthode pourra déboucher sur la conception d'un moteur de recherche spécialisé
dans l'extraction de citation en lien avec l'analyse de l'action collective. Sa
conception implique une contribution interdisciplinaire, où des ingénieurs et des
chercheurs spécialisés en humanités numériques, en communication
organisationnelle, en sciences de l'information et en informatique pourront
collaborer pour réaliser une interface adaptée aux besoins des chercheurs
envisageant des analyses d'action collective sous une approche dispositive.
Enfin le dernier chapitre de l'autobiographie retrace la conduite et la
collaboration au sein d'un projet épistémologique où la représentation de la
discipline des Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication (SIC) à l'aide de
concepts repères facilite la compréhension du paysage des SIC. Ce travail a pour
le moment une dimension éditoriale qui pourra évoluer vers une éditorialisation
pensée comme dispositif info-communicationnel.
La notion de dispositif info-communicationnel m'a permis de donner une
cohérence à un parcours professionnel entamé en 1997 au département
information communication de l'IUT Lyon 3 et qui se poursuit depuis 2018 à
l'Enssib. Je me suis investie dans ces deux institutions dans l'insertion
professionnelle des étudiants par la conception et la responsabilité d'un diplôme
en collaboration avec des professionnels du secteur, par des suivis de stages et
de projets qui ont participé à la construction de ce regard dispositif. J'aimerais
prolonger ces relations professionnelles et scientifiques par l'encadrement de
doctorants en contrat Cifre. Je suis membre du laboratoire Elico depuis sa
création.
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et SociétéOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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