Introduction: About the Digitalization of Society

Not everything that can be counted counts…and not everything that counts can be counted.

William Bruce Cameron

What does digital mean? The question was asked on May 2, 3 and 4, 2018, at an international Conference organized in Montreal by the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la communication, l’information et la société (CRICIS). Under the title “Numérisation généralisée de la société: acteurs, discours, pratiques et enjeux” (Widespread digitalization of society: actors, discourses, practices and challenges), it brought together some 100 researchers who have devoted their reflections to the theme of digitalization of our societies, to discourses and social practices in this field, to mobilized actors and to communicational, informational and cultural issues. This two-volume publication is a follow-up to this event. However, these are not conference proceedings for three reasons. First, this publication brings together the texts of about a third of the people present during these three days. Second, a significant number of text proposals were rejected, and for the other selected texts, significant editorial work was carried out. Third, some of the texts in this publication are from people whose contributions to the Conference had been accepted but who were unable to attend. This opus is the result of this work.

The term digital is now present everywhere and applies to almost all the activities of our advanced capitalist societies (Bravo 2009; Cohen-Tanugi 1999; Doukidis et al. 2004; Rushkoff 2012; Stiegler 2015). It is a question of digital technology about the economy (Illing and Peitz 2006; Les Cahiers du numérique 2010), security and surveillance (Mathias 2008; Lévy 2010; Kessous 2012), identity (Les Cahiers du numérique 2011), social relations (Les Cahiers du numérique 2017) and many other fields (divide, solidarity, friendship, innovation, etc.). Almost all the information circulates in the form of binary computer coding. Media, screens of all kinds (computers, televisions, tablets, video game consoles, multifunctional telephones and a whole range of so-called connected everyday objects) and networks (wired, satellite, microwave, etc.) are omnipresent in both the private and public spheres of our daily lives, two spheres whose boundaries tend to blur each other in part. Big Data circulates almost instantaneously and is processed by increasingly powerful computers and algorithms that bring to the fore the idea of artificial intelligence (AI), which has been regularly challenged since the 1950s when cybernetic thinking had contributed to its development. There is now a reference to “digital culture” (Doueihi 2011; Gere 2002; Greffe and Sonnac 2008) in reference to the uses of technologies that utilize digitalization and the use of these algorithms that require a minimum of interactivity (Denouël and Granjon 2011). Some even speak of the “digital age” or “digital revolution” (Collin and Verdier 2012; Esprit 2006). In short, digital technology is present both in a vast set of discourses and in countless practices. But what exactly does this term refer to? So who are the actors who talk about it, who put it into practice? And what economic, cultural, political, political, social and technical issues does it raise, particularly from the point of view of communication studies? Here are the questions to which the contributions in these two collective works attempt to provide answers.

However, we wanted to focus not only on digital technology as such, but also, and beyond, on the idea of digitalization of our societies. We have made the scientific choice to approach digitalization as a long and constant process in which all areas of societies’ activity, from industry to leisure, from art to studies, from health to the environment, are concerned by this digitalization and reconfigured – and if so, to what extent – by it. To this end, the two volumes of this book put emphasis on analyses of communication, information and cultural phenomena and processes. That said, our ambition is also of a socio-political nature, because it is not only a question of analyzing and understanding, but also of contributing in a decisive way to changing the world, through the proposal of different critical perspectives that emphasize both several of the ways in which digital technology participates in power and domination relationships and can contribute to possible emancipatory practices. All these elements explain the title of the two books: Digitalization of Society and Socio-political Issues.

I.1. What does digital technology involve?

Speaking about digital involves putting it in numbers, to represent the world, society and individuals. For a researcher, a researcher in the human and social sciences, this operation immediately refers to the many debates that, in recent centuries, have dealt with epistemology about philosophy, the natural sciences and the human and social sciences, with oppositions that have, among other things, crystalized around the respective merits of quantitative methods, on the one hand, and qualitative methods, on the other hand, to better analyze the “real” (Pires 1997). Do the figures provide a more objective, representative view of reality than the participating observations and other life stories? Or is it not rather the way we look at the different data at our disposal that determines our positioning, positivist, neo-positivist, constructivist, realistic, critical or other? As we can see, the debate is not recent, but it has been updated in recent years with the production of a considerable amount of data, called Big Data. Would these mega data processed by algorithms provide us with a privileged mode of access to the world or is it a mode of representation of the world among others?

That said, not unrelated to the above, the word digital also leads us to another field of research, that of information and communication technologies (ICTs), sometimes preceded by a “d” for “digital”, digital information and communication technologies (DICTs). Perhaps it would be more relevant here to talk about socio-technical information and communication systems. The use of the word device would refer to the idea of addressing different interdependent tools, the whole forming an infrastructure, a system, a device therefore, which facilitates informational and communicational practices, at least some of them, because any device is both enabling and binding. The material dimension of the device, starting with the choices made in terms of socio-technical design, provides a framework for the related communication processes (Proulx 1999). Nevertheless, no terminology stabilization has been observed over the past five decades, as the terms used vary significantly over time. Thus, there has been alternating references to IT, then to ICT and now to DICT, as well as to “media technologies” and “new media” (George and Kane 2015). More recently, various syntagmas combining several of the words media, networks, socionumeric, digital social or social have emerged, such as “digital platforms”.

Writing is therefore not stabilized on this subject. However, behind this variety of expressions lie notable choices that are often not very explicit. Thus, emphasizing the “media” underlines the fact that these devices constitute organized groups from the cultural, economic, aesthetic, political, social and technical points of view. They are characterized by their interface, their mode of financing, the provision of access to a production of formatted cultural content and the way in which they create links between the supply of goods and services, on the one hand, and demand, on the other hand. Most of the time, private companies are behind these media, and not small companies, since the most important of the digital social media, Facebook, is part of the prestigious “GAFAM“ (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft). Moreover, this acronym is sometimes slightly modified, to GAFAN for example, when we want to highlight the role of Netflix. On the contrary, speaking of networks rather aims to highlight the reticulated technical dimension of the devices, which recalls the historical development of the Internet, as well as the older development of the telegraph, or even the railway, in an Innisian perspective (Innis 1950, 1951), its fundamentally decentralized nature and the fact that these networks largely rely on the participation of all parties, in order to produce the famous user-generated content (UGC).

That said, the only terminological issue is not the use of the words media or network. Thus, in some cases, we are talking about “social networks” or “social media“. But doesn’t such a task reveal a certain blindness, a new oblivion of history when it comes to ICTs? Indeed, the very expression “social networks” refers to analyses that do not necessarily concern digital technology and that predate its development. As for the expression “social media”, it is also questionable, because all media are part of social processes. Unless, as mentioned above, reference is made to a “digital platform”, which means that neither the term media nor the term network can be used. Such websites that aim to link supply and demand can cover transport and accommodation...