Introduction

Luc MASSOU1, Patrick MPONDO-DICKA2 and Nathalie PINÈDE3

1 CREM, Université de Lorraine, Metz, France

2 LERASS, Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès, France

3 MICA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Pessac, France

I.1. An object that is long-standing and yet still current

From a set of interconnected HTML pages to online service platforms and digital social networks, websites have constantly changed their forms and functions, prompting the humanities and social sciences to renew or invent analytical methodologies on the one hand, and on the other hand to think of praxis, courses of action adapted to non-specialists and future players in digital communication. Additionally, the production of online elements has been on the agenda of communications training since its emergence among the general public and professionals in the early 1990s, according to a different and complementary approach to that implemented for computer scientists. This book seeks to compare these two perspectives - methodological and pedagogical - in information and communication science research by studying Web communication in its technical, discursive, methodological and social dimensions, from the time it is designed to its integration into the digital and communication practices of organizations, whether in the public, non-profit or private sector.

To accomplish this, this book draws on a cycle of scientific study days that began at the end of 2015 at Université Toulouse 2 Jean-Jaurès, based on a deliberately critical question: is website analysis still relevant in information and communication? Six years after its initiation, four more study days were organized between 2017 and 2021 at Université Bordeaux Montaigne, at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Paris), at the Université Clermont Auvergne, and finally at the Université de Lorraine, to carry out further reflection and expand the extent of the research on this subject, the dynamics of which are always present. On this basis, a first collaborative book was written: Site internet : audit et stratégie, under the direction of Rouquette (2017), which includes the participation of some of the authors who had been present during the initial session in 2015. In order to highlight all the researchers who contributed to these sessions between 2015 and 2021, this book, the second in this series, builds on and completes the first part, and will interconnect with a third part released by the same publisher, Digital presences of organizations, to be published in 2022, also under our co-direction. This will allow us to offer a detailed overview of the research carried out on an object that is both long-standing and yet still current, whose methods of analysis took some time to come into being, and about which we reviewed only four books expressly devoted to the issue in 2015: Penser le web-design. Modèles sémiotiques pour les projets multimédias by Pignier and Drouillat (2004), Les sites web. Conception, description et évaluation by Stockinger (2005), L'analyse des sites internet. Une radiographie du cyberespace by Rouquette (2009) and Manuel d'analyse du Web en sciences humaines et sociales, coordinated by Barats (2013).

Figure I.1. Typology of the device in communications research conducted by organizations (Appel and Heller 2010, p. 45)

For this second volume to be released on the basis of our 5 scientific study days, we have brought together 12 authors to expand on epistemological, methodological and also pedagogical approaches to the analysis of websites, which we have structured into three sections based on the notion of the device, widely used in information and communication sciences (Charlier and Peeters 1999; Leblanc 1999; Appel et al. 2010), and in particular for the communication research of the organizations that interest us here. As noted by Appel and Heller (2010) on the basis of a review of the literature in this specific field, three logical mechanisms of interpreting the device can be distinguished here (see Figure I.1): the logic of arrangement (related elements), analytical logic (mediation) and critical logic (ideology, control).

If it were necessary to position our 10 chapters using this typology broken down along three main axes, and by considering websites as communication devices for organizations1, we could write them mostly following the analytical logic proposed here. For their part, here is how their authors (Appel and Heller 2010, p. 41) define it:

A second level of meaning designates the device as a process that the researcher will have highlighted and which takes two orientations: social/technical co-construction and co-construction of meaning. These two different meanings refer to two approaches to research in CIS, and to two epistemologies: on the one hand, communication as a social construction with a connection from research to sociology, and on the other hand, to communication as a construction of meaning with a connection to the sciences of language.

In the three parts of our book, the authors will use this analytical logic in their examination of websites, considering them as processes of mediation comprising social, technical, and semiotic constructs, and which we have grouped into three non-exclusive subsets: the website as a socio-technical, semiodiscursive and communicational device. In each contribution, the authors will develop in greater detail their notional, methodological and/or pedagogical choices and will rely on different examples of analyzed corpus of websites, if necessary.

I.2. The website as a socio-technical device

Considering websites as socio-technical devices involves analyzing the way they bring social actors into interaction with different technological systems on the Web, which have been constantly evolving since its entry into widespread use among the general public in the early 1990s. This is precisely what Camille Alloing proposes in his chapter, where he historicizes five periods of the Web in the communication practices of organizations: the pioneer era of the Web (before 2000), the citation Web (2000-2005), Web 2.0 (2005-2010), the social Web (2010-2015) and finally the affective Web (2015 to the present). For each of these periods, the author identifies the characteristics of the site as a formal and technical system, describing the nature of interactions and uses made by Internet users, and explaining the digital communications strategies of the organizations involved.

From a more epistemological perspective of the analysis of websites, mixing socio-technical devices and semiodiscursive approaches, Christine Barats and Julia Bonaccorsi will then highlight the points to observe and the difficulties to be faced when interpreting messages transmitted through websites, where the abundance and heterogeneity of digital content and data prompt us to question the way they are produced and how they circulate on the Web, but also the mechanisms and conditions of how they are collected by researchers. Here again, the importance of the socio-technical devices and the place of technical mediation are at the heart of the reasoning, upstream and downstream of the analysis.

Finally, taking a pedagogical perspective, Luc Massou proposes a personal implementation of training experiences in the expertise of websites in Bachelor's and Master's courses in information and communication, for future specialists in digital communication. Whether based on various website analysis grids from the scientific and sometimes professional literature or created ad hoc with Master's students, it is a critical and reflective assessment, both in terms of contributions and limitations, but also methodological constraints and the acquisition of professional skills in the use of these socio-technical devices on the Web.

I.3. The website as a semiodiscursive device

The second part covers the theoretical and methodological approaches that are part of a mainly semiotic perspective, which is based on an analysis of discourses and/or interfaces in websites. Here, Nicole Pignier puts forward a definition of a semiotics of digital design, which involves questioning the way we "make sense" of Web design, in order to create a link between the instances of enunciation - organizations - and co-enunciation - the viewers who use websites. She presents a methodology for a semiotic analysis of multimodality and the interface design of websites, also specifying its limits, and concluding on the enunciative and ethical interrelations of digital design.

Taking a perspective that is once again interconnected through a pedagogical experience at Master's level university courses, Alexandra Saemmer and Nolwenn Tréhondart present a methodology for analyzing websites that is rooted in pragmatic semiotics, but which shifts the focus from the interpretative results to the study of its process of construction. This social semiotics of websites thus compels learners to collectively debate the way their interpretative filters are constructed, so as to make them more aware of this process, and to promote a more reflective posture among future digital communications professionals.

Justine Simon, for her part, explains the theoretical and methodological challenges of the spaces of expression and communication that...