Algorithms and Territorial Regulation

Uber, Waze, Airbnb… The algorithms that control these platforms are based on an optimisation of the service provided to the user rather than any collective, political or moral norms. The accusations against these algorithms expose the way technical architectures implicitly govern our lives

The Strength of Weak Cooperation:an Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Web 2.0

This paper examines some continuities and ruptures in the use of Web 2.0 such as blogs, social media, user-generated content services etc. vis-à-vis earlier web services. We hypothesize that one of the sociological characteristics of Web 2.0 services is that making personal production public creates a new articulation between individualism and solidarity, which reveals the strength of weak cooperation. Web 2.0 services allow individual contributors to experience cooperation ex post. The strength of the weak cooperation arises from the fact that it is not necessary for individuals to have an ex ante cooperative action plan or altruistic intention. They discover cooperative opportunities only by making public their individual production. The paper illustrates this phenomenon by analysing the uses of different services and by looking at the new process of innovation that appears through Barcamp and Coworking spaces

Méthodes digitales: Approches quali/quanti des données numériques

International audienceL'objectif de ce numéro spécial dédié aux méthodes quali-quantitatives est de rendre compte de la diversité de ces nouvelles approches. Jour après jour de nouvelles méthodes rétives à la dichotomie classique entre approches qualitatives et quantitatives prennent forme. Ces méthodes circulent entre micro et macro, local et global, permettant aux chercheurs de traiter des larges quantités de données sans perdre en finesse d'analyse. Ce sont précisément ces expériences qui ont été rassemblées dans ce numéro, sans exclusion de disciplines, d'objets ou d'approches

Le redoul, herbe des tanneurs et des teinturiers. Collecte, commercialisation et utilisations d’une plante sauvage dans l’espace méridional (xiiie-xve siècles)

Le redoul ou corroyère, Coriaria myrtifolia L., arbuste indigène des forêts du nord-ouest méditerranéen, très riche en tannins mais toxique, est pris comme exemple de gestion des ressources de l’environnement naturel au Moyen Âge. Ses particularités botaniques et chimiques, indiquées en première partie, expliquent ses applications, durant des siècles, en tannage et en teinture. Les zones et méthodes de récolte mentionnées dans les documents médiévaux – principalement catalans – sont mentionnées, ainsi que les circuits commerciaux à l’échelle régionale et internationale qui organisaient l’exploitation de cette matière première végétale. Enfin, les données techniques sur son emploi en tannage et teinture sont discutées.Redoul, Coriaria myrtifolia L., a tanner’s and dyer’s plant. Collecting, trade and uses of a native plant of the Mediterranean ecosystems (13th-15th c. AD). Coriaria myrtifolia L. is a wild bush indigenous in the forests and scrublands of north-western Mediterranean countries that is very rich in tannins but toxic. It is here taken as an example of management of natural resources in the Middle Ages. Its botanical and chemical characteristics are described ; they explain its applications for tanning and dying during centuries in that part of the world. The mediaeval documents – mainly from Catalunya – mentioning the places where it was collected and the methods used are discussed, and so are the texts describing the trade at regional and even international scale that was gradually organised to fully exploit this vegetable resource. In a last part, we explain the technicalities of its use in tanning and dyeing processes as they can be inferred from the medieval and later documentation

Unfolding the Multi-layered Structure of the French Mediascape

Unfolding the Multi-layered Structure of the French Mediascap

The Stength of Weak cooperation: A Case Study on Flickr

Web 2.0 works with the principle of weak cooperation, where a huge amount of individual contributions build solid and structured sources of data. In this paper, we detail the main properties of this weak cooperation by illustrating them on the photo publication website Flickr, showing the variety of uses producing a rich content and the various procedures devised by Flickr users themselves to select quality. We underlined the interaction between small and heavy users as a specific form of collective production in large social networks communities. We also give the main statistics on the (5M-users, 150M-photos) data basis we worked on for this study, collected from Flickr website using the public API