This is the question posed by this issue of the journal Réseaux, coordinated by Dominique Pasquier.
"There is a lot of work on the Internet, but they focus primarily on the advanced uses of the most educated. There are many works on the working classes, but they pay marginal attention to the penetration of new technologies in the populations they study. However, over the last ten years, social inequalities in Internet access have largely disappeared. In France, between 2006 and 2015, the proportion of employees with an Internet connection at home rose from 51% to 88%, and that of workers from 38% to 83% (CREDOC 2015 report). Do these populations with little or no education have the same uses of the tool as the highly qualified young urbanites on whom most research has focused up to now?Nothing is less certain. The Internet is a very versatile tool that gives access to highly plastic socio-technical devices. The online uses of these newcomers to the Web should not be measured against the innovative practices of older Internet users. They make sense in relation to a social ethos and particular living conditions. The Internet is not part of their professional world and they have trained themselves in it, with more or less difficulties. It can be both a powerful tool for opening up to the world and entering the knowledge society, and a threat by disrupting certain ways of life.Dominique Pasquier returns, in the introduction, to the abundant literature devoted to inequalities of access and inequalities of use: too often done "from a vision of the "top" of the social scale, with an analysis in terms of lacks and deficits when it comes to dealing with uses in working-class environments... In reality, it is very likely that these "forgotten" digital audiences have their own way of getting to grips with it . Relying on the work of Richard Hoggart ("The culture of the poor"), he reminds us that"the appropriation of culture and communication cannot be dissociated from the social conditions in which it is accomplished, and thus from the ethos that characterizes a social group. It isagainst this backdrop that we must try to understand the appropriation of the Internet in working-class environments."Bénédicte Havard Duclos reports on a study of the digital uses of childcare assistants. She observes a great diversity of uses, whether it is exchanging with other childcare assistants on blogs to find out about working conditions and PMI regulations, learning how to carry out new activities with the children on tutorials, or discussing educational standards between childcare assistants. The dedicated sites help to break the isolation of home-based work and bind the community together by allowing these subordinate wage-earning women to have a public discourse on their professional group and its evolutions.Christine Seux looks at research on children's health conducted by young parents in Normandy from different social backgrounds: she observes differences related to the level of education and social profiles in the use of possible informational sources (health professionals, traditional media, internet). "Parents from the "popular" group are particularly numerous not to look for information online (and they are very reluctant to consult forums on health issues). On the other hand, they draw advice for care from their own parents, especially their mothers, more than others."Faustine Régnier 's work focuses on digital food monitoring devices and highlights the strong reluctance of individuals from working-class backgrounds to use these self-quantification technologies. She formulates the hypothesis that "there is a relationship between this phenomenon and the fact that members of modest social categories find in food an important "space of freedom" in a context of precarious living conditions".
Irène Bastard gives another example with the problem of public display of the network of friends on Facebook. Her survey of high school students from working-class and immigrant backgrounds in a school in Seine-Saint-Denis shows "that their first steps on the network were often supervised by the elders of the siblings: it was they, not the parents, who set the rules and explained the practices. Creating an account on Facebook thus appears to be a move towards autonomy in relation to parental authority. The high school students studied refused to "friend" strangers. At the same time, registering new people is a way to broaden the horizon of their social circle, which is often considered narrow.Margot Déage , for her part, is interested in the uses of Snapchat by young people in institutions with a varied social recruitment: she shows "that they have diverted the bilateral and ephemeral nature of the exchanges that the device offers by organizing a system of advertising that allows the network to open to new contacts for self-staging.Mohamed Sakho Jimbira and Hadj Bangali Cissé surveyed three different groups in Senegal belonging to the working classes: domestic servants, street vendors and marabouts (who are the only ones who are not illiterate). "All of these individuals switched to almost exclusive use of WhatsApp on their phones using mobile connection recharges. The free exchange allows them to stay in daily contact with family members who do not live in Dakar, to settle certain stock problems for street vendors and to follow religious groups for marabouts."Bruno Vétel evokes a kind of " class struggle" in video games "with poor players who take on repetitive tasks in the game to increase the power of their characters and sell them to richer players who have less time to devote to the game".The research presented in this dossier shows that the Internet for the less fortunate is not a cheap Internet: it responds to its own logic, solves particular problems and generates specific practices.
Contents- Dominique Pasquier: Popular online classes: "forgotten" by research?
- Bénédicte Havard Duclos: The Internet for childcare assistants: A tool to bring the profession to life
- Christine Seux : Social disparities in the use of the Internet in health ; Combined effects of family socialization and information sources
- Faustine Régnier: "Taste of freedom" and self-quantification: Perceptions and appropriations of self-tracking technologies in modest environments
- Irène Bastard : When a network confirms a social place ; The use of Facebook by working-class teenagers
- Margot Déage: Exposing oneself on a ghost network; Snapchat and the reputation of middle schoolers in working-class environments
- Mohamed Sakho Jimbira, Hadj Bangali Cissé: The use of the Internet in the Senegalese working classes. The case of marabouts, street vendors and cleaning ladies
- Bruno Vétel: The video game working poor
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