The survey Cultural practices of the French has become, over time, the main instrument for monitoring the behavior of the French in the field of culture and media.
To date, this survey has been published five times: 1973, 1981, 1988, 1997 and 2008.
The survey covers the various forms of participation in cultural life (reading books, listening to music, attending cultural facilities and events, amateur practices), while giving a large place to the use of traditional media (television, radio, press) and, since the 2008 edition, to digital equipment and practices.
Each time, the survey was conducted using the same method: a survey of a representative sample of the population of metropolitan France aged 15 and over, stratified by region and urban area, using the quota method, and face-to-face interviews at the respondent's home.
The inclusion of digital cultural practices in the 2008 edition
The 2008 edition highlighted the rise of the Internet and the "new screens", the decline of television and radio among the younger generations, a profound renewal of preferences in terms of music and films, the continued decline in the reading of newspapers and books, and the stability of attendance at cultural facilities, which is globally stable.It underlined the impact of digital technology on "the landscape of amateur practices, promoting the emergence of new forms of expression but also new modes of dissemination of self-produced cultural content in the context of free time. The changes were particularly spectacular in the case of photography or video whose practice has almost entirely switched to digital in less than a decade. The diffusion of computers in the homes has also renewed the ways of making art in amateur in the fields of writing, music or graphic arts".
The 2008 edition had given rise to a series of publications, including:
- Olivier Donnat, Pratiques culturelles 1973-2008. Generational dynamics and social constraints
- Olivier Donnat, Cultural Practices of the French in the Digital Age: Summary 1997-2008
- Sylvie Octobre, Pratiques culturelles chez les jeunes et institutions de transmission : un choc de cultures ?
- Sylvie Octobre, Mutation of cultural practices in the digital age
A new survey in 2017-2018
The Department of Studies and Statistics (DEPS) of the Ministry of Culture and Communication has undertaken to renew this survey in 2017. The fieldwork will be conducted in 2017-18. The first publications are expected in the 2nd half of 2018.On this occasion, the questionnaire was thoroughly revised to take into account the creation of new uses and new forms of access linked to the digital revolution.
The survey will focus " as much on updating an often partial knowledge of the characteristics of the audiences of cultural venues (concert halls, museums, libraries...), as on describing the development of a significant cultural offer on the Internet. Are these two forms of experience complementary, reinforcing each other to enrich the attendance of works? Or do they oppose each other at the expense of the other?"
In particular, it will be necessary to"finely articulate knowledge on traditional cultural practices (attendance at cultural facilities, reading books, amateur artistic practices), as well as on digital behaviors, in particular by articulating the various explanatory factors: socio-professional category, age (with a particular interest in young people), generations, gender, territorial belonging and mobility, geographic and ethnic origins... What are the effects of the acceleration of time on the formats of works?"
According to the designers of this new survey, "the digital revolution raises complex methodological questions for the observation of uses. The methodological dimension will therefore be structuring".
"The design of the questionnaire was confronted with a double constraint: to keep a protocol and a methodology as close as possible to those of the previous editions in order to be able to compare the results over a long period of time; but also, to take into account the emergence of digital technology and to no longer approach cultural practices solely through the medium (the museum, the book, the newspaper, the television, the cinema, the record, the stage, etc.), but also through the content, insofar as works can now be consumed more and more at home (even shows, exhibitions), and without physical supports.Références :
