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Opening New Avenues in Research on Digital Technologies, Media, and Communication

This workshop brings together researchers from diverse backgrounds to share novel and cross-cutting approaches. The goal: to foster reflection on methods and theoretical frameworks applied to digital technologies and media.

Event, Workshop

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Salle K.011, 1 place Saint Thomas d'Aquin 75007 Paris

Social science research on digital technologies, media, and communication faces significant challenges today. It has expanded considerably, offering detailed accounts of various aspects of the modern communication and media landscape. It has also utilized increasingly sophisticated approaches, especially with the rise of digital and computational methods.

However, this area of study is at a methodological and conceptual crossroads. First, accessing digital production and consumption fields has become increasingly difficult due to technology companies’ growing resistance to social science investigations and tightening restrictions on APIs that facilitate the large-scale collection of platform data. Second, there has been a tendency to develop conceptual tools to explain particular issues that have not been matched by attempts to build overarching theories. Many concepts exist, but they are partly unsuited to making sense of the current state of digital communication.

This workshop aims to tackle these methodological and conceptual crossroads by bringing together leading researchers from different countries and intellectual traditions to share novel and encompassing approaches in research on digital technologies, media, and communication. To achieve this goal, rather than the typical presentation focused on a specific research project, participants will be encouraged to propose broad, innovative, and thought-provoking methodological or conceptual approaches. 

Each session will last 90 minutes to allow for ample time for the presenter to develop their argument, the discussant to offer commentary, and the participants to engage in a lengthy question-and-answer portion. Revised versions of the papers and the commentaries will be included in a special issue of the journal Réseaux to be published in fall 2026.

PROGRAM

8:30 – 9:00 | Registration

9:00 – 9:15 | Welcoming remarks: Sylvain Parasie and Pablo J. Boczkowski

9:15 – 10:45 | Session I

10:45 – 11:00 | Coffee break

11:00 – 12:30 | Session II

12:30 – 13:45 | Lunch break

13:45 – 15:15 | Session III

15:15 – 15:30 | Coffee break

15:30 – 17:00 | Session IV

17:00 – 17:15 | Closing remarks: Sylvain Parasie and Pablo J. Boczkowski

This workshop is partly made possible by funding received from the French National Agency (Medialex Project) and a Global Collaboration Grant from the Buffett Institute for International Affairs at Northwestern University.