Pratiques de communication et figures de la médiation

How can communication practices, transformed by the arrival of computerized technologies and the evolution of me televisual system, be analysed? This article suggests looking at both technical and social mediation. The influence of technology is manifest in the modelling of practices on its logic and performance and in the increasing technicality of the communication process. That of society is seen in an individualization and personalization of uses, a combination of technical rationality and subjectivity. Yet the social link remains the reference which gives meaning to practices. Changes in life-styles and in users' discourse also bear witness to the inter-relatedness of technology and society which forms the theoretical approach of this analysis of communication practices.