Thesis supervisor(s)
: Pascal Ughetto, Sylvain Parasie
The rise of "Web 2.0," commonly referred to as the participatory or social web, has revived the term "community" to describe the spontaneous gathering of Internet users around topics of discussion or common projects. As computerized platforms for exchanging information and content develop, foremost among them Facebook and Twitter, advertisers are investing heavily in their presence, in the form of brand pages and accounts, to take advantage of the expressiveness of Internet users through the prism of the "brand community." The management of these innovative promotional spaces is entrusted to a new category of service providers—community managers—who are responsible for promoting the organizations' offerings and responding to consumers' uninterrupted demand for information. It is this dual mechanism of commercial reinterpretation of online collectives and the strategic aim of their administration that is questioned here. Community management is treated as a practical achievement, in order to understand how a marketing doctrine fits into a professional activity that is being reconfigured through successive waves of rationalization of digital brand communication. In doing so, this research aims to contribute to a pragmatic sociology that refuses to reify the process of "digital transformation" in our societies, in order to describe how it is performed by a plurality of actors who work to align the expressiveness of connected consumers with the needs of businesses.
Doctorate
: Sociology
Year of thesis registration
: 2012
Doctoral school
: OMI – Organization, Markets, Institutions
Thesis defense on Monday, September 19, 2016
Jury:
Pierre-Jean Benghozi, Director of Research at CNRS, Professor at École Polytechnique
Franck Cochoy, Professor at Toulouse Jean Jaurès University (rapporteur)
Alexandre Mallard, Director of Research at Mines ParisTech (rapporteur)
Sylvain Parasie, Associate Professor at Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée University (co-director of thesis)
Dominique Pasquier, Director of Research at CNRS, Télécom ParisTech
Pascal Ughetto, Professor at Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (thesis supervisor)