Thomas Jammet: Harnessing social media for brands. A pragmatic sociology of community management in France

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 shared projects. As computerised platforms for exchanging information and content develop – foremost among them Facebook and Twitter – advertisers are investing heavily in establishing a presence on these platforms, in the form of brand pages and accounts, to capitalise on internet users’ expressiveness through the lens of the ‘brand community’. The management of these innovative promotional spaces is entrusted to a new category of service providers – community managers – tasked with promoting organisations’ offerings and responding to consumers’ constant demand for information.

It is this dual mechanism—the commercial reinterpretation of online communities and the strategic aims of their administration—that is examined here. Community management is treated as a practical endeavour, in order to understand how a marketing doctrine is embedded within a professional activity that is being reshaped by successive waves of rationalisation in 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 this process is enacted by a plurality of actors working to align the expressiveness of connected consumers with the needs of businesses.

Members of the jury

• Pierre-Jean Benghozi, Research Director at the CNRS, Professor at École Polytechnique
• Franck Cochoy, Professor at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès (rapporteur)
• Alexandre Mallard, Research Director at Mines ParisTech (rapporteur)
• Sylvain Parasie, Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (joint supervisor)
• Dominique Pasquier, Research Director at the CNRS, Télécom ParisTech
• Pascal Ughetto, Professor at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (supervisor)