1For some people, bringing journalism into sociology is like bringing a wolf to guard the sheep. Journalists and sociologists often stare stonily at each other, while learning from each other, the sociologists sometimes accepting to play the media game, even if they highlight its limits in terms of temporality, formats and space to express a complex thought; the journalists appealing to sociologists for sources or primary materials to enrich their productions. They are not the same profession, the same type of inquiry, the same methodology, the same way of writing and transcribing, the same dissemination channels, or even the same economic ecosystem. And yet, many bridges exist between these two disciplines and professions whose aims often converge, the primary basis of their research material being the interviews they conduct with their sources. Whether these interviews are treated from a sociological or journalistic point of view, their aim is to collect information stemming from the field they investigate. This ambivalence that links and opposes at the same time these close enemies was the very subject of a colloquium entitled “Journalists and sociologists: Between recognition and misconception, competition and collaboration,” on the 26th of June 2006 in Paris.
2It is a reflection that can also be transposed to the multiple avatars of photography, including photojournalism. How is this practice of images at the service of information part of the process involved in any photographic act?
- 1 The projects of the workshop “Sociophotography investigates digital transition” are published on th (...)
3We have experimented this blending of genres as part of the “Digital Investigation”1 project, to which I have been collaborating for four years, where the content and the form of these simultaneously close and different disciplines are rooted in a visual expression—that of the website—that interlaces journalistic and sociological approaches. In this article, I will first examine the links that can be forged between journalism and sociology, in the light of the research studies on this issue, as well as the possible correlations between photography and photojournalism. I will then investigate the specificities of journalistic writing, its techniques and narrative methods, to bring the topics discussed in this project to the attention of the greatest number of people.
4“A set of complex interdependencies, the interlacing of multiple logics, the interpenetration of methods and tools” is the way Vincent Goulet et Philippe Ponet (2009) define the links between journalists and sociologists in their article, in which they identify the different studies and research works on these more or less dangerous liaisons. In a skilful back and forth of proximity and distance, Denis Ruellan describes “dividing lines” between two camps, “frontiers” and “contact zones” that coexist with forms of “impermeability” (1992, p. 25). From this blurred space “proximities and misconceptions” emerge, according to Jean-Marie Charon (1996, p. 17), relating to the methods and tools (various documentary sources like press clipping, convenings of interviews or meetings), thereby creating conflicts of legitimacy, as well as differentiated interpretations concerning the relation to “real facts.” But, as Goulet and Ponet note, to only retain differences and ambivalences would be a reductive approach, underestimating “the real proximities between the journalists willing to raise their ‘level of professional autonomy’ by involving social sciences and sociologists who, in the name of science, seek to ‘enlighten’ journalistic practice” (2009).
- 2 Translator’s note: AJIS (Association des journalists de l’information sociale).
5With the intensification of some demands and struggles, the second half of the 20th century in particular saw the emergence of social journalism, a new “speciality” in the profession, to which Sandrine Lévêque dedicated her book (2009). She shows how journalists interested in social matters have waged a “twofold fight: that for the recognition and autonomy of their rubric and that for the definition of professional journalism” (p. 10). This professionalisation is based on two modes of journalistic legitimacy: one on militantism, benefiting from sources within the working world, the other on diploma and professional experience. The type of journalist that would progressively impose itself is the expert and non-militant one, as shown by the evolution of the association of reference on these issues: the AJSI (Association of Journalists of Social Information),2 founded in 1967, which brings together professional journalists specialised in social issues.
6Social journalism being seen as falling under a devalued speciality, the journalists dedicated to these topics have been overcommitted to the principles of professional excellence (rigour, objectivity, simplification of information for the many) to gain legitimacy. As a result, social information has expanded beyond the scope of working class and labour movement, over to the fields of economics and society, at the risk of weakening its specificity.
7In parallel, the two disciplines—journalism and sociology—have established contact points, in particular in the 1960s with the importation of social sciences methods in journalistic practice, thereby giving rise to new journalistic narrative forms. This is how media anthropology emerged, led by anthropologists hoping to make their work more visible and raise journalists’ awareness of the cultural complexity at play. Susan Allen conceptualised this approach and defined the concept in these terms:
Media anthropology synthesizes aspects of both journalism and anthropology to create an alternative method of gathering and presenting information that can help fill the educational vacuum, not with more detail, but more perspective. (1994, p. 24)
8To the 5W constituting the fundamental information deemed to describe any type of fact in journalism—Who, What, When, Why, Where—Allen proposes the addition of a sixth “W,” the Whole which opens up a holistic dimension, by linking the multiple connections of the facts that create events to give them meaning.
9Two a priori antithetical new forms of journalism would emerge during this time. On the one hand, new journalism, theorised by Tom Wolfe in 1973, conveys a more literary narrative form, based on an immersive experience through which the author expresses himself or herself according to the “I” mode. Let us cite among their most famous representants Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. Mihai Coman thus talks about a form of narrative journalism centred on storytelling which, without dealing with fiction, is performed in two stages: investigation, then storytelling (2003, p. 6-7). On the other hand, another form of journalism appears, its methods being inspired by sciences. The development of computers tools and of database systems opens up the field to endless investigative possibilities, giving rise to datajournalism, also called investigative reporting (journalisme de précision) (Calderan et al., 2016).
10It is therefore important to study the specific contributing factors to the emergence of these new forms embodying the porosity and the convergence between journalists and sociologists. Following a long career as a journalist, the American Robert E. Park became a sociologist and played a major role within the Chicago School of Sociology, a school of thought focused on research in urban sociology led by a team of academics and students at the University of Chicago between 1915 and 1940 (Coulon, 2020). Much of his research was also dedicated to the study of the transformations of journalism since the 19th century, examining the invention of the news and focusing on defining the notion of “public,” in contrast to the crowd, and its importance in democracy (Park, 2008).
11In a reversed trajectory, Philip Meyer, one of the pioneers of investigative journalism, studied social sciences at Harvard. As a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, he reported on the 1967 Detroit riots and highlighted the decorrelation between social status and taking part in a riot, by drawing upon computer-assisted surveying methods. He was one of the leading supporters of the use of statistical methods and of digital tools in journalism (2002).
12Therefore, be it in terms of interdisciplinary studies in sociology and social sciences or in terms of the use of quantitative tools (data or surveys) or qualitative tools (interviews, documentary sources or field of observation), journalists and sociologists share a range of concerns that both deal with the finality of knowledge provision and with the sharing of the investigative tools of the real.
13They differ in their content mainly through methodology, the sociologists implementing a scientific and reflective approach over a relatively long period, whereas the journalists report contextualised facts within a news-related time constraint. As far as the form is concerned, the academic writing of the former often follow narrative forms different from those employed by the latter who seek to reach the greatest number of people, for the sake of popularisation, even if stylistic simplicity must not mean that it is simplistic.
14The communication from scholars to laypersons is often the result of a demanding and challenging exercise (Jurdant, 2023).
15It is this very expectation that is at the heart of the research carried out within the ArTeC project. But before discussing the contribution of journalistic writing to “digital investigation,” I would like to briefly return to the photographic dimension of this project.
16One can consider that the visualisation of “Digital Investigation” inquiries is a matter of social photography, whose following definition is the result of a collective work: “Social photography investigates and communicates on social issues; it is a militant form of photography that aims to bear witness in favour of victims and contribute to the transformation of issues through concrete documents and action on the evolution of mentalities” (Collectif, 2018). It is not dissimilar to “visual sociology.” What characterises it? For instance, Howard S. Becker (2008) wonders whether photography could be used as a research method particularly adapted to certain subject-matters. A response is partly given by visual sociologist Douglas Harper who privileges interactions, the foregrounding of emotions, the dissemination of information in interviews and the analysis of material culture in his approach (Harper, 2019). A field of action that we have been able to adapt in several inquiries of the “Digital Investigation” project.
17Furthermore, numerous published articles touch upon the staging of the self through social networks. It would be interesting to take into account the work of Francisco Coelho dos Santos (2016) on the utilisation of social photography on selfies, these digital self-portraits that form a new means of communication and interaction of individuals through their own images. This new form of self-expression and self-representation is related, according to him, to social photography.
- 3 These frontiers are also discussed by iconographer Laetitia Guillemin in the article “Des machines (...)
- 4 Samuel Bollendorff reconsiders this formulation which he now thinks is outdated to define the work (...)
18As for journalism and sociology, there are many correlations between social photography and photojournalism. The latter designates the activity of journalists who produce images through media, the nature of these images being difficult to define but falling within its relation to news.3 The idea of an urgency of immediacy associated with proximity is embodied by Robert Capa’s famous motto: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” (Capa, 1968).4 Robert Capa distinguished himself in war reporting, but photojournalism covers other genres, including that of social reporting. One of its emblematic figures, Dorothea Lange, immortalised the 1930s Great Depression in the United States. Other photographers worked within the field of major sociological inquiries, such as trained sociologist Lewis Hine (Matet, 2018, p. 211-212), or Jacob Riis (1901). Here too, their works provide evidence of the crossed destinies of sociology and journalism through the prism of images.
“It’s not worth showing talent in the fifth line if the reader doesn’t go further than the third one.”
Françoise Giroud, journalist and co-founder of The Express
“Journalism teaches us not to be boring. Serious matters can be told in a lively, interesting way.”
Henri Amouroux, interview with Jacques Jaubert, December 1979
“A journalist is first of all a person who succeeds in being read.”
François Mauriac
19If the logic of standardisation of journalistic writing had to be retraced, its birth could be dated back to news dispatches and the first world agencies (Palmer, 2014). A lot of journalists have edited volumes reprising the fundamental writing techniques, on the content as well as on the form. On the content: the choice of a general interest subject-matter, the quality and diversification of sources, the reliability and precision of verified information, a complete and enlightened contextualisation. On the form: short and punctuated sentences, techniques to engage readers (headings, teasers, subheadings, tail), a good balance between the text and the quotations (Agnes, 2015; Hervouët, 1978). In a collective reference book dedicated to journalism before 1914, the chapter entitled “Press writing in the 19th century” (Vaillant and Thérenty, 2001) analyses the professionalisation of the “day-to-day writing,” the “poetics of press writing,” through the prism of its different functions (inform, educate, recount, entertain), and the “journalistic forms and materials” (leading article, feature article, serial, critique, chronicle, news items, reporting, interviews, etc.).
20Other works have been dealing with more specific functions of the production of journalistic information. Like the necessity to find a story angle, that is to say to decide, often prior to the field work, on the prism through which the subject-matter will be treated, and therefore on the choice of sources and information, which Denis Ruellan translates as:
The story angle is a journalistic routine of preconstruction which facilitates an anticipated organisation of information gathering and a rationalised presentation of said information. It ensures that the production of information is carried out in relation to the material, temporal and cognitive conditions that bind it. (2006, p. 369)
21The temporal constraint, or working under the constraint of urgency, has been analysed by Olivier Pilmis (2014) during his immersion in newspapers and the pressure of the daily flow of news. He therefore studies individual decisions in a context of uncertainty, depending on the gains and, mostly, on the material and symbolic costs associated with the different terms of this arbitration. This time constraint, which has become more and more pressing since the arrival of continuous news, leads to simplification and shortcuts, at the risk of losing the quality of content and of a reduced time for verification.
22Other researchers have also examined the evolution of this journalistic writing in relation to formats, especially since the arrival of the web. Marc Lits and Adeline Wrona (2014) emphasise furthermore the convergence and the value of several textual disciplines on the expression of journalism and of its forms: history, literary analysis, language sciences and the sciences of information and communication (SIC), each of these disciplines examining centuries-old analyses, biographical sciences and the analysis of formulas and formats from the perspective of their own specificities. With the development of online journalism, new media players, or infomediaries, emerge (Smyrnaios & Rebillard, 2010). They express themselves via sites, blogs, social networks or other content aggregators and partake in the emergence of new forms of writing. Lits and Wrona thus speak about “web applications with journalistic value,” which come along formats blending redactional elements with images.
23But it would be wrong to think that the web has totally revolutionised and transformed the fundamentals of journalistic writing, as demonstrated by Anne Küppers (2013), who studied over four years the narratives of a printed media (the daily newspaper Le Soir), as well as its online version, a web media (Rue 89) and an online citizen-orientated media (Agoravox). It is necessary to explain what the term web media implies: a mediatic tool that enables new voices to access public expression more easily. It concerns not only the visibility of new journalists’ profiles (Pélissier, 2003), but also the possibility for internauts to contribute to editorial production (mainly proposals of subject-matters) (Rebillard, 2007). This two-fold journalistic and participatory approach has indeed been at the heart of the Rue 89 project, while Agoravox defines itself as a media that is 100% citizen-orientated and 100% participative (Revelli, 2008). Financed by a foundation, this online platform is made available to all the citizens who want to disseminate information. An editorial board, made of independent editors with at least four published articles of their own, is in charge of individually approving each article according to its topicality, relevance and originality.
24As part of Anne Küpper’s research, more than 10,000,000 words have been analysed in an automated manner to identify possible writing variations relating to formats. Given the recurrences of similarities, substantially higher than identified differences, she demonstrates, however, that the fundamentals of journalistic writing pertain. The new web media tend to follow the characteristics of classical journalistic writing.
25In addition to brief and continuous information, Lits and Wrona also ascertained the emergence of longer types of writing privileging narration and responding to a newly expressed interest from readers. These new forms have materialised in magazines such as XXI or 6 mois,5 to take two examples in French. Robert Boynton calls this evolution the “new new journalism” (2005) which he describes as a renewed appetite for elaborate narrative forms, the result of lengthy immersions and observations and an alternative to rolling information and to the production of articles written in a limited time and read just as rapidly. This form of journalism is also characterised by a commitment to an often neglected, if not forgotten, social sphere, thereby re-engaging with the beginnings of social journalism and its empathy for the people concerned by the topics covered.
26This narrative form fits into multiple visual formats, from photography to comic books, or to various graphic games, these visual incentives representing what Marc Lits calls the visual turn—a central pivot around which written narration revolves, in a back-and-forth movement (2005, p. 3). As Lits and Wrona note:
27Journalistic writing is not about simply presenting a text anymore, a more or less narrativized text, the restitution of an event, of an investigation, of an immersive coverage, it is about thinking about the best plurisemiotic translation of the life stories that are created to be read and seen by readers/spectators. (2014)
28It is this new dialogue between disciplines and formats that the written and visual creations of the Digital Investigation project tend to embody.
29To illustrate this reflection, we have chosen an investigation led in 2021-2022 and entitled: “Des adolescents face à la privation de smartphones” [Teenagers facing the privation of smartphones]. It was conducted by Cécile Perret, a Master candidate in Sciences of Information and Communication at Paris 8 University, and Aminata Beye, a student in photography at the ENS Louis-Lumière. The two authors were interested in the moments when they have to get by without their smartphones, these objects that have become essential in their daily life and their social relationships: to what extent these periods of privation enable them to shed a light on their relations to their smartphone?
30The sociological dimension of their work transpires in their investigative approach: they gathered elements of understanding drawn from literature, but also from other sources: studies, programs, scholarly works, etc. In parallel, they conducted sociological interviews with teenagers aged between 14 and 17, made up of individual interviews and one collective interview.
31In their written rendition, they have expertly incorporated the rules of journalistic writing to the expectations of a sociological approach. What is referred to as journalistic editing, that is to say the “dressing-up” that will attract and retain the readership’s attention, is respected:
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The title: “Teenagers facing the privation of smartphones.”
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The lead-in (a short text summarizing the subject-matter): “Teenagers confronted with the privation of smartphones stand up against the injustice it represents to them. But after reflecting on the moments of privation they have undergone, they express more complex feelings and reactions where their frustration gives way to a desire for control and autonomy.”
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The teaser, or hook (the first sentence that will “hook” readers): “‘I can’t live without you by my side/I’m captivated by your pixelated gaze’ hums Soprano to his ‘precious,’ in one of hits in 2016.”
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Subheadings (excerpts that revive the readers’ attention): “What do teenagers think of this?,” “Without phones, teenagers say they’re worried and destabilised,” “Emotional work, pursuit of continuity and empowerment,” “I put it on flight mode, keep it in my pocket, but feel reassured.” (Nadir; Au cœur du disposif).
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The text, written in a flowing and balanced style, with contextual and knowledge-related elements and first-person accounts (verbatim, testimonies, etc.).
32From a visual perspective, the layout seamlessly alternates textual passages and photographic pieces, thereby illustrating the driving force of the investigation. As explained by Aminata Beye, the approach is both aesthetic and symbolic:
For this project examining the relation of young people to smartphones, I took pictures of landscapes which I blew up and on which I drew little figures absorbed by their phones. They forget about the surrounding beauty of the world and flee the present moment. Then their phone is their only escape and the days pass by without them being aware.
33In her approach, photography reinterprets the results of the sociological investigation through her overprinting graphic work. The choice of traced silhouettes pertains to a paradox: it signifies human presence solely through the contours of vacuous characters, thereby inscribing a presence through an absence, a whole through a void, a visible theory of contraries—a fitting process of hybridisation between the graphic and the photographic which becomes a source of creative interpretation.