Journalists, it is widely admitted, are engaged in new forms of boundary work on social media platforms, seeking to uphold their influence over news dissemination. This study focuses on music festivals as a case study to examine journalists' endeavors in maintaining their authority on social media. We analyze Twitter coverage of music festivals in France during the summer of 2018, systematically collecting data from 16 festivals of varying sizes and musical genres. Through this analysis, we investigate journalists' engagement and evaluate the trading of authority with other stakeholders through mentioning practices. Our findings challenge the prevailing notion of journalists as primary arbiters of authority on social media platforms. Despite their conspicuous presence during music festivals on Twitter, journalists emerge as relatively passive participants compared to other stakeholders in the music scene. Moreover, their ability to assert or receive authority from the broader public sphere is limited. This study sheds light on the bounded nature of journalists' boundary work on social media platforms, emphasizing the evolving dynamics of authority within digital information ecosystems.

This data paper presents an open-access database that identifies and compares 894 French general news media that broadcast their news on Facebook, Instagram, X (ex-Twitter) and/or YouTube. This database offers an up-to-date and extensive census of media active on four of the most widely used socio-numerical networks (SNNs) for news and information in France. The data paper explains and details the principles and operations of the media census: by selecting media recognized as such by various central institutions of the journalistic field, with contrasting visions of what a media is, our approach goes beyond the limits of self-definition of media and overly restrictive institutional definitions. The database includes addresses and identifiers for accessing the sites and accounts of the media studied, as well as data on their age, production volume and visibility on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. These data can be used for a wide variety of research purposes, whether they concern one or several RSNs, and the production, circulation or reception of information.

Adopting a relational approach that remains rare in the literature on social networks and digital inequalities, this article examines the forms and unequal social distribution of the uses of nine of the most widely used networks in France: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp. To do this, it uses multiple correspondence analysis to analyse the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in 2022 among a representative sample of the French population. This analysis shows that generational, class and gender effects structure the choice of networks used, as well as the way they are combined, the reasons for their use and their inclusion in broader repertoires of informational and political practices. Generations and classes differ in the nature and diversity of their use of social networks. Men and women are differentiated by their investment in the production of messages (texts, images and videos), particularly political ones, and by their assignment to practices that are more political or professional for the former, and cultural or social for the latter. The definition of four ideal-typical logics of social network use enables us to situate these digital practices in the cultural, political and social space. In so doing, this article contributes to bringing the study of digital practices closer to the sociology of cultural practices, at a time when digital and cultural practices are becoming increasingly intertwined.

In this article we use data collected on the LinkedIn social network (n = 7,549) to describe the professional careers of journalists since the 1980s. In particular, we discuss the relationship between the flexibilization of employment relations in the world of journalism and the exit from journalism. We begin by highlighting the recent generalization of flexible forms of employment. We then classify careers to describe the emergence of tournaments at entry to this world regulating the careers of young recruits, and their longitudinal effects, including reduced opportunities for access to stable employment at the start of a career and increased exits from journalism. These tournaments are characterized in particular by a sharp acceleration in the temporality of careers, whose major turning points come earlier and earlier. We also highlight the fact that the initial educational investment made by new journalists tends to increase their exposure to job flexibility, while at the same time increasing the probability of staying in journalism. Finally, we show that these entry tournaments encourage young journalists to position themselves increasingly early on the border between the world of journalism and related worlds. Finally, we discuss the significance of these results and the value of our approach for a better understanding of how the world of journalism works.

American sociologist Howard Becker died on August 16, 2023 at the age of 95 at his home in San Francisco. A pivotal figure in twentieth-century sociology, Howard Becker was the last representative of the "Chicago School" and made particular contributions to the study of deviance and music. A living monument of sociology, "Howie", as he wished to be known, remained a source of benevolent inspiration for all those who ask themselves, as he did in one of his last books, how to "tell the story of society".