Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

While emblematic newspapers are falling into industrial, bankers and businessmen’ hands, aside from State ownership, “independency” is being held as a unifying principle by a plurality of medias partly created against the field of mainstream media. With few employees and low budgets, some of these institutions defend a high conception of journalism by placing independency toward economic and political powers as central values. Through their capitalistic organization, this article proposes to open the “black box” of independency and to analyze its social uses in the French field of news. What role does these news media play in the journalistic field? How do they build their singularity and legitimacy? What do they reveal about French New media logic of sustainability?