le débat

While I was in Spain I received email from German colleagues about an upcoming meeting we were to have in Amsterdam. My reply: “Wunderbar! Hasta Vreijdag.” Something weird is happening.

May 20, Monday: Five minutes’ walk from my apartment to Amsterdam Centraal, then by  train via Schiphol, Rotterdam, then Antwerp (with T-mobile texting me messages whenever I cross a border telling me something I will never understand), Brussels, then Paris. My first time to France.

Gorgeous and grand. Rainy and cold. My invitation was instigated by Brian J.Bowe, a PhD student from Michigan State on a fellowship at CELSA, the communication school of the Sorbonne. It was coordinated by Philip Scheiner and another Fulbright Inter-country lecture arrangement. 

And incredible luck.

The CELSA acronym unpacks into English as the Graduate School of Communication of the Paris-Sorbonne University. I learned that it originated in 1957 as an applied certificate program for advanced students in communication fields such as public relations. Journalism came later and even later came media, and research, as it evolved into a school of its own with numerous departments and coursework in corporate communication, media production, language instruction, social media, communication theory, and the analysis of macrosocial processes related to communication and technology. Brian is on a fellowship here, often acting as a bridge between the kind of quantitative, English-language social science that international communication research and Michigan State tend to do, and the philosophically-oriented, French communication research that thrives here. How culture is marketed to tourists is one of the topics researchers here explore, as well as cultures recreate themselves in diasporic communities abroad and online. 

Brian is part of the Languages Department. Its Director is Kyle Schneider, another member of whom is Felix Zaratiegui, an international advisor and director of Spanish language programs. But beyond teaching foreign language these faculty teach foreign culture. This group is like the international traders or inhabitants of port cities: They are multinational, very multilingual, and they tend to be exposed to scholarship from international associations and journals. 

They are also on the leading edge of a fireline that is sweeping across the French academic landscape, pertaining to language, culture, and scholarship. I got a clue when I asked Brian what I could read that would typify the research at CELSA, and I learned that, unfortunately for me, none of their publications are in English. The absence of—perhaps resistance to—English publications is, it turns out, an issue of some concern at CELSA and beyond. In fact, the first day I was there the issue was especially salient. The front page of Libération, one of the largest daily newspapers in France, which is ALWAYS in French through and through, appeared this way:

  

I have found each place I have been in Europe, when two or more Germans are together they speak German. When two or more Dutch are together they speak Dutch. Two or more Spanish, Spanish. French, French. But whenever there is any combination at all, English is spoken. At least among the well educated, English is, ironically, the lingua Franca. This is, of course, most beneficial to me whenever I am in a multinational conversation, even though it is sometimes a strain for my colleagues. But it is not a personal courtesy or even a matter of convenience. It has become a great source of concern of research scientists throughout Europe to remain involved, integrated, and recognized in cutting edge research literacy and visibility. This topic was so salient during my visit because, coincidentally, the government was debating on whether to authorize more college instruction in English.

So at CELSA, as I have also heard from German, Dutch, and Spanish colleagues, there is recognition that English-language journals are the most influential and prestigious. In order to get and to retain the best students and the best faculty in the world, an institution’s scholarship must have an international reach and reputation, and like it or not, that means nowadays that it may need to be done in English. At CELSA, Brian and Kyle are tentatively working with other researchers to explore international outlets like the International Communication Association.

What of one’s own language? What of the culture that is embodied in one’s own language? What of the way of thinking and the philosophy that pervades speech and writing, which is not in English? What of its uniqueness? Beyond the question of culture, there are also strategic issues to confront: Subscription to English-language science has the potential to place the work of scholars who are not fluent in English and its style of argumentation at some disadvantage when they must submit manuscripts to international journals.

The Sorbonne, or at least this corner of it, faces a dilemma. They have proudly maintained French research in the French language, with great French success. But they are wondering whether they are becoming isolated. Is this an inherent problem? Not necessarily. Does the faculty here need to intersect to a large extent with non-French scholars? Not absolutely. Does it hamper their ability to attract the best students in the world and to turn out graduates with an international reputation? Possibly. That might or might not be a problem. But it’s a topic of considerable concern, at CELSA, at the Sorbonne, and in France.

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I would learn through discussions with other faculty that CELSA researchers, like those in Barcelona who I met, employ semiotic analysis. An exciting focus for them has been how, on the one hand, commercial entities design interfaces and internet platforms that lead users to do certain things and behave certain ways from which the designers’ institutions might benefit. But, according to Dr. Etienne Candel, users are aware of the way their online behaviors would be influenced and tracked, and they alter they behavior to avoid and even subvert this would-be influence and tracking. How these dynamics are studied seems to assume systematic behavioral influence attempts by design and in users’ responses, and at the same time some phenomenological degree of spontaneous rebellion. These are fascinating issues. I am still struggling to understand how they are emergent and independent and not causally circular. I said to Etienne, who was describing these processes, I can’t tell if you are a determinist or an anti-determinist. As I thought he might, he seemed to cringe at the notion of determinism, but he admitted it was a good question.

Etienne and I were interviewed for a video documenting CELSA researchers and visiting scholars, and we ended up debating vigorously during this taping. It began with when the moderator, Marie Doezema, an American journalist in Paris and CELSA advisor, asked me to say what I study and what brought me to the subject. I explained that I’m primarily concerned with how people get to know each other and relate to each other online, and that these questions have evolved into a series of studies looking at Web 2.0 systems and how we relate to the various sources in these interface systems. Etienne argued one cannot really get to know someone via the Internet the way you would in person: The anonymity and the frequent deception that takes place when one interacts with someone on the other side of the globe, for instance, raises questions about how one can truly get to know another person online. And since people lie online, the authenticity of these relationships are questionable when they are bound to the Internet. 

I said I agreed with everything he said, except for the qualifier, “when they are bound to the Internet.” How truly do we ever know another person, I asked, even face-to-face? And as far as anonymity goes, should I get email from Etienne when I am in Michigan and he is in Paris, does it make sense to say that there is any anonymity of the Internet at all? Or in any context when the source has a name, as there is a greater tendency to require in online discussions these days? And as far as deception goes, lying has been happening long before the Internet, and I don’t believe there’s any real evidence that it is more common online than offline, I added. So, I said, I think Etienne has described the human condition, not the Internet. He countered that there is a common narrative about deception via digital communication. It is the Internet’s reputation, and the belief that the Internet prompts deceptive communication is so widespread that it affects people’s actions whether the rumor is true or not. I said I agreed and I disagreed: I concur that there’s a widespread assumption that many people present themselves falsely online, but I disagree about its actual prevalence and or even that the belief pervades much online behavior. For one thing, selective self-presentation need not be dishonest; it is partial. It is easier to present one’ desired characteristics online, but that does not mean that we do not possess those characteristics nor that we do not try to do the same offline. But in terms of the narrative affecting interaction, that’s an intriguing notion but is it real, all the time? In America we have a stereotype about car salesmen being dishonest. But I think that when we go to buy a car we mostly put our suspicion aside once we see that the salesman is really just a person trying to do a job that you asked him to do. I think people go into the situation with suspicion but they put it aside rather readily, most of the time. I think it is the same with digital media. I contact someone and we share information and I learn about the person enough to get things done. If I email Etienne and he writes back, I don’t proceed as if he is lying to me. And if in the course of our exchanges we find out that we both like jazz music, that’s great and not something we get suspicious about. We learn about each other enough for our relationship to serve its purpose. It was a good debate. I have reported my comments at greater length than I reported his, although his may have taken a greater proportion of the discussion. It will be on YouTube someday, I’m told.

The discussion continued, in a way, after my research presentation. My talk presented numerous experiments, and conclusions deduced from theories and supported with statistical tests. This approach is uncommon at CELSA where they focus on cultural critique and the interpretation of users’ actions. It is qualitative rather than quantitative and it focuses on case studies as examples of broader social and institutional intrusions into users’ prospective behavior, their privacy, and economics. My kind of work is often criticized as too sterile, artificial, and ungenuine to be informative. Frankly, people who approach work their way and my way often get along quite poorly, and end up rather polarized with respect to what counts as valuable research. Things were only slightly combative during the period for discussion following my presentation. They challenged me.

Dr. Valérie Jeanne-Perrier asked me, “In these experiments of yours how much do you take context into account? How much do you study context?” she queried. “Not nearly as much as you would like me to!” was my response. I explained that we know the context of a lab experiment is often artificial, and that is an accepted limitation, yet we try to design experiments that are generic and abstract so that they may be applicable to a broad array of contexts. This is just as much a limitation as it is to study one context in detail and not know how generalized one context is to another. Dr. Karine Berthelot-Guiet, CELSA’s Research Director, disagreed: We find the same thing in many contexts, she said. I asked her to expound using the example of how users try to subvert the would-be intrusions of privacy by platform designs—do users who are aware the potential dangers always work around them?

“Yes,” she said.

“They always do so,” I asked, “but in different ways depending on the nature of the systems and their knowledge of how to defeat them?”

“Yes,” she said, in each context, no matter how the platforms are designed to exploit the users, the users find ways to undermine them.

“Then we are in complete agreement!” I said. “There is a determinist law of behavior that users who suspect interface designs of potential exploitation find ways to undermine them, and what contextual analysis does is confirm the patterns and illustrate the specific illustration. We are walking down two sides of the same street!”

There seemed to be a sense of surprised agreement, although it also seemed that it might take a while before people would decide if they were comfortable with it or not.  

Behind the Louvre, with the stylish ICA man-purse

A stimulating day and a most enjoyable visit. I will never forget the intellectual challenge and, I think, mutual respect that may not have been expected but seemed to emerge, gladly, nevertheless.

A little more walking in Paris and back by train “home” to Amsterdam.