Symbolic mediation in public debates: the case of the accident of Fukushima on web comment boards

This thesis aims to contribute to the construction of a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of symbolic mediations which occur in the public sphere during public debates. Firstly, we discuss the epistemological conditions of a search for ideological forms shaped by the circulation of discourses. Secondly, we show that conversations about civil nuclear power among internet users on comment boards of online news web sites are structured by a limited number of frames of intelligibility that we call 'modes of apprehension'. These modes of apprehension never occur in their canonic form: they only appear by fragments in the speech of individuals. Hence, an argumentative analysis of discourse can be used to rebuild them by reordering the multiple 'topoi' in consistent and coherent universes of meaning. Bringing out these modes of apprehension, forged and perpetuated by the circulation of discourses, has three main interests: we highlight some of the symbolic mediations of the social communication about civil nuclear power after Fukushima; we underline some of the main political and philosophical issues of the question; and we examine some of the dominant ideological sedimentations of our modernity. (author)