Usagers et socio-économie des médias

This article proposes a socioeconomic approach of media and the user at two levels. At the “micro” level, we study users who are individuals or communities, and who, beyond their role of consumers or/and receivers of media, define new uses thanks to their initiatives, inventions, their “do-it-yourself”. The conception of the active, creative user leads to a communicational approach of innovation which integrates the user into the process of innovation. At the “meso” level, in the general framework of the political economy of communication, and by reminding the analyses of cultural industries, we propose a socioeconomic approach widened to the media and information industries. Thanks in particular to quantitative indicators, we estimate the considerable economic weight and the strong concentration of information industries and we show that the user risks to be more and more dominated by these industries