RÉCITS MÉDIATIQUES EN TEMPS DE CRISE DÉMOCRATIQUE : COMMENT LES UNES DE PRESSE MANIPULENT LES IMAGES PATRIMONIALES
MEDIA NARRATIVES IN TIMES OF DEMOCRATIC CRISIS: HOW NEWSPAPER FRONT PAGES MANIPULATE HERITAGE IMAGES

Summary/Abstract: Mass media systems in democratic societies contribute to a “persuasion regime” (Breton 2006: 53), whose methods of influence rely on beliefs around heritage assets portrayed as fundamental to a French socio-cultural identity. By exploring the concepts of storytelling and media world-building, in line with the works of Stuart Hall, André Gunthert and Éric Maigret, this study seeks to demonstrate how front-page content manipulates the semantics of heritage images and perpetuates beliefs about truth (Charaudeau 2020), thereby blurring the line between political demands, social imaginaries and cultural literacy. Using examples from press coverage of the yellow vests protests and the toppling of statues in 2019-2020 (Marianne, Le Point, Valeurs Actuelles), we examine the creation of media iconograms of democratic crises (Citron, 1987) through the use of classical works of art in the media coverage of social protests. The analysis relies on a sociological, anthropological and art-historical approach (Maigret, 2003; Martin, 2010; Meunier, 2015) to highlight the manipulation of visual semantics in the context of tensions and power grabs (Gunthert, 2018). We will examine how the dominant discourses are shifting, revealing a certain instability (Moualek, 2022, 139–156), particularly when there is a shift from positively portraying a movement to casting it in a negative light, with the aim of regaining media control to steer the narrative of current affairs (Garcin-Marrou, 2007). These information and communication processes are based on generating meaning, narrative, and spectacle (Baetens, 2007), revealing multimedia issues relating to identity, memory, and heritage. The complexity involved in their production, transformation and reception reflects the casual adoption of contemporary practices that is a hallmark of our image-driven society (Jeanneret, 2008). These iconograms combine narrative systems of informational, symbolic and analogical units, making them complex media devices and revealing the power dynamics at work in media phenomena (Passeron, 1981).

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