Nowadays, the humanities and social sciences seem to be disrupted, both epistemologically and methodologically, by the digital tools that make it possible to analyze heterogeneous and voluminous data. For their part, the Digital Humanities, and more broadly the Digital Studies, represent a developing field of research and teaching, studies and practices, the purpose of which is to understand the implications and digital opportunities as media, the object of study, develops a new ecosystem.
As they are concerned, the information and communication sciences (ICS) shed light on the societal and scientific challenges of the digital world due to their interdisciplinary pluralism (semiological, informational, sociological, etc.) which is situated on several levels (theoretical, methodological, and empirical) and covers several areas: for example, the transformation of knowledge circulation processes, the media coverage of workplace communication, information systems, and the issues of document digitization (CPDirSIC / SFSIC Symposium, From the Digital Humanities to Digital Studies, Paris, March 16, 2018).
Owing to their critical reflection on the genesis of the digital world, ICSs show that, despite the impact of digital technology on the process of data production and interpretation, the recurring questions posed by the human and social sciences remain central in order to grasp the complexity of communication and go beyond a strictly computational approach. Articulating humanities and digital as an object of study (approaches, fields, actors, field of research) refers to logic itself allowing a critical work positioning the ICSs as sciences of interpretation.However, do they have sufficient hindsight to analyze the forms of information socialization disrupted by digital technology, which affect not only man’s well-being, but also his professional skills and his relationship to society, to institutions and heritage?The contributions to this conference fall under the following eight themes, which will lead to several parallel workshops.