This thesis investigates the communicational dynamics at work within research project and program about biodiversity. It focuses on three dimensions: relational, organizational and symbolic. The issue of biodiversity gathers a growing number of persons, objects, and networks through devices that organize their interfaces. My research benefits from the interplay of sciences of information and communication on the one hand, and sciences studies on the other hand, based on three notions: how projects and programs reshape the collectives around biodiversity; which organizational forms arise from those devices and around which “standards"? Research programmes and projects have become fundamental devices for the development of French research on biodiversity through the convergence of scientific, financial, rhetorical and political opportunities. Two case studies were analyzed : the project Inbioprocess (ANR-IFB-2008) and the program “Agriculture, Biodiversity and Public Action” (DIVA2-Ministère de l’Ecologie-2006) based on data collected through participant observation, interviews, animation of meetings methods combined with semiotic analysis. The study of devices’ relational dimension allows to describe the interactions and mediations in which I was involved. The contrasts between the two cases are confirmed at the organizational level by the singularity of the work of articulation and mediation at play. However, the two devices borrow communicational standards whose symbolic function is to open a space enabling the dialogue between science and society to take place.As spaces where collectives and publics are constituted, those devices reveal tensions between different modalities of communication and between the articulation of different scales.
The Communicational Dynamics within Ecological Research : Research Project and Program on Biodiversity