Latest articles in english

• Olson’s Paradox Revisited : An Empirical Analysis of Filesharing

  11 juin 2009, par Raphaël Suire, Sylvain Dejean, Thierry Pénard

  This article aims to examine the impact of group size on the provision of collective good
  provided by P2P file-sharing communities. Olson (1965) argued that small communities are
  more able to (...)

• A Web Replication of Snyder, Decker and Bercheid (1977)’s Experiment on the Self-Fulfilling Nature of Social Stereotypes

  20 March 2009, by Camilo Charron, Jacques Fischer-Lokou, L. Lamy, Marcel Lourel, Nicolas Guéguen

  Expectations often result in actions that elicit expectancy-confirming behaviors. Research indicates that the different, and almost always more positive, personality characteristics are attributed to attractive, as compared with unattractive individuals (for reviews see Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani & Longo, 1991) and Lamglois et al, 2000). In a classic demonstration of this phenomenon, Snyder, Decker-Tanke, and Berscheid (1977) had male participants engage in a telephone conversation with a female confederate. When the participants believed that the confederate was an attractive woman they behaved in a more friendly, likeable, and sociable manner than they did when they believed the confederate was unattractive.

  Based on the results of Synder et al. (1977) and Walther, Slovacek, and Tidwell, 2001), we hypothesized that an attractive photo accompanying a woman’s personal advertisement on an internet dating site would produce greater involvement from male respondents and increase the likelihood that their communication would elicit a reply from the woman.

• Firms’ contribution to open source software and the dominant user skill.

  16 March 2009, by Jean-Benoît Zimmermann, Nicolas Jullien

  Keywords: "Free"/"libre" or "open source" software, Industrial economics, dominant user’s skill

  JEL Classifications: L11, L15, L22, L86

• Students and Video Game Players

  27 November 2008, by Magali Moisy

  Abstract : Some studies show that video games are used in teaching (Foreman 2004) and others report on players learning through their leisure activities online (Perriault 1987; Berry 2007), as formerly was the case through ordinary games. Even though the latter have been recognized by many researchers as leisure activities (Natkin 2003; Lafrance 2006), they were already used as learning tools (Brougère 1995, 2004).

  However, since the beginning of time, play has been more or less directly opposed to work (Caillois 1967; Henriot 1989). The term “work” can be related to the notion of school work for children and adolescents, and to academic work for young adults. But, if for the former, parental and teacher supervision proves to be sufficient so that game playing does not encroach too much upon school work, what are the effects when institutional and parental frameworks are less evident?

  Such is the situation in which most university students who play video games find themselves. In fact, recent studies mention the risk that these young adults who play on the Internet could potentially put less effort into their studies to spend more time playing on-line games (Valleur 2003; Griffiths 2004).

  This paper presents part of the results of a study being done for a doctoral degree in Education, using a psychoanalytically-oriented clinical approach (Blanchard-Laville, Chaussecourte, Hatchuel et Pechberty, 2005). My research analyzes students’ psychological investment in video games and their game-study relationship. The objective is to show, through the in-depth analysis of three non-directive interviews done with student gamers, how video games are experienced as leisure tools, but also as learning tools at the same time. For the first two students, their intensive use of video games, which became their object of study for a time, was transformed into what we can call addictive. However, in the end this particular experience of video games permitted them to better come to know themselves. As regards the third student, video games are for her as for her mother informal tools for leisure and learning which do not conflict with her studies.

• Developing FLOSS, a market driven investment.

  17 June 2008, by Nicolas Jullien

  Over the last few years, FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) has become a commercially viable reality of the first order, with an increasing number of companies getting involved in the communities developing it (Lakhani & Wolf 2005). In this article, we try to explicit the link between market offer and involvement into communities.

  To do so, we surveyed francophone companies (France, Belgium, Switzerland) affirming a utilization of FLOSS in their commercial activity. Based on roughly 500 companies concerned, we obtained 141 usable responses and we statistically verified the link between FLOSS commercial strategies and degree of involvement into communities. We propose a typology of commercial strategies explaining the differences in involvement and we validate this typology thanks to a ascendant hierarchical classification (AHC) on them.

• To think "citizen journalism".

  21 November 2007, by Denis Ruellan

  Abstract.

  Since 2005, the Internet has given rise to several novel initiatives concerning journalism designated by the generic term "citizen journalism". Underlying a set of heterogeneous systems, a unique principle can be observed: web users, who are not professional journalists, contribute directly to the production of the daily news. These practices raise a series of questions, one of which is the link, in the media and journalism, between professional and amateur practices (pro-am) and which we will examine in this article.

  Keywords: journalism, citizen journalist, pro-am.

  This text is from a paper presented October 9th 2007 in Natal (Brazil) at the opening of the colloquium Comunicação, História e Política organized by the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte.

  This paper is based on work carried out jointly with Florence Le Cam, senior lecturer, and Olivier Trédan, doctoral student at University of Rennes 1, CRAPE-Arènes, GIS M@rsouin.