With the emergence of the Internet and of the World Wide Web, the Web site has become a key communication channel in organizations. To satisfy the objectives of the Web site and of its target audience, adapting the Web site content to the users' expectations has become a major concern. In this context, Web usage mining, a relatively new research area, and Web analytics, a part of Web usage mining that has most emerged in the corporate world, offer many Web communication analysis techniques. These techniques include prediction of the user's behaviour within the site, comparison between expected and actual Web site usage, adjustment of the Web site with respect to the users' interests, and mining and analyzing Web usage data to discover interesting metrics and usage patterns. However, Web usage mining and Web analytics suffer from significant drawbacks when it comes to support the decision-making process at the higher levels in the organization.<p><p>Indeed, according to organizations theory, the higher levels in the organizations need summarized and conceptual information to take fast, high-level, and effective decisions. For Web sites, these levels include the organization managers and the Web site chief editors. At these levels, the results produced by Web analytics tools are mostly useless. Indeed, most of these results target Web designers and Web developers. Summary reports like the number of visitors and the number of page views can be of some interest to the organization manager but these results are poor. Finally, page-group and directory hits give the Web site chief editor conceptual results, but these are limited by several problems like page synonymy (several pages contain the same topic), page polysemy (a page contains several topics), page temporality, and page volatility.<p><p>Web usage mining research projects on their part have mostly left aside Web analytics and its limitations and have focused on other research paths. Examples of these paths are usage pattern analysis, personalization, system improvement, site structure modification, marketing business intelligence, and usage characterization. A potential contribution to Web analytics can be found in research about reverse clustering analysis, a technique based on self-organizing feature maps. This technique integrates Web usage mining and Web content mining in order to rank the Web site pages according to an original popularity score. However, the algorithm is not scalable and does not answer the page-polysemy, page-synonymy, page-temporality, and page-volatility problems. As a consequence, these approaches fail at delivering summarized and conceptual results. <p><p>An interesting attempt to obtain such results has been the Information Scent algorithm, which produces a list of term vectors representing the visitors' needs. These vectors provide a semantic representation of the visitors' needs and can be easily interpreted. Unfortunately, the results suffer from term polysemy and term synonymy, are visit-centric rather than site-centric, and are not scalable to produce. Finally, according to a recent survey, no Web usage mining research project has proposed a satisfying solution to provide site-wide summarized and conceptual audience metrics. <p><p>In this dissertation, we present our solution to answer the need for summarized and conceptual audience metrics in Web analytics. We first described several methods for mining the Web pages output by Web servers. These methods include content journaling, script parsing, server monitoring, network monitoring, and client-side mining. These techniques can be used alone or in combination to mine the Web pages output by any Web site. Then, the occurrences of taxonomy terms in these pages can be aggregated to provide concept-based audience metrics. To evaluate the results, we implement a prototype and run a number of test cases with real Web sites. <p><p>According to the first experiments with our prototype and SQL Server OLAP Analysis Service, concept-based metrics prove extremely summarized and much more intuitive than page-based metrics. As a consequence, concept-based metrics can be exploited at higher levels in the organization. For example, organization managers can redefine the organization strategy according to the visitors' interests. Concept-based metrics also give an intuitive view of the messages delivered through the Web site and allow to adapt the Web site communication to the organization objectives. The Web site chief editor on his part can interpret the metrics to redefine the publishing orders and redefine the sub-editors' writing tasks. As decisions at higher levels in the organization should be more effective, concept-based metrics should significantly contribute to Web usage mining and Web analytics. <p> / Doctorat en sciences appliquées / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Ce mémoire porte sur l'utilisation des médias sociaux à des fins de construction identitaire par les personnes membres de la communauté LGBTQ+. Cette recherche a pour objectif d'écouter et comprendre la pluralité des expériences LGBTQ+, ainsi que d'analyser le processus d'utilisation des médias sociaux dans ce contexte particulier, à travers les différents outils disponibles. Les théories Queer, la sociologie des usages ainsi que l'interactionnisme symbolique sont mobilisés tout au long de la recherche pour penser les questions de recherche sous l'angle de l'appropriation des plateformes sociales et des différents outils de présentation de soi en ligne. Pour cela, une méthodologie qualitative est adoptée, à travers douze entrevues semi-dirigées et une observation des pratiques en ligne. À la lumière des résultats tirés des entrevues et après la réalisation d'un codage thématique, l'analyse révèle que les plateformes sociales sont vectrices de nombreuses pratiques tels que la création de communautés en ligne et l'accès à du contenu éducatif. En s'appropriant les plateformes sociales et leurs outils et ressources, les personnes interviewées mettent en place un jeu de l'interaction et de présentation de soi, tel que présenté dans la métaphore théâtrale d'Erving Goffman, dans un but de construction de d'affirmation de leur identité sexuelle et de genre. / This Master's thesis explores the use of social media as an identity building tool by LGBTQ+ people. This research tries to meet a double objective which is listening and understanding queer people's plurality of experiences whilst analyzing the process of using social medias in this particular context, through given tools. To think the research questions through, approaches such as the appropriation of social media and the self-presentation, Queer theories, a symbolic interactionist perspective as well as the sociology of uses are employed. Through qualitative methodology, twelve people have been interviewed and their online practices observed. The results of the interviews and the thematic transcription thoroughly done afterwards, show social platforms as a conveyor of numerous online practices such as community building and access to educational contents. Through the appropriation of social media and their resources, the interviewed individuals establish an interacting game of self-presentation in an aim to affirm and construct their sexual and gender identity.

Cette thèse porte sur l'actualisation du genre dans les pratiques de gestion des réseaux socionumériques (RSN) comme Facebook et Twitter dans les médias d'information francophones québécois, marqués par un contexte hyperconcurrentiel encourageant l'innovation. Ce faisant, nous contribuons à la compréhension des rapports inégalitaires, souvent au détriment des femmes, dans la production journalistique et dans l'espace public numérique dont font partie les RSN, nous inscrivant ainsi dans le champ de la communication publique. En plus du concept de genre, qui décrit un construit social et un rapport de pouvoir forgé dans les organisations et par des technologies de genre tels les médias, nous mobilisons le Web social afin d'examiner les RSN comme des dispositifs sociotechniques coconstruits par les usages, les affordances (possibilités et contraintes) techniques et les rapports sociaux. Nous employons le journalisme, défini comme une institution relativement stable marquée par ses normes propres, mais qui connaîtrait une mutation paradigmatique possiblement liée à une forme de « féminisation » des pratiques. Enfin, nous utilisons le concept de l'audience, soit une construction discursive variable selon les époques et les lieux, saisi à travers la lunette du modèle « codage-décodage » de Hall. Nous enracinons ces concepts dans une méthodologie qualitative critique inspirée des études culturelles. Les études féministes posent notre recherche dans un cadre sensible aux rapports de pouvoir systémiques, dont le genre. Pour saisir le contexte professionnel de nos répondant.e.s, nous avons réalisé, en 2018, une ethnographie dans cinq médias différents : *Le Journal de Montréal, Le Journal de Québec, La Presse, Le HuffPost Québec* et Rad. Nous y avons observé et interviewé 21 professionnel.le.s des RSN. L'analyse critique de discours a servi à analyser les données recueillies. D'abord, nous nous demandons comment et dans quelle mesure le genre s'imbrique dans la reconfiguration des salles de rédaction et des emplois ainsi qu'à la culture organisationnelle à la suite de l'arrivée des RSN. Les configurations organisationnelles varient. Pour certains médias, la gestion des RSN est littéralement invisible, intégrée aux postes existants, alors que pour d'autres, des équipes spécialisées sont créées. Titres d'emploi et tâches varient aussi d'un média à l'autre et selon les plateformes. Quant au genre, il se reproduit à travers une culture organisationnelle masculinisée désavantageant les femmes, avec une conciliation travail-famille difficile, des qualités attendues masculinisées et une diminution du nombre de femmes dans les salles de rédaction dans les dernières années. Ensuite, nous avons analysé la reproduction des normes genrées du journalisme d'information, caractéristique au XXᵉ siècle, dans les pratiques de gestion des RSN par rapport à l'audience. Nos répondant.e.s disent rejoindre une audience floue, non genrée, sans utiliser les outils de ciblage des RSN. Toutefois, il.elle.s perçoivent l'audience générale comme masculine, tel que le montre la structure genrée des sites Web et des pages Facebook des médias étudiés. Par ailleurs, des tensions apparaissent entre le potentiel d'interactivité des RSN et les pratiques traditionnelles de distance avec l'audience. Celles-ci amènent nos répondant.e.s à mobiliser les sujets masculinisés traditionnellement valorisés et à éviter de répondre aux commentaires pour préserver leur crédibilité journalistique. Aussi, ils et elles rédigent des vignettes informatives et accrocheuses, selon l'esprit du journalisme d'information. Enfin, nous nous intéressons aux innovations observées dans les pratiques de gestion des RSN en éclairant leurs liens avec le paradigme du journalisme de communication supposé dominant au XXIᵉ siècle. Des stratégies non-genrées, soit la commandite de contenus et la création de personas, émergent pour cibler certaines audiences. D'autres stratégies innovantes, genrées celles-là, mais rares, apparaissent afin d'obtenir des clics : choix de sujets (souvent considérés « féminins ») qui vont toucher les gens, et rédaction de vignettes humoristiques, suivant une qualité associée aux hommes. Un certain travail émotionnel pour créer et gérer les émotions se dévoile aussi dans les messages privés et les réponses aux commentaires, à travers lesquels quelques médias créent un lien avec leur audience. Rad, pour sa part, innove en choisissant des sujets pour rejoindre les femmes ou les hommes lorsque l'un des groupes a peu consulté les contenus dans les derniers mois et établit une relation visible avec les internautes dans les commentaires des publications. Notre thèse souligne ainsi les résistances et innovations genrées nuançant et enrichissant la théorisation des paradigmes journalistiques, les études sur le genre en communication publique et celles sur l'espace public numérique. / This thesis focuses on the actualization of gender in the management practices of social networking systems (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter in Quebec's French-language news media, marked by a hyper-competitive context that encourages innovation. In so doing, we contribute to the understanding of unequal relationships, often to the detriment of women, in journalistic production and in the digital public space of which SNS are a part, placing our research within the field of public communication. In addition to the concept of gender, which describes a social construct and a power relationship forged in organizations and by gendered technologies such as the media, we mobilize the social Web to examine RSNs as sociotechnical devices co-constructed by uses, technical affordances (possibilities and constraints) and social relationships. We use journalism, defined as a relatively stable institution marked by its own norms, but which is undergoing a paradigmatic mutation possibly linked to a form of "feminization" of practices. Finally, we use the concept of audience, a discursive construct that varies according to time and place, captured through the lens of Hall's "coding-decoding" model. We root these concepts in a critical qualitative methodology inspired by cultural studies. Feminist studies position our research within a framework sensitive to systemic power relations, including gender. To capture the professional context of our respondents, we conducted in 2018 an ethnography in five different media: *Le Journal de Montréal, Le Journal de Québec, La Presse, Le HuffPost Québec* and Rad. We observed and interviewed 21 RSN professionals. We used critical discourse analysis to analyze the data collected. First, we ask how and to what extent gender is interwoven into the reconfiguration of newsrooms and jobs, as well as organizational culture, following the arrival of SNS. Organizational configurations vary. For some media, SNS management is literally invisible, integrated into existing positions, while for others, specialized teams are created. Job titles and tasks also vary from one media outlet to another, and from one platform to another. As for gender, it is reproduced through a masculinized organizational culture that puts women at a disadvantage, with difficult work-life balance, masculinized expected qualities and a decline in the number of women in newsrooms in recent years. Next, we analyzed the reproduction of gendered norms of news journalism, characteristic of the twentieth century, in SNS audience management practices. Our respondents say they reach a blurred, ungendered audience, without using the targeting tools of the SNS. However, they perceive the general audience as male, as shown by the gendered structure of the websites and Facebook pages of the media studied. Moreover, tensions emerge between the potential interactivity of SNS and traditional practices of distance from the audience. These lead our respondents to mobilize traditionally valued masculinized topics and avoid responding to comments in order to preserve their journalistic credibility. They also write catchy, informative vignettes, in the spirit of news journalism. This resistance to innovation can be explained by a professional context marked by declining readership and revenues. Finally, we shed some light on innovations in SNS management practices, highlighting their links with the supposedly dominant paradigm of communication journalism in the 21st century. Non-gendered strategies, such as content sponsorship and the creation of personas, are emerging to target certain audiences. Other innovative, gendered strategies are emerging to get clicks: choosing topics (often considered "feminine") that will touch people, and writing humorous vignettes, following a quality associated with men. A certain amount of emotional work to create and manage emotions is also revealed in private messages and responses to comments, through which some media create a bond with their audience. Rad, for its part, innovates by choosing topics to reach women or men when one of the groups has consulted little content in recent months, and establishes a visible relationship with Internet users in comments on publications. Our thesis thus highlights the gendered resistances and innovations, nuancing and enriching the theorization of journalistic paradigms, gender studies in public communication and the digital public sphere.