Publications

Growing numbers of people are commodifying their leisure activities on the internet. This article’s mixed-method study of French food bloggers and Etsy handicrafters focuses on the overflow of digital market work into amateurs’ domestic lives. Building on the sociology of ‘serious leisure’, the study examines the novelty of such social phenomena. We show that traditional serious leisure activities have already revealed comparable forms of overflow and similar motives for consent to such spillover effects. However, the study also brings to light three specific effects of online commodification on leisure activities: the new forms of extra work in which amateurs are involved, the transformation of the leisure activity, and the shortening of amateurs’ careers.

Since the mid-1990s, genetically modified (GM) crops and foodstuffs have been the subject of much controversy. While research has highlighted a disparity between attitudes toward the consumption of GM products, this study focuses on the circulation of cultural frameworks for GMs online. We use two datasets obtained using Google as a privileged observation site for understanding how debates regarding genetic engineering are framed in global and local contexts. While the English-language corpus brings to the fore the framing of GM products in terms of economic value, the French-language corpus is characterized by the strong association of such products with matters relating to risk. This has consequences for public perceptions of biotechnologies. Stakeholders using communication media to convey GM issues could assist public understanding by taking these cultural differences into account.

The aim of the paper is to understand what drives private general practitioners (GPs) to introduce digital technologies, and to use them extensively. While prior research has highlighted barriers to adoption for practitioners when digital tools are introduced by managers and policy makers, we explore how GPs having their own practice introduce digital innovation and how they integrate them into their practices. Our qualitative study focuses on liberal emergency medicine in France, providing a unique context to examine how GPs at the front lines of health system failures and changes introduce and adopt digital technologies. Through in-depth ethnographic research conducted from 2021 to 2023, we reconstruct three sequences of digital innovation since the 1990s and observe current digital tool usage among GPs. We put forward two major findings. First, the introduction of digital tools is driven in this context by the organization of GPs as a professional group that aims to enhance its capacity for action and gain recognition for its expertise. Second, the adoption of digital innovations depends on how the changes in practices involved align with the professional culture of these doctors. Tensions between the most recent digital innovation initiatives that take place during and post-Covid 19 crisis, and doctors’ understanding of practicing medicine as an “art”, leads to the weak adoption and even contestation among GPs.