La communication sociale : une perspective de l’Église catholique ? Jean Devèze et la critique de la notion de « communication sociale »

• Main Author: David Douyère
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université du Québec à Montréal 2010-01-01
• Series: Communiquer
• Subjects: social communication; media; catholic church; evangelism; communication studies; Sfsic
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/communiquer/1579

The multifaceted notion of “social communication” became a subject of debate very early on. During the 2nd Congress of the Société française des sciences de l’information et de la communication (Sfsic) in 1980, researcher Jean Devèze saw it as an unintentional re-use of an idea he believes to have been coined by the Catholic church under Vatican II. It was in fact in the Inter Mirifica decree of 1963 that the term was used by Rome to refer to “mass media” and to encourage laymen, priests, monks and nuns to use media to make the Christian Word present in a society dominated by secular media. For the Catholic Church, the expression “social communication” means that communication creates society and vice versa and that media speaks not to the masses but to individuals who are creative and not merely passive. This article reexamines Devèze’s reasoning ; it is based on conciliar texts and comments made by ecclesiastical experts to evaluate the meaning the Catholic Church gave to the idea of “social communication” in the early 1960s — a time when it was adopting a new form of evangelism that took into account the arrival of public opinion supported by mass media.