The Online Press and Cognitive Communities

The aim of this paper is to show that the comment boards of some news websites contribute to stabilizing ideologically homogeneous communities. After having defined “cognitive communities” as places where people co-create a unity of worldview by sharing discourses with one another, the author shows that the digital agoras provided by online newspapers allow people to test, compare, and reinforce an ideological unity. He supports this discussion with an argumentative analysis of comment boards from two online newspapers, Atlantico.fr and l’Humanité.fr, in response to the “DSK affair”. The relevance of qualitative analysis of comment boards to accurately describe ideological sedimentations on the internet is thus highlighted.