Meadows and Fallows in the Professional Information field : Farmers in their press

Résumé 0

Professional press has suffered for a long time of a lack of academic interest. Nonetheless, it is a core case for both the definition and reproduction of vocational groups. This article aims at investigating the mechanisms of (in)vizibilisation in this farm press which plays a key role in monitoring the decline of a profession. News are mainly technical, since they focus on professional practices and standards. They are produced in a process in which the journalist is integrated into professional agricultural organisations. He depends on intermediaries to gather the farmers' word. This overrating of technics is based on the exemplification of success (and failure in the mirror) of the winners of farming social worlds by the use of portraits. Thus this press supports a neo-liberalist view. It supposes that if farmers follow the right technical choices, they can survive despite the multiple crises the sector is facing for many decades. Presenting farmers as technicians ignores more social topics: suicides, occupational diseases, homosexuality, are basically invisible.