About us

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Marsouin is a research network in social sciences created in 2002 by the Britany Regional Council (France). It gathers scholars from the four universities of Bretagne and three prestigious schools. Marsouin consists of 19 labs, working on digital practices. About 200 scholars specialized in social sciences in Western France are part of Marsouin.

The network works on scientific projects supported by the ANR, the MSHB, territorial authorities or other public and private actors. Marsouin is an active member of the World Internet Project. It is a collaborative international project which includes countries from all the regions of the world. The WIP conducts detailed research, generates a wealth of publications and holds annual conferences looking at the impact of these new technologies.
For those reasons, Marsouin is a research network composed of experts in digital technologies and its societal impacts.

A unique system in France

Its uniqueness lays on the networking of multidisciplinary teams in human and social sciences. They share the same interest in studying how digital tools are transforming our life and society. Marsouin gives its members the opportunity to pool their tools: their methodological skills in one hand and a financial support for the research on the other hand.

Click here to download the english presentation brochure.

Omni : the observatory

Omni couples academic resarch topics and surveys to produce original and meaningful analysis.
Methodology. Building questionnaires, sampling, through quotas to guarantee representativeness. Rigorous and up to date sampling in depth questionnaires.
Content. Pre-test, pilot studies, users needs.
Treatment. Cleaning database, statistical analysis (cross and frequency tab) specific treatment, multivariate analysis (typology, factorial analysis), econometrics.

Latest articles in english

  • [Cahier de recherche] Du temps GMT au temps BMT : une interprétation de l’échec de l’Internet Time au regard de l’épistémologie réaliste critique.

    , par Bertrand Urien, Philippe Naccache

    RÉSUMÉ.

    En 1998, le célèbre groupe horloger Swatch souhaite réaliser une révolution temporelle en lançant le SIT (Swatch Internet Time) encore qualifié de temps BMT (Biel Mean Time). L’ambition est de supplanter le temps GMT, et plus généralement la conception classique du temps de l’horloge. Sept ans plus tard, force est de constater que le temps BMT ne s’est pas imposé. Dans le cadre de cet article nous souhaitons avancer l’idée que le temps en tant que construit social s’origine à un niveau de réalité épistémologique qui n‘a pas été pris en considération par Swatch. De manière plus générale, et au travers de cet exemple, nous essaierons par une analyse épistémologique réaliste critique d’identifier les raisons pour lesquelles le « Swatch Internet Time » n’est pas aujourd’hui en mesure de s’imposer. Nous montrerons que faire évoluer le temps dominant requiert une approche plus complexe, qui prenne en compte l’origine de l’expérience humaine et ne reste pas à la surface de la réalité sociale de celle-ci.

    ABSTRACT.

    In 1998, the famous clock making group Swatch wishes to carry out a temporal revolution, while launching the SIT (Swatch Internet Time) still qualified BMT (Biel Mean Time). The ambition is to supplant GMT Time, and more generally the traditional design of clock time. Seven years later, force is to note that time BMT was not essential. Within the framework of this article, we wish to advance the idea that time, as a social construct, has epistemological roots which were not taken into account by Swatch. In a more general way, and through this example, we will try, by a critical realist perspective, to identify the reasons why "Swatch Internet Time" is not able today to impose itself. We will show that to make evolve the dominating time, it requires a more complex approach which takes into account the origin of the human experience and does not remain on the surface of the social reality of this one.

    Keywords : social time, Internet time, epistemology, critical realist perspective, Swatch.

  • Detailed breakdown of the project about the mutualisation of ICT experiments in the field of health.

    , by Myriam Le Goff-Pronost

    Confronting the actors’ methods with the practices in the field would be a full research-action approach. Some experiments could form the subject of learning environments in terms of analysis of ICT uses in the field of health. This project also meets the demand from the Region for an informational monitoring of the development of computer-based medical records. It will deal mostly with animating seminars to share actions and methods in order to draw a set of common indicators, success conditions, difficulties or failure cases in some experiments and of the common points found in different experiments. The final objective is to obtain a prospective position about the expected developments of telehealth in Brittany.

  • [Rapport] AUTOMATE Project stage’s report

    , by Myriam Le Goff-Pronost

    The AUTOMATE project aims to propose a collection of indicators, evaluation methods on the uses made of the information systems developped within health informatics. The modification of the cooperation practises among professionals has been focused on through the partnership with the Uni-Medecine company and follows up the implementation of an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) within two particular networks: the first one takes care of addicted people (ADDICA network, Champagne Ardennes) and the second one monitors diabetic people (REDIAB network, Boulogne-sur-Mer).

  • [Cahier de recherche] New approaches to intellectual property : from open software to knowledge based industrial activities.

    , par Jean-Benoît Zimmermann, Nicolas Jullien

    Nous abordons dans cet article la propriété intellectuelle dans le secteur du logiciel. Nous montrons que ni le droit d’auteur, ni le brevet ne sont parfaitement adaptés aux besoins et spécificités de cette industrie. Le modèle « alternatif » du logiciel libre (open source), basé sur un concept juridique innovant, la licence GPL, prend une importance croissante. Nous en présentons les principales caractéristiques, qui imposent au producteur de rendre public le code source du programme protégé par une licence de ce type, ainsi que celui de toutes les modifications postérieures en cas de redistribution. Cela entraine une modification profonde des stratégies industrielles de valorisation de la propriété intellectuelle, allant vers un plus faible niveau de protection. Nous analysons les conséquences d’un tel mouvement en terme institutionnel et de politique publique. Enfin, nous notons que cette approche apparaît exemplaire pour un nombre croissant d’industries dans le contexte d’une économie basée sur la connaissance.