The Conversation. New online media to inform information

Last updated on February 23, 2025

The Conversation is a new free online media, collaborative and focused on deepening current topics by academics and researchers.

The French version is launched this morning, The Conversation has existed in the English-speaking world since 2011. The idea, the good idea of this full-fledged media is to offer an innovative editorial space based on the lighting of major current topics by real experts. At a time of constant zapping, info-shows and the race for audiences in the traditional media, this is undoubtedly good news and meets a real need.

On The Conversation journalists or contributors are all exclusively from academia and research talking only about subjects they know well and are proficient in. The ambition is to enlighten the reader, to help them see the news from a different perspective, to put things into perspective. In the hollow it is a terrible criticism of the current media.

The Conversation France serves one of the sometimes forgotten missions of the world of university and research: Dissemination of knowledge to the citizen beyond scientific journals and confidential colloquia between specialists.

The Conversation France is a non-profit association funded inter alia by the Institut Universitaire de France, the Conference of University Presidents, Paris Sciences & Lettres Research University, Sorbonne Paris Cité, the University of Lorraine, Université Paris Saclay and several other institutions. All articles are open access and licensed under Creative Commons. In other words, they can be reproduced free of charge provided that they cite the source and do not modify them.

For the opening of the website in French, you already have a series of fascinating articles, including a light by Hervé Le Bras of the National Institute for Demographic Studies on the issue of refugees, a portrait of the archaeologist of the Palmyra site by Pierre Leriche of ENS or the first part of a column on educational inequalities by sociologist Marie-Duru Bellat. In addition to the production of French academics, The Conversation France will also offer translations of articles published by foreign colleagues on the English-language sites of The Conversation.

Welcome to The Conversation France which responds to this paradox of our ultra-connected era. We have never had so many sources and access to information and yet we have probably never been so misinformed. In the face of ‘infobesity’ and permanent zapping, we have probably never needed so much light and perspective to understand the world in which we live.

Link: The Conversation France