The Genesis of Trace: How to Make Social Realities Visible

In this paper we propose to consider the trace-effect as a communicational structure whose origin must be questioned. Two hypotheses are studied: no traces without their invention by society: the present status of trace in discourse and in the creation of devices is consistent with a particular intellectual and political system of communication. The text proposes an approach from the point of view of information and communication sciences on social uses of knowledge and on network writing and its specific features; it aims to deconstruct the natural perception of the object called “trace”, mainly in finalized and instrumented research. The topic of trace is studied within the scope of the analysis of the social circulations of ideas. Digital information is considered within computer mediated communication as the medium of screen writing. The subject of editorial mediation of network writing, known as ”trace of use” is in the heart of a semio-political reflection. It gives the opportunity to come back to a classification of the different kinds of materiality for trace: mark, index, inscription, graphic form. Given as an example, tourism websites will help to illustrate the different definitions and circulations and to enlight the way the analysis of the genesis of trace is carried out in this article. Complex and numerous transformations are done especially while inventing traces of uses by a process of mediation of practices-. Computer mediated communications have a strong dynamic power on this social genesis of trace by the way of an exponential industrialization of writing forms leading to an ambiguous and plastic status, between writing, computing and representing. In this paper we have also the opportunity to question research on anthroposocial sciences about his position on the idea of trace. The trace seems mostly to be a variant of the idea of reflection but is never clearly explained; it implies to establish the context of a mediatic text and aims to interpret discourse as an effect of social realities. Finally, the meaning of trace is perhaps linked to the proper work of the researcher, the subject of his research