Press Discourse on Cycling Before, During, and After the First Covid-19 Lockdown in France. The Rise of the User-Group Voice

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter we explore what a “crisis” event (here the first lockdown related to Covid-19 in France) means in terms of (i) the balance of power among actors expressing themselves in the daily press and of (ii) the main messages that the more prominent of these actors disseminate. In order to analyze changes in press discourse on city cycling in France, we examine a corpus that spans the period from September 2019 to September 2020, i.e., six months before the first lockdown (March 17, 2020) and five months after the end of the month-long lockdown (May 11, 2020). The discourse analysis has been conducted on 578 press articles from five regional newspapers (Rennes, Montpellier, Besançon, Paris, and Lyon) and one national press title (Libération). This entire corpus was analyzed using textometry, a computer-assisted method for analyzing quantitative textual data. This enables us to identify a discursive change. Two elements characterize that change: (i) the balance between actors who “talk” or who “are talked about” in the articles shifts gradually. During this period, cycling organizations appear to be the actors whose position is strengthened in the media discourse; (ii) these actors are strengthened in their traditional mission of lobbying for cycling, but with a focus on new issues (e.g., wearing a face-covering or not for cyclists, calling for the reopening of green public spaces to allow the transit of bicycles, etc.). The first Covid-19 wave appears to have been the accelerator of a wider process that has led cycling organizations to professionalize since the 2000s, to move away from ecologist, anarchist, and anticapitalist discourses and to promote instead the idea of everyday cycling as a tool for improving public health. The Covid-19 crisis has further established cycling organizations as reference actors for bicycle mobility in French cities.