Le bruit de la loi : comment les lois deviennent médiatiques

This thesis focuses on how the government uses the laws as tools of communication. The demonstration is based on the analysis of the agenda building and the media coverage of two highly mediatized laws. The purpose is to study the law as a government means for solving public problems and at the same time as a political communication tool. It's a way of articulating political sociology of the public action, sociology of professions and media studies. The double sided face of law, government and advertising tools, is thus shown with the tensions inherent to the functioning of the pluralistic constitutional democracies. If political actors choose the law as tool of government, it is first because this is the evidence they address an ill structured problem. Moreover it is especially because the law can represent government action in the media. However the media being not only channels of transmission but very independent actors in the process of communication of the law, can influence the wording of the law, even thwart the processes of communication thought as strategic by the government, by opposing the law. Thus the profesionnalization of communication does not empower politicians with the "control" communication. They are even less empowered as journalists deal with their own professional practises and constraints. This research is based on a media corpus analysis and interviews with journalists, communication professionals, politicians, legal professionals and trade union leaders involved in the communication process of the French law in 2004 on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in school, as well as the law of orientation and programming for the Justice reforming the juvenile justice and establishing new proximity judges in 2002.