This article examines the promise of market democratization conveyed by consumer rating and review websites in the restaurant industry. Based on interviews with website administrators and data from the main French platforms, we show that review websites contribute to the democratization of restaurant criticism, which first started in the 1970s, both by including a greater variety of restaurants in the reviews, and by broadening participation, opening restaurant reviewing to all. However, this twofold democratic ambition conflicts with the need to produce fair and helpful recommendations, leading review websites to seek compromises between these two dimensions.!

No abstract

In this paper we explore the use of computer at home. This work is based on the automatic recording of application focus data in natural situation from a wide representative panel of 661 households with 1,434 users at home over 19 months. To process these large-scale data, we build a twolevel classification of PC applications describing the whole PC use. At the household level, we worked on computer usage temporality: we observed two strategies of PC usage reflecting a tension between synchronous and asynchronous usage profiles. At the individual level, we found out that software preferences and usage intensity are rather independent; therefore, we distinguished five specific profiles of users reflecting strong routine behaviors of computer usage at home. These observations tend to show the strength of routine behaviors in computer usage.

Abstract. This article presents a study of online digital library (DL) uses, based on three data sources (online questionnaire, Internet traffic data and interviews). We show that DL users differ from average Internet users as well as from classical library users, and that their practices involve particular contexts, among which personal researches and bibliophilism. These results lead us to reconsider the status of online documents, as well as the relationship between commercial and non-commercial Web sites. Digital libraries, far from being simple digital versions of library holdings, are now attracting a new type of public, bringing about new, unique and original ways for reading and understanding texts. They represent a new arena for reading and consultation of works alongside that of traditional libraries.

No abstract