Claude Domenget

With the expression ‘mediated temporalities’ we mean the relationship with time perceived during the use of audiovisual media integrated with social temporalities, playing a role more or less important throughout the daily life of users. This subject is more concerned with the reception, and tends to differ from the studies focused on the times of the reception, which use a theoretic approach coming from semiotics and pragmatic. This essay aims at analysing the temporalities perceived by the users stressing the differences of the relationships with time according to the age of the user and the evolution of the temporalities with the introduction of new technologies. The relationship that elderly people have with media underlines an approach allowing both «happy meetings» and «hazards»: the unexpected, together with the habits, plays an important part in their choices. Time managing is in this case characterized by a temporality of occupation, related to users who leave open their time of fruition to the television. The use of PVR (Personal Video Recorder) shows a rational managing of time and activities: a new kind of time articulation can be observed, that of “conciliation”: it allows combining perfectly the vision of a television program with the rhythm of life.