What do the media talk about when they use the word “sobriety”?[De quoi parlent les médias quand ils utilisent le mot « sobriété » ?]

This exploratory research aims to find out how the framing of the word "sobriety" has evolved over time by adopting a longitudinal approach. The word "sobriety" is increasingly used to describe the reduction of different types of consumption (energy, consumption, digital, food, mobility, buildings, etc.) in French society. The press has a framing effect (Gerstlé, 1997; De Piccoli et al., 2004; Derville, 2017): the use of certain words, images and metaphors frame events, which allows individuals to interpret them and give them meaning. By conducting a textual data analysis on a corpus of 512 press articles (1994-2022) that include the word "sobriety" from 5 French media, this article aims to understand how and to designate what this word is used in the press. The results show that the word "sobriety" is not linked to new approaches of consumption or to the ecological transition before 2010s. This 1 word was used more in association with the themes of culture (literature, architecture) or religion. From 2010 to 2015 the concept of "sobriety" starts to appear in the press, especially through the theme of energy consumption. Thus, the results show that the word "sobriety" is used within two different ways: to describe something (a piece of art for example) or to be something (the concept of energy sobriety for example). Even if, from 2010s and, in particular, after Paris Agreement (2015), the use of the word "sobriety" as being something is more and more common, it is still not its primary use in the press. These results show that the concept of "sobriety" is not fully conceptualized, which could explain the fact that individuals' representations of sobriety are often blurred.