Repenser la construction discursive de l'espace public. Bush à Massada, ou comment on discute de l'évènement dans le cyberespace

Based on a case study, President George W. Bush's visit to Massada and the Knesset at the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, this paper explores the construction of a public space diverging from classical criteria of rational deliberation aiming at consensus. The discursive and argumentative analysis of the analogies drawn on the Massada myth in the online information and debate, shows how public discussion around the news is built and, moreover, what type of communication is put forward. The epideictic mode based on affective communion is attacked and superseded by a polemical mode in which the conflicts tearing apart the Israeli society are voiced. Thus public space in democratic regimes can be revisited and redefined around the notion of conflict and its polemical management.