Opening remarks by Roch-Olivier Maistre at Arcom's third study day

Check against delivery,

Madam Member of Parliament, dear Céline Calvez,

Mr Vice-President of ENS-Paris Saclay, dear Philippe Maitre - we had the same name but for one letter!

Ladies and gentlemen, professors,

Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you this morning to the third edition of the Arcom Study Days, an event that we are delighted to see now firmly established after the success of the 2022 and 2023 editions.

On my own behalf and on behalf of the College and the Authority's teams, I would like to extend my warmest thanks to the researchers who are taking part in this event by coming to present their research work. I know that their work will provide valuable input for the Authority's reflections and decisions, as well as those of European regulators. I would particularly like to thank the researchers who have come from far and wide, from other cities and above all other countries, and who have kindly accepted our invitation.

I would also like to acknowledge the presence of the French government this morning, which is a major supporter of Arcom's research policy, and to thank our partners and contacts in the public sector [CNIL, CNNum, INA, PEReN] as well as those in the audiovisual and digital industry. I know they will find in today's exchanges the echo of the challenges and issues they face, as well as relevant insights for their missions.

I am delighted to see that Arcom's Scientific Committee is also represented, as it is of course one of the linchpins of our policy of openness to research.

Last but not least, I'd like to thank the Arcom teams who have been preparing this event for months, and who are the prime movers behind it. My special thanks go to the Department of Studies, Economics and Forecasting, in particular its Director Bruno Schmutz, his deputy Sébastien Lécou and Laure Fallou, who joined us a few months ago and has been directly involved in the preparation and organization of this event. Nor should I forget the role of our Communications Department - without it, we wouldn't be here this morning either.

I believe that the regulator's research policy is now well established.

The one-off or recurrent studies published by Arcom, sometimes in partnership with other institutes or government departments, help to shed light on the transformations in the environment in which we operate. I'm thinking, for example, of the studies we published at the beginning of the year on developments in the media advertising market, or on the information habits of the French, which fed into the reflections and work of the Etats généraux de l'information.

We have strengthened our ties with the academic world, which have been given fresh impetus by the European regulation on digital services, which makes access to data a fully-fledged facet of the regulation of major digital players. The European Commission is currently consulting on the delegated act concerning access to platform data by researchers. We intend to contribute to this by relaying the comments of the research community to the Commission.

In addition to our joint center with Arcep, the scientific committee I mentioned and the agreement we have with the French government's Pôle d'expertise de la régulation numérique, we are in daily contact with researchers. In fact, we often welcome them to come and present their work to our staff, and to help us in our deliberations.

Our 2024 study day includes a number of new features, demonstrating the dynamism of this initiative, and once again showcasing a variety of disciplines and subjects.

We are honored and fortunate to have partnered with ENS Paris-Saclay, an institution renowned for its academic excellence and cutting-edge research in both the social and basic sciences. Their expertise has enriched the exchanges in the preparation of the event, on the selection of papers, and guaranteed the scientific rigor of these study days.

Once again this year, papers were selected following a call for papers, which was addressed to the entire scientific community, including doctoral and post-doctoral students. Once again, we received a large number of applications from a wide range of disciplines, and ENS-Saclay's support in sorting them out was essential. I'd like to extend my warmest thanks to them, and am delighted to welcome their vice-president to Arcom today.

Beyond this partnership of excellence, the topics addressed throughout this study day are directly linked to the regulator's immediate current affairs. I'd mention the supervision of online platforms and social networks with the implementation of the DSA (Panel 1), protecting audiences and media literacy (Panel 2), monitoring the moderation of online content (Panel 3), or guaranteeing information plurality, with new challenges linked to online information (Panel 4).

All these topics are at the heart of our reflections, our deliberations and our questions: I know that today's discussions will shed valuable light on them, and put a little science and drop back on subjects that often agitate the audiovisuel and digital landscape. I often say that the time for law is not the time for social networks; nor is it the time for research: it encourages us to make in-depth analyses, based on substantiated facts and comparisons, often over long periods of time.

Our program also includes two keynotes by leading figures in their fields: Claire Balleys, Director of the Medialab in Geneva, who will speak at 12:15 pm on the use of platforms by teenagers (and in particular Tiktok, which has been little studied), and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Professor at the University of Copenhagen, and Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which publishes a key report on the sector every year. He will talk to us at 4pm.

As in previous years, but perhaps even more so this year, this study day is interdisciplinary: we welcome research topics from economics, law, sociology, infocom and data science, for example. It's also an international day, with several foreign universities in attendance, and above all our friends from Ofcom. We're also fortunate to welcome our counterparts from Congo, Benin and Albania, who I'd like to thank warmly for coming to take part in our work: their presence shows that our event is open to all, that it's a place for exchange, debate and encounters.

I'd now like to hand over to Philippe Maitre, and thank you for listening. I wish you all an excellent study day.