My research program is aimed at achieving a better understanding of the situated rhetorical practices by which political and organizational players influence the interactions in which they take part. I study the constitutive role of language in different types of interactions and situations, such as spontaneous face-to-face interactions in the workplace, formal deliberation among citizens involved in public consultation hearings, or inter-organizational collaboration between stakeholders with divergent and often competing interests, backgrounds, and discourses. Thus, my research documents the many different ways in which rhetoric partakes in the establishment/perpetuation of relatively long-lasting social, material and political structures, such as a public sphere (Benoit-Barné, 2006, 2007), a technology (Benoit-Barné, 2007) or a relationship of authority (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2010).

I am particularly interested in three questions:

• the ways in which contemporary political actors debate controversies, in particular but not exclusively as part of arguments concerning science and technology;
• the role of objects in interactions, and the way in which players organize themselves and advance discussions through association with objects;
• how political and organizational players manage the tensions between the ideals driving them and the practical requirements of their activities.

• Benoit-Barné, C. et Zoghlami, K. (2018). La notion de porte-parole à la croisée de la rhétorique: enjeux de représentation et communication. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy.
   
• Myles, D., Benoit-Barné, C. et F. Millerand. (2018). Not Your Personal Army! Investigating the Figure of Vigilantism and Its Agency in a Reddit Collective of Websleuths. Information, Communication Society.
   
• Benoit-Barné, C. et Fox, S. (2017). Authority. Dans G. R. Scott (Éd). The International Encyclopedia of organizational Communication. Wiley Blackwell.