national audience Who wants to understand the dynamics of rural and peri-urban areas should be interested in the conflicts that cross them! It is on this assertion that the research programme on conflicts of use and neighbourhood, carried out jointly, in the French context, by various multidisciplinary teams belonging to public research organisations (INRA, CNRS, INA-PG, Engref, CEMAGREF, Enitac) has been built up over the last three years. Our research programme is deliberately built on empiric-deductive foundations and aims to analyse the ways in which conflicts are emerging, conducted and attempted within the French space. On the basis of a conflict reading grid, drawn up on the basis of the experiences of the members of the group, we carried out investigations covering seven significant areas of the national space. This work has so far been carried out using three different sources, each of which is biased but offers satisfactory complementarity. These are, respectively: — surveys of experts conducted at local level among resource persons from different professional circles and public bodies; — analyses of litigation on the basis of judgments of the Council of State, the Court of Cassation, the courts of appeal and the administrative courts of appeal; — the counting of articles published in the regional daily press (PQR). The latter type of research is presented here. Analysis of the press reveals the content associated with the concept of conflict by the media — and by a number of local actors — and the choices that favour one event over another. This approach to the mediatised conflict responds to our vision of conflict relations. Far from being an object to be forbidden or a pathological relationship, the conflict seems to me to be a consubstance of life in society. We consider that this is one of the possible and usual forms of relations between individuals and that it is a factor in maintaining social ties. It is relatively illusory to look for definitive and instant resolutions because it is a process that takes place over time and can be revived after periods of calm or delay. Conflicts have a long history, which is indissociable from that of negotiation, mediation and consultation procedures. In the first part, we reiterate the concept of conflict before developing our working method. We then present the main results of our study.