French politics in the blogosphere
By Anne-Sophie Lechevallier Posted Apr 1 2007
Polls, TV debates, electoral meetings and all other traditional tools used by presidential hopefuls are for the first time becoming progressively old-fashioned, and the Internet is responsible. In 2007, blogs, videos on Web sites like YouTube or Dailymotion, spam and newsgroups are making political news. Although the first election round will occur on April 22, 2007 and the final round two weeks later, campaigns began on the Web in early 2006.
After the 2002 race, Jacques Chirac was elected president of the French Republic with 82.2 percent of the vote against Jean-Marie Le Pen. At that time, the Internet played a minor role. That has all changed with this election year.
On May 29, 2005, French voters rejected the European Union Constitution; almost 55 percent voted against it. In the weeks before this referendum, which triggered a political earthquake throughout the EU, the traditional media were mainly in favor of the proposed constitution. The first voices rejecting the constitution could be heard only on the Web.
Among them was Etienne Chouard, an unknown high school teacher from the south of France. Chouard posted an argument against the constitution on his Web site. The text circulated among Internet users and finally influenced the media to change to a more unbiased stance. By then, it was clear that the 2007 presidential elections would rely on the Internet as a major communication tool.
The contenders themselves are making the Internet part of their election strategies. Although the official candidates won’t be known before mid-March, it is more than likely they may be Ségolène Royal, who belongs to the left-wing Socialist Party whose past leaders include François Mitterrand and Lionel Jospin; Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate for Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), a right-wing party created by Jacques Chirac; François Bayrou, candidate for Union pourla Démo-cratie Française (UDF), acenter-right party; Jean-Marie Le Pen, candidate for Front National, an extreme left-wing party; and Dominique Voynet, candidate for Les Verts, a left-wing ecology party. They all have official Web sites.
On Nicolas Sarkozy’s site, for instance, situated next to his slogan, “Together, everything becomes possible,” there is an accurate countdown that tells visitors how many days and seconds are left before the election’s second round. It’s a sign revealing his self-confidence: he doesn’t even imagine not being heralded through the first round.
Also on Sarkozy’s Web site, some short TV reports are broadcast on a channel called “NS TV.” Anything but journalistic, these reports portray him in a semi-professional, semi-amateur way in a supermarket meeting of “the people who get up early” as the report’s title puts it, a nod to one of his electoral themes. A camera also follows him during a trip to Madrid. Short interviews of supporters are also broadcast.
Ségolène Royal uploads her speeches to her official Web site, desirsdavenir.org (desires for future), created before she ran in the Socialist party primary elections, while some video links are posted on Dailymotion. Royal also encourages Internet users to create personal blogs to support her and express their own points of view.
This tactic mirrors her ambition of “renewing” politics with local input and fighting for a “participatory democracy.” At first, Royal wanted to turn the comments on the site into a book, but the experience failed. The Socialist party has also recruited new members online by asking only 20 euros instead of the 45 to 75 euros frequently charged.
Another mainstream candidate, François Bayrou, features more or less the same content on his Web site. On the top of the page, he invites citizens to fund his campaign. Jean-Marie Le Pen, who often criticizes the media for not covering his party, comments on the news once a week in his “ship’s log.” Philippe de Villiers, for the Mouvement pour la France, a nationalist right-wing party, regularly blogs.
Apart from these traditional Web sites, some of the contenders have tried to be innovative and offensive on the Web. Last year, the agency “L’enchanteur des nouveaux medias,” hired by UMP for the campaign, bought keywords on Google. Typing “violence,” “suburbs” or “burnt cars” on the search engine, which made advertising links for UMP appear in the right part of the Web page. Using marketing techniques, this agency also organized a spam wave. Some voters were unhappy to receive ad emails from Sarkozy in their own mailboxes and complained.
Last October, the CNIL (National commission for data processing and liberties), which is in charge of protecting privacy, decided to publish a recommendation that forbids parties to use addresses from commercial prospecting files if the customer hasn’t given his agreement beforehand. These methods have consequently reached their limits.
The site Second Life is new ground for political battle. Particularly successful in France, this Web site shelters virtual Socialist party headquarters, and Sarkozy Island has been recently bought and created by a well-known right-wing blogger, Loïc Le Meur, who is officially in charge of the UMP platform for online forums and debates. On this Web site Internet users ask questions and are answered by Sarkozy — or at least by the party — but the candidate neglects to respond to some comments that are at the heart of the debate.
But the true change in the political landscape might be in the so-called “blogosphere.” The number of blogs commenting on politics is growing dramatically. Many bloggers give a solid understanding of what is going on. Take for instance, “Maître Eolas,” a lawyer who explains pedagogically the law themes in the programs and election debate.
The University of Compiègne has come up with new measuring devices to evaluate the importance of several candidates on the Web (observatoire-presidentielle.fr), scanning 1,100 blogs last October. According to this lab, the Socialist Party has 237 affiliated Web sites, the UDF 206 Web sites and the UMP 141. Even though the figures must have changed recently, it is nonetheless interesting to note that the UDF is the second party by blog numbers, whereas it is in reality quite clearly the third. The same observatory also shows every candidate’s “political volume” on the Web. It can count how many times the candidates names are written in blogs. The two most quoted candidates are leading so far in the polls.
Unsurprisingly, the intensity of the blog posts depends on the news. For instance, the day after Eric Besson, the head of economic affairs of Segolène Royal’s campaign, gave his resignation on Feb. 11, 2007, Royal’s name was quoted 1,944 times in blogs. Nicolas Sarkozy’s name reached 2,046 “occurrences” on Jan. 15, when he was officially named as candidate for the UMP. The highest score for François Bayrou didn’t exceed 445 posts and Jean-Marie Le Pen had 191 posts in January and February. The rule instituted by the CSA (Comité Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel) requiring TV stations to devote equal time to each candidate, is clearly broken by the Internet. The CSA has decided not to take into account the candidates’ podcasts. The Web might later force officials to redefine campaign rules.
Some of these online texts are written by citizens who find, thanks to the Internet, a way to express themselves and be heard. They often criticize the political analysis of the traditional print media and accuse them of overwhelming readers with news of only two candidates — Sarkozy and Royal. These blogger critics often point out that the media are not reliable and unbiased because they are owned by powerful industrial groups strongly linked to some politicians.
Others use the Internet as a very fast weapon to trap candidates. Before the Socialist Party’s primary elections in early November, many emails were sent with a link to Dailymotion that showed a candid- camera record of a meeting of Royal’s team 11 months prior in Angers. On this leaked video footage, she discussed teachers’ work hours with party members. She said that they should be present at least 35 hours a week in schools. Posted by a so-called supporter of Laurent Fabius or of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (both competitors during the primary elections) this extract was chosen intentionally to compromise Royal among teachers, who historically vote massively for the Socialist Party. It’s hard to say if it worked, but she easily won the primaries.
Entire Web sites are dedicated to fighting the political “enemies,” sometimes resembling launching sites of rumors and dirty tricks. The “Sarkonautes” (from Sarkozy and Internautes, which means Internet users) are active against Royal. Several sites (paslesroyal, segostop, desertdavenir, desirdevent…) make fun of her by changing her slogan into “Don’t count on me,” quoting sentences taken out of context to make them ridiculous or making fun of her name which refers to monarchy. The opponents of Sarkozy (on Sarkozix, Sarkostique, Sarkozy news…) are also playing on words, deriding the right-wing candidate. According to Dailymotion, 1,601,000 people have seen a video edit of several reports called “The True Sarkozy.” The reports describes Sarkozy as a “populist and demagogue” with frightening sounds.
The question often arises: Does the Internet become the 5th estate? As far as politics are concerned, it might be too early to know the impact of the Web on voters. It is likely that it will ultimately help decision-making but might not change election results. The Web is still far from being a mass medium, and the accuracy of its content can often be discredited given that providers often have no journalistic deontology.
The “Cevipof barometer” underlines that TV remains the first source of political information for 58 percent of French voters, whereas the Internet is the first source for only 5 percent of them (a percentage that approaches 10 percent for 18- to 34-year-olds). Moreover, studies show that Internet users who are reading about politics on the Web are already interested in politics, are younger and have more diplomas than the rest of the population. According to a Novatris Harris Interactive poll for RTL, 71 percent of French Internet users don’t believe the Web will influence their votes.
Often presented as the losers of Internet expansion, traditional media have reacted. Most newspaper Web sites have a special section dedicated to the presidential elections and can cover the news quicker. On Jan. 30, though it was a secret to no one, Sarkozy officially announced that he was going to run for president. He had planned to do so in regional daily newspapers. The same interview was supposed to be published by several publications. But Liberation managed to intercept it and posted it on their Web site prior to print. Proud to have short-circuited the very efficient UMP communication machine, the national newspaper ruined the exclusivity of the news.
The Internet still relies on traditional media. News becomes news when it is reported in a magazine, a newspaper, on the radio or on television. Televised evening news programs can attract an audience of more than 10 million people. No political Web site has ever done that.
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Alain Duhamel: When the web obliges a journalist not to cover the campaign
Alain Duhamel, 66, works for the public channel France 2, the private radio RTL and writes a column for the daily left-wing newspaper Libération. The well-known TV journalist often gives conferences about his work and his perception of politics.
Last November he was invited to the Institute of Political Science in Paris to speak to a group of 60 students who support the UDF. During his talk he criticized some of François Bayrou’s political choices. At the end of a sentence in which he was severely judging the UDF leader, Duhamel added that he was going to vote for Bayrou in the 2007 presidential election.
There was no reaction to this statement until mid-February, when a video of the speech was posted on the Web site Dailymotion by young supporters of Bayrou. Downloaded more than 128,000 times, the video suddenly had a wide circulation. Judging that he didn’t respect the journalistic deontology by showing his political bias, France 2 decided to suspend him during the campaign. RTL did the same. Libération is the only newspaper that kept Duhamel’s op-eds.
In response, Duhamel argued that he didn’t know this “private meeting” was filmed. Patrick de Carolis, the president of France Televisions, said in an interview for the daily Le Figaro: “Everything is circulating on the Internet. It is essential for journalists to remember that during sensitive times, some strict and rigorous rules must be imposed.”
France Television had previously suspended Duhamel during the 2002 presidential campaign for writing a book on conversations with the “ex-candidate,” socialist Lionel Jospin.