Is The road To The Elysee Passing By Twitter?
BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, October 27 2011
After the Socialist primary election that happened earlier this month, the French presidential campaign is heating up and social media are being used by both parties in what can be seen as the second social media campaign. In 2007 both Sarkozy and his opponent Ségolène Royal used tools that called for citizens participation.
Twitter is emerging as a primary tool for all concerned.
On Le Monde, Alexandre Léchenet has analyzed the Twitter political scene at the beginning of the two candidate race.
On its website the UMP (Sarkozy's party) is encouraging people to use Twitter to discuss about the election but - quite surprisingly - not by asking questions to Sarkozy but to the French President's opponent, François Hollande, who recently won the Socialist primary election (during the primaries you could do the same with the other Socialist candidate, Martine Aubry).
Le Monde reports more on the UMP Twitter strategy*:
The UMP said to have launched this page right after the debate between François Hollande and Martine Aubry, finding that the candidates did not provide "enough concrete answers." The aim was to "stimulate debate and ask questions constantly evaded" by both candidates. The questions were varied and related points of the project of the Socialist Party and other more targeted areas, such as pools "reserved for Muslim women" for the mayor of Lille or debt for the Correze Francois Hollande.
Aim of the operation, for the UMP: swarm-arguments against its through its activists. But the signal is low.
The UMP announced 800 that there were users for the service. According to Linkfluence, Le Monde partner for the analysis of the online campaign, the number of tweets posted represented 0.02% of tweets published in France the first three days, before declining to 0.002% the following week.
The campaign team of Francois Hollande said he did not see "being challenged" by the device. And said he was "always ready to discuss" on Twitter.
The Socialist candidate did not seem to be doing too well either, says Le Monde: on his website, Toushollande.fr , activists can find an application that - when allowed by the user - send messages on Twitter on his/her behalf. This practice was considered as spamming and defined as "Twitter prostitution", a claim denied by Roman Pigenel, the creator of the app.
Pigenel blames some technical issues on the experimental nature of the app but also argues* that his objective was to let activists focus on more important efforts while still being able to echo the candidates' message:
Just look at the twitter accounts of activists (I put myself in the lot): during the moment of intense focus (especially the debates), all supporting the same candidate are, in fact, broadcasing (at least in part) the same information, use the same words. This makes sense: when necessary, we put his individuality into his pocket to spread the word of his candidate. From there, it is in the interest of everyone to automate this task. It's in the applicant's interest to give more visibility and impact of the messages he deems important. It's in the interest of activists who can discharge the least personal part of their business to focus on other operations - including tweets - where they can best develop their creativity and ingenuity.
The explanation does not convince Le Monde's Léchenet: "Under the guise of innovation, the new militant remains ultimately often a simple poster gluer 2.0," he concludes.
[*Quotes have been translated from French]