Damien Brunon: "On Twitch, politicians affect people they don't usually talk to"
Audio 05:30
Prime Minister Jean Castex will be on Samuel Étienne's Twitch channel this Sunday at 6 p.m.
AP - Stephane de Sakutin
By: Florent Guignard
12 mins
Jean Castex in the footsteps of François Hollande, a week after the former president, the French Prime Minister is preparing to speak on the Twitch channel of journalist and host Samuel Étienne.
An event that divides Internet users, some seeing it as a maneuver to politicize the platform, while others welcome the journalistic approach.
Why are politicians interested in this particular network?
Damien Brunon, head of digital education at the Lille Graduate School of Journalism, answers Florent Guignard's questions.
Publicity
RFI: Twitch has been making the buzz in France for a week. Why does a show that brings together 700,000 people get more talk than a 20-hour newspaper interview that is watched by millions of viewers?
Damien Brunon:
Because there is a question of phenomenon.
Twitch is a platform that is known to young and old alike, because there are also quite a few in their thirties and forties who use this platform.
During lockdown last year, connections and number of subscribers to this platform exploded.
And the fact that policies and major events are found on this platform, that makes people talk.
And that seems pretty normal to me.
What do politicians gain by going to this non-traditional media, it is a question of targeting young people?
Yes, that does not seem to me to cause too many doubts.
It turns out that people who watch Twitch are often people who don't watch TV often, at least traditional media.
So the politicians by going to this platform get closer and reach people with whom they are not used to speaking when they speak at 8 p.m. or when they respond to interviews with RFI or France Info.
Are Twitch users, those who play video games, those who watch video game matches, receptive
because we have noticed in recent days a kind of mini slingshot among Twitch users saying "the politicians confiscate our media ”.
Suddenly, isn't it counterproductive for a politician to go and address a public that rejects him?
There, for once, there is really a double situation.
On the one hand, I think there is a part of the Twitch users who are people a bit like you and me, who don't necessarily listen to the radio and who don't necessarily watch TV, but on the other hand are very interested in public affairs.
I take as an example the success of the Z-Event which is a charity event which has been organized by a streamer called Zerator, for 4 years, and which collects millions of euros over a weekend.
So there are people who are interested in public affairs, in helping.
It's not just video games, that's what I meant.
Clearly, there is an audience for public affairs and therefore, for political interviews.
At the same time, there is also a whole part of the people who use Twitch, who saw it a bit like a sanctuary, that is to say their little corner where they can have fun, where they have their language, their community, their habits, and seeing people intervene from outside, let's say, from real people, that bothers them.
There is a little bit of both.
Moreover, around the interview with Jean Castex this Sunday evening and the intervention of François Hollande last week, there was debate.
Ok, there was a sling against Samuel Etienne because we basically told him: you are selling our toy to politicians.
And at the same time, there are many people who defend Samuel Etienne's approach and who say: we must continue like that, it's interesting.
Samuel Etienne enjoys a very good image in this community.
So it is also supported by part of the community.
We recall the work of Samuel Étienne on this program, the journalist does not ask his own questions. But these are the questions of Twitch users. Does that limit the risk for politicians, the fact that there is a filter?
Yes and no.
There for once, we are on a situation ... Not very long ago, two or three weeks ago, Gabriel Attal, the government spokesperson, had an evening on Twitch with fairly well-known YouTubers including Enjoy Phoenix to talk about the health crisis.
And at the end of the interview, Enjoy Phoenix said to him: you are very kind to invite us, but the next time, it would be good to invite a journalist instead because we ask questions that are ours, but we don't really have the means to contradict you or to reflect on what you say.
So, it's good to have Samuel Etienne, who is a real professional journalist, to conduct this kind of interview.
At the same time, me as a professional, when I watch the interview by Samuel Etienne of François Hollande, I also see, if this is not a form of complicity, a relaxed atmosphere without always necessarily there being relaunch as we could see in political interviews.
And we are entering, in my opinion, into an area that can start to look like infotainment [infotainment] as it can be done in Daily on TMC.
So there are somewhat the same ethical questions that arise when you have a press card.
Is there finally some form of disavowal around this Twitch phenomenon? A disavowal of the classic political interview as it is practiced by political journalists on the classic media?
I wouldn't say that.
I would just say it's a different audience actually.
Twitch is just another medium that is watched, consulted by another population.
I think that the political interview has its place right now on television or elsewhere and it is made for people who listen to the radio, who watch television.
What Samuel Etienne is doing here is for the people who are on Twitch, who are not necessarily people watching something else.
For me, these are two different situations.
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