In the age of social networks, the rules of speaking time obsolete?

• How can the speaking time of candidates for the presidential election be regulated when the audiovisual media, subject to strict rules, are now far from representing the only source of information? 

• The question arises again, as Emmanuel Macron has had the right to use his personal Twitter account as a candidate withdrawn.

• Faced with this observation, several researchers point to an electoral code that no longer corresponds to its time, and call for reform.

Emmanuel Macron's clan is angry.

His team can no longer use the official accounts of the president-candidate on social networks.

In a notice published on March 11, the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign (CNCCEP) indeed asked the outgoing campaign team not to use the personal Twitter account of Emmanuel Macron, "used for a long time date and in a predominant way to relay messages relating to the exercise of his functions as President of the Republic".

In the latter's team, we cry foul, pointing out that the other candidates are still authorized to campaign with their official accounts, even though Anne Hidalgo is mayor of Paris and Valérie Pécresse was re-elected last year. last for a new term as President of the Île-de-France Region, for example.

More broadly, the committee's opinion raises the question of speaking time and its legitimacy in the age of social networks.

In fact, speaking time within the framework of a presidential campaign complies with a set of very strict rules, but the latter only take into account access to TV sets and radio stations by the candidates, which no longer corresponds really to the current context of election campaigns.

Should the speaking times of the candidates be reviewed according to their presence and their digital audience?

In the corridors of the CNCCEP, the questioning is shared.

Changing these rules would be in the air, we are told briefly, without however going into details.

“The commission's conclusions will be published following the presidential election to give its future recommendations.

»

A political upheaval

The question is not new.

In 2017, digital law researcher Hervé Isar already warned, in the columns of

, about a necessary evolution of electoral law in the face of "the development of online electronic communications which is shaking up our political uses".

According to the professor from the University of Aix-Marseille, new, more appropriate sanctions should be devised by the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA).

Since then, if the CSA has become the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM), but the texts have not been modified.

Asked by

, Hervé Isar today renews his criticisms.

“Digital technology has greatly disrupted our relationship to time and space and has greatly modified the historical methods of access to electoral information.

As a result, legislation that was thought up in the time of the few analog, national

can only be perceived today as outdated”, denounces the researcher.

An opinion shared by Jean-Marie Charon, a sociologist specializing in media and journalism.

“Speaking time corresponded well to the old organization of radio and television, when there were only a few television channels and a few radio antennas,” says the researcher at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales ( EHESS).

“As the system began to diversify, we continued to address the issue of airtime from the broadcaster's perspective.

From the moment there is a multiplicity of media, we no longer have to think from the broadcaster, but from the public.

He makes his choices now.

»

However, adapting the speaking time rule to social networks would, according to Jean-Marie Charon, be simply impossible.

“In the old conception that applied to television and radio, we had a measurable theoretical audience.

In the system of social networks, we do not have this ability to compare two accounts, which have no connection between them”, continues the sociologist.

According to him, the supervision of speaking time "in a regulatory and legislative manner" is now obsolete.

The latter calls for the end of this electoral rule – which he recalls as being a French exception.

But how to ensure the pluralism of opinions without supervision of speaking time in the audiovisual media?

The sociologist suggests the establishment of “a moral guarantee” for the media, which would require them in particular to “verify that each current of thought has indeed seen its ideas highlighted” during the campaign.

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• Election campaign

• Elections

• Digital

• By the Web

• Presidential election 2022

• Emmanuel Macron

• Social networks

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