A successful campaign on Twitter, a sure hit at the polls?

• During this presidential election, candidates like Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Eric Zemmour were very present on social networks.

  A mobilization which was reflected in a relative way in the ballot boxes.

• According to several researchers, the applications, especially Twitter, lack representativeness and are biased by algorithms.

  Result, difficult to draw conclusions on the popularity of a candidate from that recorded on social networks.

• Especially since the Zemmour and Mélenchon campaign teams have adapted their strategy to increase the visibility of their candidate online.

“Mélenchon is elected in the first round President of the French Republic of Twitter with 99% of votes”, hopes a surfer Sunday evening, a few minutes after the announcement of the ballot for the first round.

But now, in real life, Jean-Luc Mélenchon will remain the third man in this election, with 21.95% of the vote, behind Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

However, as Internet users point out, the team of the candidate of La France insoumise will have been omnipresent on social networks during this campaign, just like that of Eric Zemmour.

The very strong online presence of the Reconquest candidate and his supporters did not bear fruit at the polls, where he ultimately won only 7.1% of the vote.

This will certainly be one of the lessons to be learned from this election: the "trendy" candidates on social networks throughout the campaign will not necessarily have been voted in favor at the ballot box.

"What happens on the ground is not correlated to what happens online", immediately summarizes Stéphanie Wojcik, lecturer in information and communication sciences at the University of Paris Est Créteil, interviewed by

.

"There is a phenomenon of magnifying glass which means that when we take a look at Twitter, we have the impression that things are played out because candidates are made visible to the detriment of others", specifies the researcher.

When we take into account political speech online, we must not lose sight of the fact that social networks are never representative of the entire population.

“There is a bias effect.

On Twitter, for example, we observe a network of CSP+ with a very high concentration of journalists and politicians.

It's a microcosm,” remarks Clément Mabi, lecturer in information and communication science at the Compiègne University of Technology.

But not only.

The social network is also widely used by activists, adds Stéphanie Wojcik: "Very often, supporters follow each other, which explains why a Jean-Luc Mélenchon activist who observes his Twitter will have the impression that the candidate is already elected in advance.

»

Deep dive into the Twitter algorithm

However, one element is not negligible: candidates like Eric Zemmour or Jean-Luc Mélenchon have indeed understood the codes of social networks to conduct an online campaign.

"These are the ones who have best succeeded in adapting to the communication constraints of social networks by industrializing their presence and overvaluing their impact", underlines Clément Mabi.

For many years, digital presence has indeed been designed in a binary way: “The more people talk about you, the more visibility you gain”.

But the strategy has evolved to adapt to the different algorithms used by social networks.

On Twitter, for example, Clément Mabi explains that there is a real recipe for obtaining more popularity on social networks, which comes in three stages.

“First, you have to have a simple and divisive message that generates interaction.

Then there must be organized troops to click on, in sync.

Finally, you need calls to action that allow you to circulate in networks, beyond your basic "core".

»

These codes, which are appropriate to the temporality of an electoral campaign, promote the message of radical movements, underlines the researcher.

Candidates like Eric Zemmour or Jean-Luc Mélenchon will thus find more echoes on this social network.

"In the past, research has indeed shown that Twitter corresponded very well to radical forces, and in particular to the far right", confirms the researcher from UTC Compiègne.

Robots, but no voters

Except that the algorithm used by Twitter remains very artificial to observe trends, underlines Stéphanie Wojcik.

“In the case of Eric Zemmour, we were able to observe a visibility of subjects or personalities helped by the mechanism of the social network”.

Here we find the phenomenon

, which corresponds to the “mobilization of automatic means, for example robots, to artificially inflate trends on Twitter”, explains Stéphanie Wojcik.

“When you connected on Twitter, you had the impression that 100,000 people were talking about a meeting of the Reconquest candidate, for example, when in fact there were 5,000,” underlines our interlocutor.

A phenomenon that will have allowed, according to the latter, to highlight subjects that were not necessarily in the news, widely taken up by the media then.

But that's not all.

The lack of representativeness of a social network like Twitter is also explained, according to Clément Mabi, by the form of language used by its users.

“On Twitter, the debates are so violent and so ephemeral that we can see that they are extremely artificial.

A point joined by Stéphanie Wojcik, according to which there is an overvaluation of Twitter as a representation of public opinion.

“The social network makes it easy to measure: you can count the number of followers or retweets.

We say to ourselves that the more followers a person has, for example, the more support they have, ”says Stéphanie Wojcik.

“Except that it is in fact possible to retweet without really defending the ideas of the candidate”, illustrates the researcher.

“A bubble within a bubble”

However, online political debate is not limited to Twitter.

“Each social network has a different utility, continues the researcher.

It's very clear that Twitter is an instrument that makes it possible to highlight a personality or an idea.

But it's a bubble within a bubble.

Activism also involves messaging on Telegram, exchanges on mailing lists, Facebook posts… But also not in the field!

“undefinedThis last point remains decisive, notes Stéphanie Wojcik: “If we take the case of Eric Zemmour, it is not enough to have digital militant activists.

We also need a structuring of a campaign, a greater anteriority of a movement, activists who are a little more experienced… like those of Marine le Pen”.

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By the Web

Presidential 2022: On Twitter, politicians surf on trends

• By the Web

• Jean-Luc Melenchon

• Eric Zemmour

• Social networks

• Twitter

• La France Insoumise (LFI)

• Reconquest!

  (political party)

• Elections