New media and politics: The elections are won henceforth on social networks.

Talking about it was not enough in May 2007. Low awareness of social networks at the time (less than 700,000 French registered on Facebook, only a few thousand on Twitter) was not perceived as a threat (or in the best case, as an opportunity) by different political parties, and clearly, the battle for votes was won thanks to the televised debates, the newspapers and street marketing operation and not thanks to new media. The senatorial elections of November 2, 2010 in the United States have however given a taste of what France currently experiences with the campaign for the presidential election in France. Social networks have indeed played a relatively important role in a country where an estimated 42% of 18-24 year olds are influenced by social networks (as Echo Research).

There was a time when voters were listening to only traditional media sources to choose their candidates, especially television, through a single screen. Today, citizens are focusing increasingly on data available through multiple screens, including television, but also their computer or mobile phone. These new media sources provide new opportunities, and a recent study confirms its weight: according to Echo Research, nearly half of Americans went to learn about the various politicians on social networks, making this the one source that records the highest growth in terms of influence over the last presidential elections of 2008. Facebook and Twitter are no longer simply a fad: they must be part of an election campaign.

If these networks are so attractive at first glance, this is mainly because they make it possible to blend new methods of communication and spread it to different social spheres. Facebook allows anyone for example, not only to present an argument or a position in their entourage, but also to interact, share, exchange points of view with friends or friends of friends. Once spectators, citizens are becoming players in a campaign, which can transmit a message and argue with hundreds of other individuals. Do we not say that Twitter is the pulse of the nation? The main actors of different traditional media have also understood, and have mostly developed presences on social networks.

Apart from this quite theoretical approach, the numbers and the different actions speak for themselves. In the U.S., the third televised debate in 2010 generated 154,342 tweets,  about 27 tweets per second by 33,095 people, according to the official Twitter account @Tweetminster. On Facebook, pro-Republican groups have gathered up to 136,000 and up to 126,000 people for pro-Democrats. The Washington Post bought the promotional trend research "# Election", The New York Times has created a map showing the tracking of discussions about the various contenders, Twitter has called for the use of hashtags # Votereport # NYCvotes, Foursquare created the badge "I voted," a Facebook application was designed to draw the most reluctant people to vote and Facebook called for vote and offered a tool for locating the polling station closest to home.

However, although it may seem attractive at first sight for different political parties, social networks do not currently play a role as important in France in the United States yet. First, the penetration rate of these networks in households of the Hexagon is different. According to a study by Karalys in 2011, only 225,000 of the 150 million registered in Twitter are French, worse, only 18 to 35,000 of them are active. Now, clearly, a presidential election is played very rarely over a few tens of thousands of votes. Facebook, meanwhile, is still widely used but is still struggling to seduce the French in regard to politics: the Conservative party gathers today less than 20,500 fans, the Socialist Party 40,600.
   

Obama's victory was clearly boosted by the many email campaigns that have generated a large number of small grants necessary to pay for television ads. So it was logical that in 2012 the French candidates used Facebook and Twitter in a very important way. Indeed, the current campaign in France shows that the influence of social media in French politics grew more than expected in recent years. Thus, one hundred percent of the presidential candidates have a Facebook and Twitter accounts which they use every day.

Every candidate has nearly doubled or more the number of fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter. On Twitter, most of trending topics are related to the election. There is not a day without one of my Facebook friends or someone I'm following on Twitter post a video related to the current campaign. What also seems to have changed from 2007 (date of the last presidential election) is the money committed to digital. The internet budget from 2007 more than doubled: 2 million euros for Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the two main favorites for 2012. 

                           

New media and new technologies have therefore an important role in the choice of voters. More surprisingly, they can also play a role on ... abstainers. For the upcoming vote in two weeks time, all the experts predict a record abstention close to 30%, a study by GFK, 4 ° marketing institute in the world, shows that if it was possible to vote with their Smartphone, 12.2% abstainers would. Maybe it will be for 2017!