Twitter and politics : just a new medium ?

      Twitter entered the world of French politics mostly during the presidential and legislative elections of Spring 2012. When Valerie Trierweiler, Hollande's wife in those times, expressed her support to one socialist dissident via Twitter, French political world understood that it was entering suddenly a phase of accelerated twitterisation. If Twitter seems to be a fashionable, individualized and direct way of communication, it is far from being perfect. In my opinion, it is deteriorating politics and politicians even if they are more and more present on the social network.

Twitter, the new tool of political communication.

      In only a few months, Twitter imposed itself as an essential medium in the field of political communication. Twitter is no more only used to distribute press releases, links towards documents, or to support the institutional action of any elected representative. Twitter has now become a space for official announcements – the place where action is taking place, where talk is acting. With the twitterisation of politics, each actor is playing its own score, rôle, without any process of complex validation and with the feeling of a relative transparency. It is like every secrete meeting was happening in public, as if we were taking part in it directly. Hence, Twitter is seen as a promoter of direct democracy, connecting more and more people with politicians, and protecting citizens from secrete skulduggery. However, we should look at the other side of the coin.

The convergence culture of the « little sentence ».

      The micro-blogging social network, pushed politicians to favour this way of a very short, striking communication ; mixing in-depth thoughts (sometimes), sarcastic commentaries (often) and simple anecdotes. Twitter is not the only responsible for this. 24/7 news channels also furthered the use of the « little sentences », mostly because of the news' banners in the bottom of your screen. Instead of focusing on real political issues, the majority of media are now concentrating on every cutting remark. A majority of political observers, journalists and others, are bound with any little sentence they can find. It is almost for this that people are going on Twitter today. They are looking more for the good word than for ideas of general policy. Then, Twitter, as other instruments of social networking, would be a veritable accelerator of blunders and bum notes of ministers and others.

Twitter or the negation of politics.

        It is quite difficult to weigh the impact on public opinion of the permanent show given by Twitter and politicians. However, it is legitimate to ask, in those times of distrust towards politics, if the space given to those modes of expression short and superficial is not actually an exacerbating factor. People have the right to ask for a higher debate on complex societal questions. According to some scholars, the shortness (140 characters maximum) of the tweet is a form of « negation of politics ». If it is true, that the followers of political tweets are already politicized, but it certainly contributes to the desecretion of politicians supposed to be in a constant reflection. There is, because of this, a weakening of the political speech and quite a loosing of respect in general.

Moreover, Twitter is forcing politicians to be in instantaneousness and immediacy. This is provoking a « symbolical discredit ». Citizens want to be carried and enlightened by politics in a certain direction, focusing more on the future than on the present. We are now losing little by little our perspectives and projections. If Twitter is not the only responsible for French's loveless in politics, it is at least one of the accelerator of this trend.