France

How social networks turned the parliamentary elections upside down

Thanks to videos combining humour, clashes, behind-the-scenes footage and seriousness, the team of the head of the National Rally list, whose videos have almost 100 million views, has eleven times more “likes” than its rival at the European elections, Manon Aubry (LFI). These figures from the digital intelligence platform Visibrain may seem abstract at first. However, as soon as the dissolution was announced, the legislative elections hit the headlines on social networks, with more than 23 million messages published on the subject since then.

And while Jordan Bardella and the National Rally were in the lead during the European elections, Visibrain tells us that during the legislative campaign, the New Popular Front (NFP) alliance managed to reverse the trend. In fact, between the two rounds, the NFP overtook the National Rally for several days, before the latter finally regained its place, but obviously too late.

Jordan Bardella and Rima Hassan, young people’s favourite “influencers”

Jordan Bardella is not the only one to benefit from his influence on a young public, the majority of whom are of voting age. On the other side of the political spectrum, the now MEP Rima Hassan, also parachuted into the limelight, has made social networks her striking force. Since 7 October and the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, the Franco-Syrian has focused her content almost exclusively on the Palestinian question, which she has made her hobbyhorse. It’s a viral subject, particularly on TikTok, where videos dedicated to the “Block Out” (a movement closely linked to the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanction” (BDS) activism, born on the networks in 2024, and aimed at applying a “digital guillotine” to stars not sufficiently committed to Palestine) are reaching hundreds of millions of views.

In the space of just a few months, Rima Hassan has amassed over 700,000 followers on social networks X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and TikTok. She is very active, posting videos on camera several times a day, as well as shocking and provocative tweets and publications with thought-provoking messages. Her omnipresence seemed to pay off, as she managed to become a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and even took centre stage (still wearing her keffieh) alongside Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the evening of the results of the legislative elections.

Gabriel Attal, the face of Ensemble

With a hardly predictable surge in the second round of the general election, the Ensemble presidential coalition, made up of the Renaissance, MoDem and Horizons parties, managed to win 168 seats. Ensemble has taken advantage of Gabriel Attal’s personality to actively help block the National Rally. Despite (or thanks to?) the controversy surrounding the ban on the abaya in schools, Attal enjoys great popularity on social networks. Through question-and-answer sessions with young people on the TikTok app, Gabriel Attal (and his teams) comment on videos and regularly play the humour card.

But what neither Gabriel Attal nor Jordan Bardella saw coming was TikTok users staging a fantasised love affair between the two political figures. Known as “edits”, these video montages taken from debates and interviews with the two protagonists depict a budding love story that has become a resounding success. The videos quickly reach millions of views, giving the two politicians a lot of goodwill.

A fictitious “love story” that Jordan Bardella used to poke fun at the subject, much to the delight of the hundreds of thousands of young users who “liked” his reactions. Except that, contrary to the usual tendencies, it was Gabriel Attal’s more “serious” response that was more appealing. TikTok posted shortly before the second round, the Prime Minister can be heard addressing his 400,000 subscribers.  “Good evening everyone, I’m not going to talk to you about the edits”, Gabriel Attal begins facing the camera with a serious expression on his face. “I’m going to talk to you about the Republic, because that’s what’s important. And that’s what’s at stake this Sunday in this election. This Sunday, there is a risk that the extreme right of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally will have an absolute majority in the National Assembly”, he explains in an attempt to get his subscribers to react. A warning that seems to be paying off: witness the considerable success of her video, which has reached over 800,000 likes and several million views, her biggest success on the app.

Astroturfing, a technique for influencing elections

Another technique present on social networks also seems to have played a major role in the French elections that shook up the month of June 2024. Known as “astroturfing” and originating in the United States, this method gives the illusion of a massive movement of support or opinion on a publication thanks to numerous likes or comments, artificially augmented in order to misinform the public, convinced that they are seeing the enthusiasm of “real people”.

“Despite the sheer volume of messages published on the legislative front, a certain proportion of the flow is not ‘natural’, with accounts either spamming or creating fake disposable accounts”, we learn Florent Lefebvre, a social data analyst and Visibrain partner, who has analysed and mapped the activity surrounding the 2024 general elections on X. “Spam accounts were especially prevalent in the community supporting Reconquête and the Rassemblement national. They helped make this community more visible on X/Twitter about the legislative elections”.

On TikTok, the question also arises, especially when we know that the Chinese application’s algorithm is known to “favour” this or that content among its users. An influence denounced by Claude Malhuret, the rapporteur for the Senate’s committee of enquiry into the TikTok social network. This type of misinformation fomented by the app led the French government to suspend TikTok in New Caledonia during the state of emergency last May, in order to limit contact between rioters and, above all, to contain interference and misinformation from foreign countries.

Compromising history

Far from being just an advantage for influencing elections, social networks can also become a handicap for those who use them. While LFI candidates were the first to find themselves criticised for their highly problematic 2.0 publications during the European elections, the situation reversed during the legislative elections, to the detriment of the National Rally.

“I thought I saw illegal immigrants going back home and then, bang, it was just the pseudo-French team going to Qatar”, Christian Pérez, RN candidate in the 8th constituency of Finistère, posted on his Facebook account on the eve of the 2022 Football World Cup. These comments, revealed on social networks and by the online media Streetpress, certainly cost him the election, even though he was widely expected to win in the first round.

Dozens of National Rally candidates have seen their online presence scrutinised to contradict Marine Le Pen’s stated intransigence against racist or anti-Semitic comments. This digital monitoring revealed that many candidates nominated by the RN had made discriminatory comments online. This is the case, for example, of Agnès Pageard, whose tweet history reveals an obsession with Jews and shameless conspiracy (see page 26), or Nadedja Remy, who was defeated in the second round of the legislative elections in the 2nd constituency of Val-d’Oise, after her messages of support and admiration for Putin and her comparison of Ukrainians to Nazis were discovered.

More broadly, social networks played a very active role in the effectiveness of the “Republican barrage”. This influence was particularly noticeable in the period between the two rounds, and more specifically during the two days of “electoral silence” preceding the vote. A “silence” imposed on candidates, political parties and the traditional media, but not on ordinary citizens who had free rein on social networks to point out and denounce the amateurism, lack of preparation, racism and anti-Semitism of some National Rally candidates still in the running for the second round. And sometimes even their… delinquency!

For example, the RN candidate Annie Bell, who qualified for the second round in the 3rd constituency of Mayenne, did not escape the radar of “citizen internet users”. The latter resurfaced on social networks an old press clipping from the newspaper Ouest-France recounting the armed hostage-taking by the now septuagenarian in Ernée in 1995. She was soundly defeated on 7 July: 31.09% against 68.91% for his opponent, the Horizons candidate Yannick Favennec.