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ABSTRACT
This article examines political elites and citizens’ use of the Web during the 2007 and 2012 French presidential campaigns particularly with the aim of testing the normalization and mobilization hypothesis at two levels of analysis: supply and demand. It is based on a quantitative content analysis of the candidates’ Web sites and two surveys of French Internet users. The results present a challenge to the normalization thesis at the elite level, in that despite a strong division in online performance between the major and other candidates in 2007, by 2012 the minor candidates outperformed their major counterparts. Among voters, the results also run somewhat contrary to normalization, with a weakening in the significance of socio-demographic factors in determining traditional types of online engagement. In addition, the new social media sphere appears to encourage younger and less politicized citizens to participate. The importance of prior political attitudes such as interest and trust, however, remain strong.
Notes
2. For the 2012 presidential election, limits were €16.9 million for the candidates present in the first round and €22.5 million for those present in both rounds. Sponsorship from corporations is not allowed. The campaign is financed by the party, donations collected from the individuals and state reimbursement. All candidates are eligible to be reimbursed by the state for their campaign spending according to the number of votes obtained (with the amounts depending on whether the party got more or less than 5% of votes). For more details, see http://www.vie-publique.fr/decouverte-institutions/institutions/fonctionnement/president-republique/comment/comment-est-financee-campagne-electorale.html (accessed June 2013).
3. Most of the presidential candidates or parties supporting them were present online already in 2002 when only one out of 15 candidates did not declare any expenses for the online platforms (Vedel & Cann, Citation2008).
4. The tendency of the high participation in presidential elections is rather stable among French citizens. Turnout: In 2002, 72% in the first round and 80% in the second round; in 1995, 78% and 80%; in 1988, 81% and 84%; in 1981, 81% and 86%; in 1974, 84% and 87%; in 1969, 78% and 69%; in 1965, 85% and 84%.
5. Elite level studies were managed by K. Koc-Michalska in April 2007 and 2012 within the Online Campaigning Project run by K. Koc-Michalska with D. Lilleker (Bournemouth University). Mass level studies: survey, ‘Internautes et information,’ January 2007, ‘Mediapolis’ March 2012 (ANR 2008–2012 project), CEVIPOF, Sciences-Po Paris.
6. The concept of the Web.2.0 is not fully conceptualized; however, we follow Lilleker and Jackson (Citation2011) in underlining the role of interactivity and resource generation, simplicity of content creation, and non-hierarchical relations among the participants of communication.
7. Respondents are selected using a quota method (by sex, gender, education, and region) in order to provide the representative sample of French Internet users (according to official measurements provided by Centre de Recherche pour l’étude et l’observation des conditions de vie, CREDOC, http://www.credoc.fr)
8. CEVIPOF, Sciences-Po Paris is a research center specializing in French electoral studies (similar to ANES in the U.S. or BES in the UK) since 1960. The Center manages the surveys during different electoral periods (presidential, legislative, European, or regional) on panel or cross-sectional samples representative for the French society. A vast part of this research concentrates on the relationships between political electoral behavior and the role of the media, and offline and online campaigning (Mediapolis project).
9. The scale’s Cronbach’s α does not fulfill the standard reliability level (.7). The Cronbach’s α is very sensitive to “the scale length” (Briggs & Cheek, Citation1986, p. 115). However, as the indices are not a result of the statistical analysis (e.g., factor analysis) but rather an outcome of theoretical assumptions based on the previous studies, we decided to keep the indices regardless the sometimes weak internal consistency statistics.
10. Hoffman (Citation2012, p. 223) enumerates 27 different online political activities in PEW studies.
11. In France, television still keeps a strong place as the first source of political information; however, other traditional media (print press and radio) are losing their audiences mostly to the Internet (for more details on this change, please see Appendix 2).
12. With the exception of the Ségolène Royal’s Desirs d’avenir Web site, with 135,000 comments during a few months of existence (Bousquet, Citation2009).
13. Barack Obama gathered 22 million Twitter followers and 33 million Facebook supporters, Mitt Romney gathered 1.7 million Twitter followers and 12 million Facebook supporters. The difference of Facebook and Twitter communities in both countries is also significant. In the U.S., there were 166 million Facebook users at the end of 2012, while in France it was 25.6 million (http://www.internetworldstats.com).A similar disproportion existed in 2012 for Twitter, with 7.3 million user profiles in France and more than 140 million in the U.S. (http://www.semiocast.com; accessed October 29, 2013).
14. The number of supporters on social network profiles varied in the same proportion as the number of votes gained by the candidates in an election. This may support the normalization thesis, as more important candidates gathered larger supporter groups.
15. We use here a relative interactivity index (weighted number of posts by candidate and comments by her/his visitors per general size of the community). (For more details, please see Koc-Michalska & Lilleker, Citation2014.)
16. Commission Nationale Des Comptes De Campagne Et Des Financements Politiques (http://www.cnccfp.fr). There is evidence, however, that the official spending may not fully cover the total spending on campaigns (Greffet, Citation2013), as some parts of the structural budget could have been spent before the official campaign (e.g., equipment, advisors, etc.). However, for comparative reasons, we use official budgets presented to the Commission by all candidates.
17. The result of the pooled Poisson regression is not shown here (as it gives similar results as in ), but it is available upon request from the authors.
18. This paragraph is based on the in-depth interviews performed by Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo in the aftermath of the 2012 campaign with the campaign strategists: JF. Martins (F. Bayrou), JF. Jalkh and D. Rachline (M. LePen), O. Faure (F. Hollande), B. Millot (UMP), B. Buisson (J. Cheminade) within a project ‘Les gourous de la com,’ Sciences-Po, Paris.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Karolina Koc-Michalska
Karolina Koc-Michalska is Assistant Professor at SciencesCom--Audencia School of Management and an associated researcher with the Centre for Political Research CEVIPOF at Sciences-Po Paris, France. Her research focuses on electoral studies and political communication, especially the role of social networks in Western politics and their impact on political engagement. She is also interested in the campaigning effects, media influence on election outcomes and original methods to study the online public spheres.
Rachel Gibson
Rachel Gibson is Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Social Change (ISC), University of Manchester. Her research interests focus on the use of digital media in political communication, particularly by parties, and for election campaigning and participation. She is also interested in the development of new methodologies to study the web and particularly social media, as it is used by political actors.
Thierry Vedel
Thierry Vedel is a Senior Research Fellow with the National Center for Scientific Research and is based at the Center for Political Research (Sciences-Po Paris). His research interests are on the transformations of political communication in democracies, the political uses of the internet, and the regulation of media in a context of globalization.