Those who are Geeking the Elysée came to my school this week to debate web campaigning in 2012: click on the image below to discovery my Storify of the event!
Geeking the Elysée
Tech, web and geek culture in the 2012 French presidential elections. By Aurelien Breeden
Tag Archives: Twitter
Candidates meet Twitter founder Jack Dorsey
This Thursday French presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and François Bayrou published a series of strange tweets:
This begged the question of who on earth was Jack, and why was he meeting with three of the main candidates for the French presidential elections? Answer: Jack Dorsey is the co-founder and president of Twitter.
If you needed additional proof that social media of paramount importance in 2012 (as opposed to blogs in 2007, see more here), look no further. The meeting between Sarkozy and Dorsey was even immortalized on Instagram:
Besides underlining the fact that Twitter is now a crucial campaigning tool, Dorsey’s visit didn’t have any immediate impact on the campaign. The American web entrepreneur played it safe by meeting with a classic spectrum of candidates – the incumbent right-wing Sarkozy, the socialist Hollande and the centrist Bayrou. All spoke of web entrepreneurship in France (French news site La Tribune has a good recap here). But the number of French Twitter users (5.2 million according to the latest estimates, only 1.4% of the total number of accounts) is still too small for most of the population to care.
The most interesting outcome of the visit is Dorsey’s announcement that Twitter is going to open offices in France. In an interview with French newspaper Les Echos, he said that “France is probably one of the next countries where we are going to open an office, but we haven’t determined a date yet.” (Twitter already has offices in London, and Google inaugurated its Paris headquarters last December).
Still not convinced of Twitter’s importance in the eyes of French politicians? How about now: even though Dorsey makes no mention of it in the interview, the Elysée claims that opening Twitter offices in Paris was their idea.
Geeking the Elysée…On a Bike !
They are on Facebook, on Twitter (here, here and here), on Dailymotion, on Rue89, France TV Info and France Bleu.
And on their bikes.
La Campagne A Velo's itinerary.
La Campagne à vélo (The campaign by bike, or Biking the campaign trail) is a new journalistic initiative that started in February and is co-produced by France Télévisions, Radio France and Playprod in a partnership with Rue89. I have grown particularly fond of La Campagne à vélo because it is one of those rare instances were new technologies and social media are used for journalistic purposes in a refreshing and interesting way.
Two journalists, Raphael Krafft and Alexis Monchovet, are biking around France in order to meet French voters directly in their workplaces and homes until the end of the French presidential campaign in May.
La Campagne à Vélo's Facebook Page
Instead of merely repeating the same format and distilling the same information across different platforms like many news organizations do, La Campagne à vélo uses each outlet for a specific reason and enables the audience to engage with the information much more seamlessly.
Their Facebook page is the main portal: the two journalists post pictures of their trip, updates on their latest video, radio or written productions and ask for help or tips on their journey (the two bikers have to find a place to sleep every night!). Facebook is a platform where they interact with their audience, answering questions or asking if anybody knows where they can rest for the night. The page also includes a live geo-tracking map of the two journalists’ location.
The different Twitter feeds enable live coverage of the journey, from their own trials and tribulations to the places they go to and the people they meet. Like the Facebook portal, the Twitter feeds also enable user interaction.
(Electoral posters are timidly appearing, Miguet and Mélenchon are ahead)
(Raf and Alex have left Sedan for Charleville-Mézières. Vintage photo bonus!)
(Marcel de Bure: “My only regret is that I counted my money too much)
The interviews and encounters that the journalists have with voters are then packaged into one of three written, audio or video formats and published on one of the partner websites. You can listen and watch the latest audio (an interview with France Bleu Lorraine) and video (an encounter with French citizens who fled the country for Luxembourg) productions below:
Overall, La Campagne à Vélo is a very strong journalism project because it uses social media (Facebook and Twitter) to interact with the audience and promote quick, live content. It then produces interesting multimedia content across platforms. In essence, it plays with the strengths of different outlets instead of copying the same content across them: social media for interaction and speed, traditional media for summaries and perspectives. Even though there are a minor flaws (most notably, a slight tendency to cover the journalists’ trip itself rather than the voters), this is a format that uses new tools to do an old job: on the ground, door-to-door reporting, directly with the voters.
François Hollande: Flour Power Gone Viral
One of many parodies after the incident.
Presidential campaigns aren’t always a piece of cake, especially in an age when every mistake, slip of the tongue and gaffe instantly go viral online. Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande‘s – culinary – mishap is yours to discover on my first Storify by clicking on the image below.
Screenshot of François Flour-Bombed, an Aurelien Breeden Storify
The whole flour incident is of little consequence on the overall elections, but it shows how the Internet coupled with social media enables rapid-response reactions to any tiny stumble, on both sides. It is as easy for opponents of François Hollande to quickly build a Flash-based game ridiculing him as it is for his sympathizers to spread footage of their champion reacting to the event. All in all, the speed with which this kind of story goes viral means that except for the truly polemic or personal ones (think “Casse-toi pov’ con” or “sale mec“), most of these “political” events are over in a 24-hour news cycle.
N.B: Storify has a built-in export tool in order to embed creations in WordPress. I have tried it mutliple times, but to no avail. If you have any tips or solutions to this problem, please comment!
Televised Tweeting
CC/Flickr/arcticpenguin
You can yell all you want at your television, but no one will answer back, even if French President Nicolas Sarkozy or TF1 anchor Claire Chazal make a mistake during a live interview.
Enter Twitter. You can’t pack millions of spectators into your living room to watch a live presidential interview, but you can tweet about it – and get the corrections you expected in real time. Audiences can now simultaneously watch a political news program and get instant feedback online, enabling them to better analyze and evaluate what is being said on air.
This is the gist of what many journalists and cybernauts are expressing in the aftermath of Sarkozy’s televised interview bonanza last Sunday. Many grumbled at the four interviewers’ lack of fact-checking follow-ups, which enabled the French President to go almost unchallenged during his one-hour, eight-station interview. Corrections of his mistakes and approximations abounded in the press afterwards (watch the full interview at the end of this post).
Twitter, however, is the perfect platform for real-time verification of the many figures and numbers candidates wave around on air. Media outlets, politicians and netizens alike frantically commented Sunday’s interview to defend, criticize or mock the President.
https://twitter.com/Eric_Besson/status/163724025976209409Take French newspaper Libération‘s Désintox journalists, who picked up on Sarkozy’s false assertion that he had never pronounced the word “TVA social” [“Social VAT”]:
A video quickly followed the next day to confirm their claim:
Vodpod videos no longer available.So what are we dealing with? There are three events happening simultaneously. First, a television audience that is 17.5 million strong but remains completely passive. Second, an online community that is intensely active in real-time but is small in size (Twitter recently reached 5.2 million subscribers in France, compared to over 100 million in the United States). Third, the interview itself, with a President and four journalists who are completely oblivious to both audiences.
The solution is to merge everything together, according to media blogs and bloggers like Guy Birenbaum at French radio Europe 1:, with live fact-checking done in a way that enables the journalists to counter phony facts on air. He writes:
When will we finally decide to confront interviewed politicians with documents (audio, video, text, sources, links) in real time to show that they spruce up reality or become amnesiac?
These kind of media events, where spectators, interviewers and desk journalists work in a loop of feedback, are rare, but some are jumping on the bandwagon, like journalism students at the CFJ in Paris who recently partnered with YouTube for the 2012 campaign. The idea is to have two sets of journalists: interviewers who ask the actual questions and fact-checkers who verify information in real-time and pass it back to the interviewers for follow-ups – all of it visible to both television and Internet audiences.
Politicians beware. Soon your live gaffes and slip-ups will be retweeted right back into your faces.
More:
– A University of Illinois at Chicago study on social media and television interaction.
– Sarkozy’s interview:
Welcome !
© xkcd
Welcome to Geeking the Elysée!
In this blog, I aim to analyze the digital aspect of the 2012 presidential elections in France. How do the candidates and their campaigns use the Internet and new technologies? How do they envision these digital possibilities in their platforms? Who is a geek, and who is left behind?
In addition to the blog, I regularly tweet about French politics (you can see my Twitter feed and follow me on the widget below).
It is important to keep in mind that this is an entirely new project – a sandbox for testing and prying. Text, audio, video, embeds, links, graphs: nothing is off limits. Your suggestions and tips on what (free) tools to use and how to use them are welcome!
Which brings us to a second important aspect: interactivity. Feedback is crucial, especially if it helps me become a better blogger, and, ultimately, a better journalist. Please comment (but don’t feed the trolls).
So which politicians are masters of the web and which ones get tangled in it? Who supports HADOPI and who will abolish it? Who is at the forefront of online campaigning and who is still a noob?
Geek the Elysée with me, and you’ll find out.
Geeking the Elysée 