Nicolas, Ségolène & François sont dans un bateau...

Thomas Husson | March 14, 2007, 03:46 AM

It is amazing to see the critical role Internet as a media is playing in the current French presidential election.

François Bayrou (leader of a small independent party and the only one able to beat Sarkozy according to recent polls) criticized the role of mass-media saying broadcasters had an interest to promote Sarkozy (right wing politician and current Home Secretary) versus Royal (a former advisor to Mitterand back in 1981 and whose “partner” Francois Hollande runs the Socialist Party). The centrist leader has been investing the online space for a while and launched its own web TV on bayrou.fr a few months ago.

Royal also launched its own website desir d’avenir.org to let citizens participate to the political debate and even elaborate propositions.

Finally, Loic Le Meur, probably the most well-known French blogger (and managing director of Six Apart for Europe) recently joined the Sarkozy team as an adviser.

The importance of new media was symbolically highlighted by 3 main facts:

- Royal, Sarkozy and Le Pen all launched their virtual campaigns on 2nd life with many journalists reporting from this virtual world. See my colleague Joe Laszlo post on the opening of the Swedish embassy in the game a few weeks ago.

- A video captured by a citizen (not sure if it was with a mobile phone), posted on Dailymotion (the French YouTube) then shown on TV, created a polemic. In the video, Royal said teachers (the traditional electoral basis of the socialist party) had to work harder (remember we have a law here saying we should not work more than 35 hours a week!).

- Another video captured in a conference with a very limited student audience and then posted on the Internet also raised a polemic: one of the most famous and legitimate French journalist said he would vote for Bayrou. This might seem surprising for US readers but here editorialists are traditionally neutral.

After the influence several blogs had in the European referendum in 2005, this highlights again the raising societal role the Internet is playing. Some political parties have launched very limited mobile marketing campaigns to convince the younger generation but nothing more.

It will be interesting to see if mobile as emerged as a media in itself in the next presidential election…in 2012.

Updated: For French readers, here's an article from le Figaro summarizing the peaks in the Mobile Internet audience as well as the number of SMS sent during the election.