1. No category

A Tale of Two Campaigns: A Comparative Assessment of the Internet in French and US Presidential Elections
Dylan Kissane
CEFAM
Lyon, France
Paper to be presented at the 2010 Central European University Conference in the Social Sciences
Budapest, Hungary
16-18 April 2010
Please do not cite without permission.
ABSTRACT: French politicians, like those in democracies around the world, were enthralled by the success of
Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 US Presidential elections. Part of that thrall sprung from the
candidate’s embrace of internet campaigning and his use of Web 2.0 tools to communicate his ideas, raise campaign
funds and break through to voters that might otherwise not be reached through traditional and mainstream media
campaigning. In the wake of Obama’s win, speculation emerged that internet and Web 2.0 campaigning would soon
become a key tool in French politics, particularly at the personality-driven and high-profile Presidential level. In reality,
though, it seems unlikely that France will embrace an Obama style campaigns, not because they are ineffective but
because they are constrained by the French electoral system and French attitudes to the internet itself from doing.
*
*
*
Introduction
Barack Obama’s victory in the US Presidential election of November 2008 was not only historic for elevating an AfricanAmerican to Commander-in-Chief or for sending only the third Democrat since 1969 to the White House. It was also
historic because, for the first time, a candidate had access to and embraced the use of the internet and Web 2.0 tools to
drive both a fundraising effort and a campaign in an incredibly effective and, as Ann Thompson put it, “sincere, specific
and authentic” manner.1 Obama’s use of the internet as a fundraising tool, in particular, was identified as a major
strength of his campaign, with Jose Vargas noting that over the course of his 21 month campaign the Democrat
candidate raised in excess of half a billion dollars online.2 Add to this the candidate’s interactive website brimming with
online video, streaming live events, candidate and campaign live blogs and Obama’s personal Twitter feed and it seems
clear that Obama’s internet efforts had radically changed the paradigm for a US Presidential candidate’s online
campaign, both in terms of drawing eyes to his site and money to his war chest. It was little wonder, then, that other
politicians in other electorates around the world might consider drawing on this success and attempt to apply some of
Obama’s successful techniques in their local races.
For example, Kobi Haddad, advisor to then candidate and now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, embraced
much of Obama’s online presence in developing a web presence for the Likud politician. As Shane D’Aprile noted, “from
the bright blue backdrop, to the prominence of the social networking tools, to the font—Benjamin Netanyahu’s
campaign website was practically an exact replica *of Obama’s site+”.3 D’Aprile notes other Obama ‘copycat’ efforts by
South Africa’s Democratic Alliance, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, Spain’s Popular Party and Mauricio Funes’
campaign in El Salvador.4 More generally, what has been termed, sometimes pejoratively, as ‘American-style
campaigning’ has been reported in recent elections in Australia, Peru and Great Britain.5 Even in stereotypically antiAmerican France there has been evidence of a trend towards American style campaigning, a trend noted as emerging as
early as the mid-1990s by Philippe Maarek.6 Amongst the American campaign elements embraced have been preelection primary elections within political parties, long ‘pre-campaigns’ in which candidates build popularity without
explicitly running for office, “reunions, rallies and mass-meetings” and a greater influence of public opinion polling on
1
Ann Thompson. 2007. ‘The YouTube Presidential Debates: Hints at the Power of Web 2.0 Technologies.’ Journal of Computing in
Teacher Education 24(1): 35-36, p.35.
2
Jose Vargas. 2008. ‘Obama raised half a billion online.’ Washington Post (20 November 2008): http://tinyurl.com/ar6sh
3
Shane D’Aprile. 2009. ‘Operation New Media.’ Politics Magazine (April): http://tinyurl.com/d57lj4
4
D’Aprile. 2009.
5
Dylan Kissane. 2009. ‘Kevin07, Web 2.0 and Young Voters at the 2007 Australian Federal Election.’ CEU Political Science Journal
4(2): 144-168; Nicholas O’Shaughnessy. 2001. ‘The marketing of political marketing.’ European Journal of Marketing 35(9/10): 10471057, p.1053; Jane Bussey. 2000. ‘Campaign Finance Goes Global.’ Foreign Policy 118: 74-84.
6
Philippe Maarek. 1997. ‘New trends in French political communication: the 1995 presidential elections.’ Media, Culture and Society
19(3): 357-368.
candidate decision making.7 The French embrace of such campaign techniques and electoral elements might seem to
suggest that French politicians are ripe to join politicians in other democracies in embracing an Obama-style internet
campaign and fundraising approach in future elections. After all, the embrace of Web 2.0 tools has proved successful, to
varying extents, in electing politicians from both the right and left of the political spectrum in places as diverse as North
America, the South Pacific and the Middle East. Yet, as this paper will argue, there is at least one significant reason why
it seems rather unlikely that a French politician of any persuasion will soon embrace an Obama style online campaign.
This paper will argue that there are significant legislative obstacles and electoral restrictions preventing French
politicians from embracing the successful Obama model in France. Beginning with a short review of the nature and
successes of Web 2.0 campaigning in American and international contexts, this paper will then draw focus specifically on
recent US experiences in online campaigning during Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. In this analysis three elements of
Obama’s campaign will be highlighted: his use of the internet for fundraising, his use of his in-house social network
My.BarackObama.com and his use of online video, in particular through the video sharing site YouTube. The paper will
then consider such online efforts in the context of France, pointing to three reasons that make it less likely that a similar
campaign could work in that country: first, the electoral laws constraining the use of existing and emerging political
communications technologies; second, the political behaviour of French netizens online; and third, the attitudes of
French voters to political information gathered via the internet as opposed to mainstream television sources. This paper
will conclude by pointing to the importance of local context when attempting to replicate overseas electoral strategies.
Web 2.0 and Political Campaigning
Discussion of Web 2.0 campaigning necessitates some elaboration of what exactly is held to be Web 2.0 and how it is
different to Web 1.0 or static candidate homepages online. Drawing on the work of Allison Orr we can suggest that Web
2.0 encompasses “the second generation of tools provided by the Internet which have interactive and participatory
characteristics”.8 As opposed to the one-way communication model of a fixed, text-heavy political homepage, Web 2.0
embraces collaboration between users and politicians, with user-generated content a major feature of Web 2.0 rich
sites. Orr lists “social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, file-sharing, blogging, vlogging and torrents” among
the most significant Web 2.0 tools and explains the quick embrace of Web 2.0 by politicians and politically active
‘Netizens’ alike:
Netizens have embraced Web 2.0 in huge numbers, with hundreds of millions of individuals
writing blogs, uploading video, sharing files, and watching and reading others’ contributions.
Politicians have come on board, many recognising the importance of this medium in attracting
the attention of younger voters. Politicians all over the world now provide regular blogs and
vlogs of their activities available through their own website, or through portals such as YouTube.
Many politicians hail their use of these tools as innovative and a means to make them more
accountable and more democratic, and Netizens are agreeing with this assessment.9
Andrew Chadwick expands on this definition and discussion in his 2009 article, ‘Web 2.0: New Challenges for the Study
of E-Democracy in an Era of Informational Exuberance’.10 Chadwick draws on Tim O’Reilly and outlines seven principles
of Politics Web 2.0:
the Internet as a platform for political discourse; the collective intelligence emergent from
political web use; the importance of data over particular software and hardware
applications; perpetual experimentalism in the public domain; the creation of small scale
forms of political engagement through consumerism; the propagation of political content over
multiple applications; and rich user experiences on political websites.11
Synthesising the key elements of both Orr and Chadwick’s definitions and discussions of Web 2.0 and its relation to
politics and campaigning it is possible to speak generally of Web 2.0 being the collection of elements in collaborative
cyberspace drawn together to promote the dissemination of political ideas, the furthering of political agendas and the
promotion of candidates for political office, both via official campaign channels and outside of traditional campaign
structures.
7
Maarek. 1997, pp.359-362.
Allison Orr. 2007. Political Participation and Web 2.0. Paper presented at the 2007 APSA Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 24-26
September 2007: 1-16, p.3.
9
Orr. 2007, pp.3-4.
10
Andrew Chadwick. 2009. ‘Web 2.0: New Challenges for the Study of E-Democracy in an Era of Informational Exuberance.’ I/S: A
Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 5(1): 9-42.
11
Chadwick. 2009, p.19.
8
The rise of Web 2.0 campaigning in local and national elections has been widely noted even if the efficacy of such
campaigning is still in doubt. Linda Feldman, for example, lauds the arrival of Web 2.0 tools, arguing that “the advent of
Web 2.0...has expanded the playing field for presidential candidates in ways that were unthinkable just a few years
ago”.12 Wired magazine, a tech and internet focused monthly, also implied that the embrace of Web 2.0 tools was an
electoral ‘game changer’ arguing that the “ideal democratic process is participatory and the Web 2.0 phenomenon is
about democratizing digital technology”.13 Indeed, Wired’s Jennifer Granick went further, claiming that Web 2.0 was
going to be a tool through which Americans could “re-democratize our democracy”.14 Enthusiasm for Web 2.0
campaigning was also a factor in Time magazine’s famous – or perhaps infamous – decision to award their 2006 Person
of the Year to ‘You’, the individual interacting and collaborating online through Web 2.0 outlets such as YouTube,
Wikipedia and MySpace. In explaining that decision, Time’s Lev Grossman noted that blogging about our candidates
losing was one of the types of interactions that pushed Time editors to make their unusual choice.15 Whether
challenging traditional notions of political and journalistic gate-keeping or in its increasing centrality in electoral
campaigns, Web 2.0 and the collaborative tools it embraces are held to be significant parts of many modern polls.16 Yet
others point to the potentially limited influence that Web 2.0 campaigns have had and, importantly, note the
significance of local context in determining a Web 2.0 campaign’s utility.
In ‘Kevin07, Web 2.0 and the 2007 Australian Federal Election’ it was noted that the Australian Labor Party’s efforts to
use Web 2.0 to win the support of young voters were partly ineffective because of the particular nature of the
Australian electoral system:
Along with a handful of other liberal democracies, Australia requires every resident citizen over
the age of 18 to vote in national and state elections with penalties in place for voters who forget
or choose not to vote. This has an important ramifications for political parties seeking votes: as
there is no need to ‘get out the vote’ – more than 90% of registered voters voted at the 2007
Federal election – the political parties can focus entirely on winning votes rather than mobilizing
voters. This may impact the efficacy of Web 2.0 electioneering in comparison to voluntary voting
systems such as the US or the UK.17
With reference to the same election cycle, Gwyneth Howell and Bruce Da Silva argued that first-time voters remained
unconvinced by Web 2.0 campaigning, concluding that:
[w]hilst theorists support [the notion that new media techniques targeting young voters are
effective], this study suggests that unlike the tactics employed within the US political sphere,
first time voters in Australia remain sceptical to sincerity and credibility of online tactics in
communicating political policy and information.18
Research concentrating on campaigns in the 1990s in Great Britain found that “the internet made a very limited impact
on the first general election campaign in which the parties consciously sought to exploit its possibilities”, though the
authors – David Farrell and Paul Webb – did caution that the potential future impact of the internet on political
campaigning in the UK could not be overlooked.19
But while there are some questions as to the efficacy of Web 2.0 campaigns there is also some enthusiasm. Rachel
Gibson and Ian McAllister, for example, note that there are potentially significant positive electoral impacts for political
12
Linda Feldman. 2007. ‘Web 2.0 Meets Campaign 2008.’ Christian Science Monitor (16 May 2007): http://tinyurl.com/yl95aqf
Jennifer Granick. 2006. ‘Saving Democracy with Web 2.0.’ Wired (25 October 2006): http://tinyurl.com/yf43cf5
14
Granick. 2006.
15
Lev Grossman. 2006. ‘Time’s Person of the Year: You.’ Time (13 December 2006): http://tinyurl.com/yf54ud
16
Terry Flew. 2008. ‘Not Yet the Internet Election: Online Media, Political Commentary and the 2007 Australian Federal Election.’ eprints.qut.edu.au: http://tinyurl.com/yjbouq8, p.10; Jim Macnamara. 2008. E-Electioneering: Use of new media in the 2007
Australian federal election. Paper presented at the 2008 ANZCA Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, July 2008: 1-21, p.7; Tamara
Small. 2008. ‘The Facebook Effect? Online Campaigning in the 2008 Canadian and US Elections.’ Policy Options (November 2008):
85-87.
17
Kissane. 2009, pp.161-162.
18
Gwyneth Howell and Bruce Da Silva. 2010. ‘New media, first time voters and the 2007 Australian federal election.’ Public
Communication Review 1(1): 27-36, p.33.
19
David Farrell and Paul Webb. 2000. ‘Political Parties as Campaign Organisations.’ in Parties without Partisans, edited by R Dalton
and M Wattenburg. Oxford: Oxford University Press (pre-print): http://tinyurl.com/yfzqogj, p.12.
13
parties that embrace Web 2.0 tools but note, too, that the impact varies depending on whether that party is small or
large.20 In the context of the most recent Israeli elections, D’Aprile notes that the two major parties – Likud and Kadima
– organised supporters via the use of SMS (texting) and through the use of online social networking sites (Facebook) and
micro-blogging sites (Twitter).21 In the Israeli context, he notes, “internet penetration is high enough for it to be a gamechanger” and, indeed, the election-winning Likud party took advantage of Israel’s high rate of connectedness to do
everything from rouse volunteers and direct them to specific regional areas to allowing ordinary Israeli electors to make
targeted phone calls through the Likud campaign site.22 Private enterprises specialising in Web 2.0 campaigning such as
Blue State Digital are reaping the benefits of successful online electioneering having been engaged to mimic their
success with the Obama/Biden campaign in elections for the Mayor of London, for Fianna Fáil in Ireland, the Labor Party
of New Zealand and the Swedish Social Democrats.23 D’Aprile cites Peter Bihr, a strategist for Germany’s Social
Democrat Party, in support of the efficacy of Web 2.0 campaigning and notes that German parties are increasingly
seeking out young voters online and instituting basic internet fundraising drives, too.24
With such contrary opinions as to the utility of Web 2.0 campaigns it is hard to describe just how effective they are.
Certainly context matters, particularly in terms of internet connectedness and net penetration. As well, the local
electoral regulations seem to make some difference as to the ability of parties to win votes online, particularly the votes
of young or first time voters who are often targets of Web 2.0 campaigns. Yet despite disagreement in the literature as
to the overall efficacy of Web 2.0 efforts, almost all authors agree that there is much political potential in Web 2.0 and
that, further, even where effects or results are less than expected presently, most scholars maintain the notion that a
revolution in political communication and electioneering is increasingly near or may have – in the shape of the
successful 2008 Obama campaign – have actually already arrived.
Obama/Biden 2008
Tamara Small described Barack Obama as “the newly minted king of online campaigning” and, in the wake of the
inexperienced junior Senator’s meteoric rise to the Presidency, this assessment seems, at the least, to be more than
fair.25 Obama utilised all mainstream Web 2.0 tools in the course of his campaign and, indeed, after his move to 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue.26 Obama’s campaign maintained a high profile on Facebook, updated followers on Twitter
regularly, made great use of online video as a communications tool (especially market leading site YouTube) and drew
on social networks to draw supporters and their cash to his campaign. So integral to his campaign was the internet that
commentator Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post noted that, were it not for the internet, Barack Obama would
not have been President and, further, without the internet he would not have even been the Democrat nominee for
President.27 In this section three key parts – online fundraising, My.BarackObama.com (an Obama-centric social
network) and online video on YouTube – of Obama’s online strategy will be introduced, outlined and their impact on the
campaign assessed.
Steve Schifferes, writing for the BBC in May 2008, noted the modern political truism that “the internet favours the
outsider and gives them the ability to quickly mobilise supporters and money online”.28 While a politician without
supporters – and therefore voters – will never get elected, it is also true that the modern American Presidential
campaign requires significant financial backing to succeed. With Obama spending nearly three-quarters of a billion
dollars in his Presidential campaign and with strict limits on the total amount that any citizen can donate in place, it was
necessary for Obama to reach out to as many donors as possible; the internet proved to offer the best means for this
outreach.29 Obama’s internet fundraising machine was extremely successful in drawing small donations to the
20
Rachel Gibson and Ian McAllister. 2009. Crossing the Web 2.0 Frontier? Candidates and Campaigns Online in the Australian
Federal Election of 2007. Paper presented at the 2009 ECPR General Conference, Potsdam, Germany, 10-12 September 2009: 1-30,
pp.20-22.
21
D’Aprile. 2009.
22
D’Aprile. 2009.
23
Blue State Digital. 2010. Blue State Digital: Clients. http://tinyurl.com/aat5tf; D’Aprile. 2009.
24
D’Aprile. 2009.
25
Small. 2008, p.86.
26
The use of new media and Web 2.0 tools as part of an explicit, structured e-government approach by Obama has been noted by
researchers, including David Osimo. 2008. ‘benchmarking in eGovernment in the Web 2.0 era: what to measure, and how.’
European Journal of ePractice 4: 1-11, p.7.
27
Claire Cain Miller. 2008. ‘How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics.’ New York Times (7 November 2008):
http://tinyurl.com/5nk8fs
28
Steve Shifferes. 2008. ‘Internet key to Obama victories.’ BBC (22 May 2008): http://tinyurl.com/ych3esc
29
Campaign receipts for the Obama campaign are recorded at OpenSecrets.org (http://tinyurl.com/44muja). Campaign donation
limits are outlined at the Federal election Commission site (http://tinyurl.com/ydmkwbk).
campaign. The Washington Post reported in March 2008 that most of the $91 million Obama raised in January and
February of that year came from small donations via his campaign homepage.30 Sources reported that most donations
to Obama’s campaign were in small denominations, nearly half of which were under $25. The technology-centric site
TechCrunch, for example, recorded that more than 250,000 supporters sent more than $28 million in donations through
the Obama website in January 2008, with 90% of those donations being less than $100 and 40% less than $25.31 The
paradigm shift that this level and breadth of fundraising represented is perhaps best explained with reference to the
immediately previous Democratic primary campaign of Howard Dean. Obama’s internet outreach allowed him to raise
more in that single month (January 2008) than Dean managed in his entire 2004 primary campaign.32 Truly, then,
Obama’s embrace of the internet as a fundraising tool was nothing less than a paradigm shift in American
electioneering, though it was not to be his only contribution to online campaigning lore.
In March 2007 the New York Times reported that a new social network had emerged online.33 Noting it was only one of
many “sprouting on the Internet these days like wild mushrooms”, journalist Brad Stone – as perhaps most others –
seemed unaware of the potential significance of My.BarackObama.com (MyBO), Obama’s in-house social network
designed by Blue State Digital for his Presidential campaign.34 In the wake of the Democratic primary elections on the 4th
of March 2008 known as ‘Super Tuesday II’, however, the benefits of MyBO became clear. Obama’s campaign harnessed
the power of the network and its user-contributed personal information, coupled it with known voter preferences and
registered party identification statistics and rallied thousands to the polls and to the Obama cause. Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic campaign director and candidate advisor, described the benefits of MyBO thus:
You could go online and download the names, addresses, and phone numbers of 100 people in
your neighborhood to get out and vote – or the 40 people on your block who were undecided...
‘Here is the leaflet: print it out and get it to them.' It was you, at your computer, in your house,
printing and downloading. They did it all very well...In 1992, Carville said, 'It's the economy,
stupid. This year, it was the network, stupid!35
The nexus that MyBO offered the campaign between typical campaign information (voter statistics, polling, likely voting,
demographics) and the large amount of information that individuals are willing to share in online social networks
allowed the Obama campaign to take full advantage of their supporters for electoral gain. The social network that was
just one of many in February 2007 had blossomed into a fully functioning online world by July 2008 with more than a
million individual user accounts and tens of thousands of user-organised campaign events being held across the United
States.36 MyBO made donating money to the campaign a friendly game – users could set targets and compete with their
friends to see who could reach their nominated goal first – and allowed the campaign to break up its millions of phone
calls into “chunks small enough for a supporter to handle in an hour or two”.37 Further, MyBO allowed for the campaign
to put in place the basic elements of a campaign organisation weeks or even months before the campaign actually
arrived. In Texas, Colorado and Wisconsin, for example, Duke University Law Professor Zephyr Teachout noted that
“MyBO was critical *and+provided the tools, remote training, and opportunity for supporters to build the campaign on
their own...When the campaign eventually did deploy staff to these states, they supplemented an already-built
infrastructure and volunteer network."38 So effective was the Obama campaign’s MyBO social network, it perhaps lay
second only to the candidate’s YouTube offerings in its potential voter reach.
The impact that the Obama campaign’s YouTube strategy had is best summed up by Joe Trippi in comments to the New
York Times. At the end of the 2008 Presidential he noted that the official campaign YouTube channel had been viewed
for a total of 14.5 million hours; the same 14.5 million hours on broadcast television would have cost the Obama
campaign around $47 million dollars.39 YouTube’s effectiveness as a campaign tool was noted elsewhere, and not just
for its cost-effectiveness. Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group noted that Obama’s YouTube campaign was
30
Matthew Mosk. 2008. ‘Obama Rewriting Rules for Raising Campaign Money Online.’ Washington Post (28 March 2008):
http://tinyurl.com/27f2mf
31
Michael Arrington. 2008. ‘Obama sets record with January donations.’ TechCrunch (4 February 2008): http://tinyurl.com/ybez9ao
32
Arrington. 2008.
33
Brad Stone. 2007. ‘Social Networking’s Next Phase.’ New York Times (3 March 2007): http://tinyurl.com/y9cq94q
34
Sonte. 2007.
35
David Talbot. 2008. ‘How Obama Really Did It.’ MIT Technology Review (September/October 2008): 1-11, pp.1-2.
36
Talbot. 2008, p.4.
37
Talbot. 2008, p.5.
38
Talbot. 2008, p.5.
39
Miller. 2008.
significantly more effective at winning viewers and supporters than the rival McCain camp.40 As Figure 1 (below)
demonstrates, Obama’s campaign clearly not only used the premier online video site more often than the Republican
campaign but also with more efficacy, drawing more video views and subscribers to their official YouTube channel.
Candidate
Obama
McCain
Videos Uploaded
1792
329
Videos Uploaded / Day
approx. 4
approx. 2
Channel Views
18,413,110
2,032,993
Subscribers
114,559
28,419
Figure 1: Comparison of Obama and McCain YouTube Activity (to 3 November 2008)41
Notable Obama speeches during the campaign gathered millions of views on YouTube, with the candidate’s speech on
race reaching particularly high numbers.42 YouTube was also an effective means for the campaign to expose new
political advertisements and allow those advertisements to be distributed by campaign supporters on their own blogs,
forums and internet sites. With the Pew Internet and American Life survey reporting that 35% of all adult American’s
had watched a political video online, Obama’s domination of this medium helped deliver his message to voters, drive up
voter turnout and bring home a victory for the Democrats in November.43
A French Obama? Non.
The strength of Obama’s internet campaign and the successful result it helped to provide encouraged other politicians
to seek to apply his strategies and Web 2.0 outreach in their own local elections. Yet, as political strategists are always
wont to remind candidates, all politics really is local and the local contexts make a significant difference in whether a
Obama-like campaign will be successful or not. As has been noted earlier, a Web 2.0 campaign did work well in Israel
but failed to work effectively in Australia. Two major reasons for this were differences in the local electoral regulations
(compulsory versus voluntary voting in Australia and Israel, respectively) and the penetration of high speed internet to
facilitate tools such as online video and file sharing (low penetration versus high penetration in Australia and Israel,
respectively). Yet it is still not as simple as to argue that a Web 2.0 campaign will be successful where voting is voluntary
– hence an internet driven ‘get out the vote’ effort has potentially significant payoffs – or where high speed internet
penetration is relatively high. Indeed, in the example of France there stands a state that, like Israel, maintains a
voluntary voting regime and has, according to Spiegel magazine, “sailed past the U.S. to become one of the world's most
wired nations”.44 Yet there are significant contextual issues that, in combination, seem to prevent the success of an
Obama-style Web 2.0 campaign emerging in France.
The first, and perhaps most significant, is what Patrick Basham of the CATO Institute refers to as the illiberal reality of
European elections.45 French electoral laws place severe restrictions on campaign advertising and candidate outreach,
limits that American political candidates probably could not envisage. For example, French candidates have little chance
to appeal directly to voters through television advertising, this being banned in France since the 1960s.46 Yet online
restrictions have hit hard, too, and severely limited the opportunities for French politicians to engage in Obama-style
campaigning. Veronique Kleck, speaking at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University,
noted that even sending official campaign emails is restricted in France with political parties needing prior authorisation
to send even a single email to voters.47 Campaigns are also restricted from buying advertising online related to keywords
(for example: ‘french election’, ‘french presidential election’ or ‘ump election’).48 With electoral restrictions such as
these in place, the effectiveness of campaign outreach to internet users is severely compromised and leads campaigns
40
Jeremiah Owyang. 2008. ‘Snapshot of Presidential Candidate Social networking Stats.’ Web Strategy (November 2008):
http://tinyurl.com/6l2dc7
41
Original data from Owyang. 2008.
42
NPR reported in March 2008 that the speech was the top rating video on YouTube having garnered more than 1.6 million views
and outpacing ‘lip-synching Chinese teenagers, babies falling over [and] drunk cats’. See NPR. 2008. ‘Obama’s Speech on Race Tops
YouTube.’ NPR Morning Edition (20 March 2008): http://tinyurl.com/y8g7agt
43
Aaron Smith and Lee Rainie. 2008. Pew Internet and American Life Survey: The Internet and the 2008 Election.
http://tinyurl.com/d6jx5m
44
Jennifer Schenker. 2007. ‘Vive la High-Speed Internet.’ Der Spiegel (19 July 2007): http://tinyurl.com/yd6yx6s
45
Patrick Basham. 2002. The Illiberal Reality of European-Style Campaign Reforms. CATO Institute (March 2002):
http://tinyurl.com/y8fxpbr
46
Maarek. 1997, p.358.
47
Veronique Kleck. 2007. The Information Society and Democratic Process: A Take on the French Elections. Lecture at the Minda de
Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, 10 April 2007: http://tinyurl.com/yeneo56. Full podcast of the lecture
available at this link also.
48
Kleck. 2007.
to invest very little in their online efforts. Nicolas Sarkozy’s winning campaign spent only €4 million on internet related
campaigns and his rival, Segolene Royal, spent just €2 million.49
A second reason relates to how French voters interact politically online. Despite enthusiasm from some sources –
Stanislas Magniant of Netpolitique.net argued that “the Internet won this campaign” for Sarkozy – other figures seems
to suggest that France voters still do not treat the internet as a serious source of political and electoral information. 50
Figures cited by Kleck suggest that political interaction online in France remains largely non-serious, certainly not driven
by fundraising and voter interaction as in the United States. She states that the top four election-related internet
activities online during the 2007 Presidential campaign were, in order, gathering information on candidates’ agendas,
sending election-related jokes, checking election-related polling and discussing the election in online forums.51 The first
and third of these suggest an online interaction more likely to be characterised as ‘Web 1.0’ where the interaction
between users and political parties is one-way and campaigns are interested less in what site visitors are thinking and
saying than in what they can be told.
A third reason that a Web 2.0 campaign not be so effective in France relates to the attitude French voters take to
information sourced via the internet. Long accustomed to a largely state-run television system – one that has only
recently opened up and is still, for all reforms, largely monopolised by France Television and TF1 – French voters tend to
place much more trust in information delivered via the evening news than gathered online.52 Kleck finds that French
voters are five times more likely to believe what they hear via television (65%) than believe what they see or read online
(12%).53 So trusted is the information delivered by television in France that the 8pm nightly news on leading station TF1
is known as ‘la grand-messe’ or ‘the big mass’, imparting with religious overtones the unquestioning trust that French
viewers place in television news.54 Compare this to the US where 48% believe that the news online is “the same as you’ll
get anywhere else” and it is clear why a net-savvy campaign is more likely to be effective in the United States than in a
European-style, heavily regulated media arena like France. Added to the previously mentioned restrictions on
advertising, the emerging restrictions on effective web communication and the lack of seriousness that French users
bring to political interactions online and it seems clear that a French campaign in the Obama style is still some time
away.
In spite of this local context, there may be some room for French Web 2.0 efforts to break through. Carvajel reports that
in the final stages of the 2007 French Presidential campaign there were more than 1500 videos posted to both YouTube
and its French-based rival DailyMotion.55 While significant in numerical terms, the lack of impact is attested to by the
fact that, until very late in the campaign, the winning Sarkozy campaign did not have one pro-Sarkozy video in the sites
Top 50 until a specially produced effort names ‘The Human Bomb’ pushed through in the final weeks. 56 Despite a
prodigious output approaching Obama and McCain’s 2100 video total, no campaign video achieved close to the relative
popularity of Obama’s speech on race or Will.I.Am’s pro-Obama tribute spot.
Conclusion
Obama’s 2008 internet and Web 2.0 campaign was a masterpiece of early adaptation and successful implementation. In
particular, his use of the internet as a fundraising tool, his adaptation of social networks to a political campaign through
MyBO and his use of online video were all elements that his campaign excelled in and which helped to deliver him the
political office he sought. So successful was his online campaigning between February 2007 and November 2008 that he
inspired politicians elsewhere to attempt to apply his techniques in their own political contexts. In some cases this was
very successful, as in Netanyahu’s election in Israel, while in others it failed to grasp the targeted voters, as in Kevin
Rudd’s campaign in Australia. The reasons for this failure seem to be clear: local political context matters.
49
Kleck. 2007.
Doreen Caravjal. 2007. ‘Online campaigning comes into its own in France.’ New York Times (7 May 2007):
http://tinyurl.com/yam7emb
51
Kleck. 2007.
52
Mediametrie, the French media monitoring organisation, reports typical viewing share of above 65% for the country’s six national
chains, and a 55% share for TF1 and the France Television group (France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5). See, for example,
Mediametrie. 2010. Médiamat Hebdo: Durée d'écoute de la télévision et part d'audience des chaînes (%).
http://tinyurl.com/yah4zbq
53
Kleck. 2007.
54
See, for example, Emmanuel Berreta. 2008. Journal télévisé: France 2 réduit l'écart avec TF1. http://tinyurl.com/ydo8zk3
55
Caravjel. 2007.
56
Caravjel. 2007.
50
It is for this reason it has been here argued that the likelihood of a French campaign in the style of Obama’s internet and
Web 2.0 effort is unlikely. Three reasons stand in support of this conclusion. First, the French electoral laws explicitly
work against open political communication by candidates with voters with restrictions on advertising being particularly
harsh by US standards. Second, political interaction online in France appears to remain largely non-serious or located
around ‘Web 1.0’ sites – static webpages, candidate homepages and the like – where information can be gathered but
not shared or generated by users. Thirdly, the internet itself is not seen as a serious avenue for news and information in
France. French citizens consider the heavily regulated television and mainstream media market as more accurate than
the internet, a reality far different from the almost plurality of Americans who consider internet political news as good
as anything else they’ll find in the mainstream media. While there is some room for confidence, particularly with the
rise of internet video in the previous Presidential poll, there seems little to suggest that an Obama-style campaign will
emerge, let alone succeed, in the French Republic anytime soon.