The 2017 French Presidential Campaign on Twitter
Résumé
The French presidential election was one of the main political event of 2017. The campaign was highly unpredictable, with moving allegiances shifting around the five main parties, instead of the historical left-right confrontation. We propose an analysis of Twitters users participation in this campaign, thanks to more than 20000 manually annotated profiles, with a focus on the differences between male and female participation on the platform. The first analyses show that the use of Twitter varies wildly according to the party. A large part of the profiles seem to have been created specifically for the campaign (19% of the profiles were created after September 2016). The majority of the participants are male, with approximately 10000 profiles owned by men and 4000 by women. Women tend to publish less tweets than men, but to retweet more. The main peaks of activity correlate with campaign events, particularly the debates and rounds of the election. La France Insoumise and Les Républicains were highly present during all the campaign, while the Front National profiles were especially active between the first and second rounds of the election. Despite the election being a national event, it attracted international attention, as demonstrated by the many countries and languages present in the dataset. Many of the most prominent countries are European neighbours such as UK, Spain or Italy. Interestingly, the international support was particularly strong for the Front National, with 11% of their identified profiles not being located in France. The retweet and mention networks are highly segregated between parties, but suggest nonetheless a proximity between Les Républicains and the Front National, as well as between the Parti Socialiste and En Marche.