Videos presenting the cardinals in Formula 1 pilots and viral image of Donald Trump in papal attire, the contents around the conclave, which begins Wednesday in Rome to elect the next pope, proliferate on social networks.
Presumably generated by artificial intelligence, a color photo, broadcast by the American president on his social social network on Saturday, shows it the solemn air in an armchair, the closed face, dressed in the white cassock of the pope, wearing the miter, sporting the imposing gold cross around the neck, left hand placed on his thigh and right index raised to the sky.
This image, strongly criticized, is only an example of content, often humorous, which have flooded the internet since the disappearance of Pope Francis on April 21.
In all, more than 1.3 million tweets have been published around the conclave since the death of the Sovereign Pontiff while this subject has accumulated 363.3 million views on Tiktok, a particularly popular network among young people, according to the Visibrain watch platform.
An online game has even emerged. Called “Fantapapa”, it allows you to choose your favorite cardinals and make your forecasts on the model of sports betting.
– Protocol, mystery and ceremonial –
An election behind closed doors in the monument that is the Sistine Chapel, a breathless suspense, a black or white smoke: this strong “visual symbolic is conducive to the narrative formats of social networks”, estimates with AFP Refka Payssan, doctoral student and researcher in information and communication sciences.
“The conclave is both gilding, protocol, ceremonial but also secrecy and mystery”, skillfully maintained by the Vatican, abounds Stéphanie Laporte, founder of Otta, digital strategy consultancy.
And “Young people like to speculate,” she continues. “On the networks, everyone has an opinion, an opinion and everyone wants to decipher info, look for clues, know which cardinal will become a pope. It is almost a +escape game +” (escape game based on observation, deduction and logic), for the expert.
In addition, there is “this curiosity for live history”, the conclave being perceived as a rare and historic event, the last having taken place twelve years ago, recalls Refka Payssan.
Beyond the Catholics, “young people are very aware of the influence of the Pope on hundreds of millions and even billions of people, be it his position on contraception or the environment,” notes Stéphanie Laporte.
– Digital moult and pop culture –
The interest aroused by the conclave also reflects the digital moult operated by the Vatican in recent years to seduce young generations.
The Pope’s official account on X, @pontifx, created in 2012 by Benedict XVI but especially used by François, which is available in nine languages, totals 50 million subscribers, while the Instagram account of the deceased Pope brought together more than ten million.
With the support of the Church, many cardinals have also invested the field of social media, becoming for some of the internet figures.
Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, Archbishop of Tokyo, multiplies the “selfies” for his 2,900 subscribers on Instagram and 1,700 friends on Facebook, one with his peers on a bus on the way to pray on the grave of Pope Francis.
Timothy Dolan, new York archbishop (nearly 300,000 subscribers on X and 55,000 on Instagram), regularly publishes videos where he tells his days in Rome before the conclave, without revealing the content of the current discussions.
Known for his moderate positions, Cardinal Philippin Luis Antonio Tagle is a hit thanks to videos where we see him doing karaoke. It has more than 600,000 subscribers on Facebook.
The cardinals are “absolutely fascinating characters who entered the +Pop culture +”, fueling the enthusiasm of the public, underlines Stéphanie Laporte.
All the more with works like the book “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown, adapted to the cinema in 2009, or more recently the thriller “Conclave”, of the German Edward Berger, which is a dazzling success in theaters and on the streaming platforms.
dax/pel/mm
X
