Why are legislative election candidates so present on social networks? A Toulouse researcher, specialist in the issue, was the guest of the Toulouse quarter-hour this Thursday, three days before the first round.
Why and how do Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jordan Bardella have so many followers on TikTok? Three days before the first round of the legislative elections, the answers from Marie Neihouser, researcher in Political Science, associated with the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès.
The legislative campaign, the shortest of the Fifth Republic, encouraged candidates and political parties more than ever to be omnipresent on the networks, explains the Toulouse researcher: “Candidates don’t necessarily have the time they would like in the field so spending on social networks is relatively practical.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has 2.4 million followers on TikTok while Jordan Bardella has 1.7 million. In the streets of Toulouse, young people talk about “Jordan phenomenon” who floods their feed, are they therefore his voters? Marie Neihouser’s response: “This remains the great unknown, there is a difference between following someone on a social network and traveling to vote […] TikTok is one more tool for Jordan Bardella, but it’s not because he’s present on this network that he becomes very popular with the population, I would say it’s the opposite. But we have to understand who is the chicken and who is the egg.”
