France: Two Separate Populist Parties; Two separate networks and One Go-Between Group

Abstract

This article proposes a literature review of existing works on the use of social networks by the populist parties in France, showing that they are part of the extension of a very different political history in both cases. French populists are divided along clear ideological radical left – radical right lines. The conflict is highly personalised. It heavily relies on social media – in part as a result of criticism of bias on the part of legacy media. Especially J.L.Mélenchon seems to be rather innovative and active in using many social media platforms and novel approaches to communication even when comparing at international level. The results show that the FB pages most shared by the two populist leaders were FB pages related to themselves, their party or other members of their organization. The shared links corresponded to the ideological orientation of the two leaders. We therefore study in detail the populist galaxies online, as a sign of the existence of two opposing political traditions that do not rely on the same networks.

Keywords

• facebook
• jean-luc mélenchon
• lfi
• marine le pen
• fn/rn
• populism
• right-wing party
• left-wing party
• network analysis
• media
• france