Internet innovation
Soufron, Jean-Baptiste
INTERNET AND new digital technologies played remarkable, novel roles in the 2007 French presidential campaign. They produced unexpected shifts in daily operations of parties, which had to...
...The old-style chain of party decision making in a campaign was supplemented (often challenged) by a different type of political practice...
...What were the strengths of online activism...
...Online activists created networks of blogs friendly to her and sifted through material on them...
...All this has interesting implications for political action...
...golene Royal's team was the innovator in these), and campaigners were mobilized via instant messaging...
...Its large Internet sites assumed that the public needed to be fed information and little more...
...How can "collective intelligence" be further developed as a democratic, interactive tool and as a means to help win elections...
...Foes of the proposed constitution made innovative use of digital tools to present their positions and to respond to criticisms of their views in the media and from politicians...
...The government also used the Internet for a "Yes" campaign, but mostly as just another traditional top-down mass communication device...
...For example, the campaign employed simple tools, such as blogs, listservs, instant messaging, and online forums...
...Strong and weak points were debated, and soon increasingly large audiences paid attention...
...DISSENT / Fall 2007 39...
...In short, political communication departed from beyond the traditional paths of a party apparatus, public relations teams, and mainstream journalism...
...What are its limits...
...Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign relied mainly on traditional organization and certainly did not try to synthesize its candidate's political program in response to a mass online constituency...
...In this sense, the online campaign questioned the past role of party expertise, past social codes of PS activists and their leaders, and, more simply put, authority within the party and politics...
...How can online and traditional party activism be linked fruitfully...
...While a local traditional party activist would he putting up posters, organizing meetings, and disseminating party messages, an online activist would be running a blog and posting several articles a week...
...Call it a "network effect": a good article on one site was soon being discussed on many others...
...Royal's Web site, desirsdavenir.org, created something that might be called political "collective intelligence...
...A popular blog article could provoke several hundred comments, and digital tools could allow campaigners to identify and encourage potential activists from among the respondents...
...Yet online activists believed such tools could be reinvented to improve political practices and to make decision making more democratic and effective both within the party (hence the discomfort of some traditional organizers) and, it was hoped, one day in government...
...What were its weak points...
...Forums were used for political arguments and to recruit new people to the campaign...
...They also dovetailed with the way she ran her successful campaign in 2004 to defeat conservative ex-prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin in order to become chief executive of France's Poitou-Charentes region...
...Emails and instant messaging allowed for collection of more information and promotion of debate...
...The Internet is often viewed as DISSENT / Fall 2007 37 nothing more than a tool for the dissemination of massive numbers of messages, but Royal's campaign showed how it can be an organizational tool and how communication can be transformed into activism, shaping decision making and reshaping the relation between a political leader and her supporters...
...Local blogs for activists and thematic blogs on political issues were invented and linked to local and national committees...
...Through desirs, the Internet became comparable to a Swiss Army knife with multiple uses...
...These efforts inspired Royal's presidential Internet campaign...
...The tools used 38 DISSENT / Fall 2007 by the online campaign were virtually identical to those used by many modern companies in day-to-day work: emails, forums, blogs, wikis, and the like...
...These will be important questions as the French left tries to put itself together again in the Sarkozy era...
...These differences were reproduced on a national level...
...While a traditional party activist would go to party rallies, an online militant would be reacting quickly to statements in online forums, demonstrating more intense daily involvement and availability...
...TRADITIONAL PARTY organizers were unaccustomed to these types of activism, and some tension resulted...
...There were forums and interactive debates online (Se...
...Surfers had quick access online to the candidate's speeches, and were provided with space to comment on how to improve Royal's program or to make suggestions to her political teams...
...Then, in her pursuit of the presidential nomination of the Socialist Party (PS), she fashioned a campaign in which activists communicated among themselves while also coordinating with the PS organization...
...As the referendum approached, "No" campaigners fashioned more and more connections among themselves...
...In the end, of course, he won and now the PS's traditional organization is battered, even though the party did relatively well in the ensuing legislative elections...
...Wikis" (Web sites that can be modified by visitors) and listservs (computer software that sends mass mailings) made it possible to ensure the candidate's political responsiveness to supporters and potential constituents...
...The Web's presence in French politics began in a serious way in 2005 during the referendum on the European Constitution...
...Online activism didn't win the election for Royal (it did help her win the PS presidential primary), and there is still a lot of evaluating and analyzing to do...
...at the CERSA-CNRS/University of Paris 2 on digital technology and its impact on law...
...Royal was, of course, the only person who could present her own political positions, but she used all these Web networks—"collective intelligence"—to formulate and rethink them responsively...
...JEAN-BAPTISTE SOUFRON is a French lawyer based in Paris, where he is preparing a Ph.D...
...Exchanges of articles and references among sites helped to create expanding circles of conversation...
...The Internet became a practical tool to bring people and efforts together, to broadcast ideas, all to promote a "No" vote...
...In contrast, "No" campaigners used smaller scale tools, such as blogs, to encourage public participation and conversation rather than just deliver facts and details...
...She made "participative democracy" one of her themes, and this was the first time that a major national campaign reformed its own efforts in regular interaction with Web users...
...These constituted a dense network of sites, individuals, and ideas, all in political movement and produced collectively...
...Interactive debates online received more than three million messages, 170,000 of which dealt with fifty issues formulated by online managers...
...The Web was essential in this, but digital means had to be accessible even to computer novices...
...Activists online helped to create the content of political debates, and this, in turn, fed into the traditional media...
...They produced unexpected shifts in daily operations of parties, which had to reverse their tactics as a result of information flows and the need to respond to revelations from unauthorized videos broadcast on the Web...
...But then again, participatory democracy was not one of his themes...
...Translated from the French by George Holoch...
...All this was directed and synthesized by activists using the new technologies...
...While traditional PS campaign organizers prepared summary analyses on the basis of various reports from their comrades around the country in order to develop strategies and activities, online managers created debates and exchanges on the Web, only then summarized them and fed them into new participatory forums online...
...This new practice demanded respect for rhetorical and communicative frameworks established by online activists through their varied networks...
...In fact, tensions gradually arose between what might be called traditional activists—those involved in the usual party campaign mechanisms—and Web activists...
...In the last stages of the campaign, desirsdavenir.org received 200,000 visits and 3,000 messages a day...
...He is also the former chief legal officer of the Wikimedia Foundation...
...During the presidential campaign, he was an adviser on Internet and privacy legal issues...
Vol. 54 • September 2007 • No. 4
