Legislative elections 2024: spam, bots… are the elections really creating a buzz on social networks ?

L'annonce des résultats aux élections européennes a engendré plus d'un million de messages en quelques heures, rapporte Visibrain. 13_Phunkod/Shutterstock

The legislative elections have become a hot topic on social networks since the dissolution of the National Assembly. The legislative elections have been propelled to the center of more than twenty million messages, an absolute record that testifies to the growing interest of Internet users in politics, according to a study by Visibrain.

Since the announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly by the President of the French Republic, the French have rushed to the platforms, underlines a study by Visibrain, the social network monitoring tool. The legislative elections, the second round of which will be held on Sunday, July 7, generated 23.4 million messages, 18% of which were devoted to the first round.

The RN, the most mentioned

While the National Rally was the most mentioned during the European elections, it is now closely followed by the new alliance of the Popular Front. The trend was subsequently reversed, leaving the NFP ahead of the RN but since June 9, it is the party formerly called the National Front which has won with 9.7 million of messages, or 60% more than the coalition of left-wing parties.

With more than 8.1 million likes on his content since January, Jordan Bardella has eleven times more likes than Manon Aubry. His videos generate more than 78 million views.

Spam and bots

However, this volume could be due to spam and bots, these fake accounts on the platforms, according to the study. "Despite the&rsquo ;high volume of messages published on the legislative elections, a certain part of the flow is not 'natural', with accounts either spamming or creating fake disposable accounts&quot ;, observes Florent Lefebvre, social data analyst and partner of Visibrain, who notably analyzed and mapped the activity around the legislative elections on X. " Spam accounts were mainly present in the community supporting Reconquest and the National Rally. They helped make this community more visible on X/Twitter regarding the legislative elections", he added.