AN ESOMAR WORLD RESEARCH ROUNDTABLE
On 13 February 2007, ESOMAR organised a Roundtable on the subject of DEMOCRACY ONLINE - Internet and Public Opinion before the Presidential Elections: new influences, new measures?
Moderated by Thierry Vedel (Professor at the prestigious Sciences Politiques University), the Roundtable attracted an invited audience of 70 journalists and ESOMAR Members. Market research specialists, political party strategists and politics experts discussed the influence of the internet on the upcoming French election. The result was clear: whatever the methods used and the points of views expressed, all agree that 2007 marks a real watershed.
“We are convinced that the internet will influence the final votes; the key question is how much?”.This analysis made by Thierry Solere, head of internet strategy for the UMP , summarized in a few words the feeling of all panellists.
Yves-Marie Cann, Director at IFOP, a leading French market research agency strongly involved in political opinion polls, began the Roundtable by underlining that the internet still remains a “new” media. First, internet users, and particularly those interested in politics, are really different than the average person in France: high earning, well educated men predominate. Secondly, the internet is seen as a reliable source of information by 21% of internet users. This is both low, particularly compared to other media (TV, radio and written press are significantly higher), and high given the fact that within a couple of years, this new media gained real legitimacy. Cann therefore confirmed an influence exists but it is quite difficult to assess.
How does the influence develop through the internet? This point was directly addressed by Guilhem Fouetillou, from the University of Compiègne who created observatoire-presidentielle.fr, a site dedicated to the presidential election. Mr Fouetillou created maps of influence that visually show the strength of all political Parties on the internet. These maps demonstrated that within six months, larger political Parties considerably increased their influence on the internet. While smaller parties used to be very visible until mid 2006, they progressively have been swept out by traditional large political groups which now really possess the largest visibility. That clearly demonstrated the real and strong involvement of traditional political parties in new media.
The first example of this involvement was presented by Thierry Solere, UMP. The Party successively created sarkozy.fr (the portal of UMP sites featuring a true web TV dedicated to the candidate), debat-sarkozy.fr (debate with Sarkozy – where internet users can post questions for Sarkozy) and supportersdesarkozy.fr (supporters of Sarkozy – a site aimed at encouraging people to recruit supporters of Sarkozy). Mr Solere positions the internet not as a new means of communication, but rather as an alternative means of communication among other more “traditional” ones, such as TV and meetings.
On the other hand, Benoît Thieulin, in charge of desirdavenir.fr, the internet platform of the Socialist Party (PS) truly used internet as a collaborative tool: for nearly one year, French people were invited to post their ideas and comments regarding key political subjects (employment, defence, education, security…). Then, all these comments were synthesized and led to the creation of the Party’s platform for the Presidential Election. Finally, a surprising total of 2.7 million visitors posted more than 135,000 propositions on 50 different themes. In this case, internet was used to facilitate the exchange of ideas and to generate the creation of a true “community” around the socialist program.
Which approach will prove to be the best? No one knows, assessed Laurent Flores, ESOMAR Board member and CEO of CRMMetrix, a Market Research Company specialising in Internet Monitoring. But this wide use of Internet will provide all political parties with a unequalled insight into their members and sympathisers. Even if the internet will never replace traditional market research, it offers researchers a unique way to “listen” to people and gather their points of view with “respect”, i.e. without disturbing them. Market Research is truly shifting from a “transactional” link to a “relational” paradigm.
In any case, internet and the development of political blogs will have a very positive impact: by facilitating the development of personal opinions they really facilitate the emergence of a debate and the development of new ideas, concluded Thierry Vedel. Citizens now have a new media to transmit and share their ideas. Politicians will absolutely have to take this into consideration in the future.