Party Activism Reconsidered or Given Up? Online Political Engagement during the French Presidential Campaign 2012

Over the last 15 years, the academic literature has analyzed forms of party activism the on-line environment might provide or facilitate. Scholars have shown to what extent party activism was becoming a (lighter) combination of online and offline activities, usually limited to the campaigns. Empirical evidence brought information about on online activists as people very interested in politics, over-active and often party members. At the same time, parties themselves were described as professionalizing, particularly with their communication activities. However, the relationship between net-activists and party organizations hasn’t been explored deeply: either surveys were conducted within parties, over-representing “traditional” party members and usually showing little difference between “offline” and “online” members; or they were conducted within the general population of voters, showing the limited impact of technologies over political engagement and political participation. This paper would offer another perspective, looking at parties at an intermediary level between the general population and the party activists. It would explore how the (limited number) of people who get involved into an online campaign perceive parties and how they consider and practice party activism. The paper would analyze, mainly through qualitative data (group and individual interviews) gathered during the French presidential campaign 2012, that the situation is much more diverse than usually described. People engaging in an online campaign consider parties much more positively than the general population, but they can be pretty reserved either towards “traditional” party activism or online activism. Also, a significant part of them gets involved within the party, either for a short period of time or on the long-term. Among teams of people involved in the online campaign for example, many are either ex or future activists. In other words, online political engagement can be a way to get into the (professionalized) organization.