Using the Digital to Organize Grassroots Campaign. A Comparison Between Web Campaign Strategies of Candidates During the 2017 French Presidential Election

This paper is about the strategies developed by candidates to organize grassroots mobilization during the 2017 French presidential election. Does the digital supply an opportunity for candidates to organize their campaign outside political parties? This question is particularly interesting to study for two candidates whose candidacy did not come from established parties, as Emmanuel Macron, the candidate of En Marche and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of La France Insoumise. This paper aims to analyze how these candidates used internet to organize their grassroots campaign and mobilization outside political parties and their apparatus. Do they use internet differently in comparison with the other candidates whose candidacy came from established parties? Who are the actors in charge of the organization of the grassroots mobilization and campaign in both environments? This paper examines the role of the web for the recruitment and the mobilization of local supporters for grassroots campaign. Moreover, a particular attention is paid for the digital devices and digital visualization developed on candidates' websites to display what is done locally for the campaign. Our methodology is twofold. First, we use data from a content analysis of four French candidates' official websites during the presidential campaign, focusing on the mobilization devices offered. We thus compare the online strategies developed by two candidates whose candidacy did not come from established parties (Emmanuel Macron, the candidate of En Marche and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of La France Insoumise) with two candidates whose candidacy came from old parties (Benoît Hamon, the candidate of the Socialist party and François Fillon, the candidate of the Les Republicains). Second, we use data from interviews conducted after the ballots with members of the webcampaign staff of these four candidates.