How Jordan Bardella Leveraged Mood Politics
Social networks have created devastating frameworks of thought, both in their ergonomics and in their ability to influence our online hatreds.
It’s another shock in France with the high scores of the Rassemblement National. This week, digital liveness turns destructive. You can also read this post in French.
Hacking the mundane and the anecdotal to influence people’s opinions. This is undoubtedly the sad performance of the Rassemblement National (RN), leveraging its understanding of social networks to rally millions of voters. How can the RN allies in 2024 claim messages of “hope,” a notion hammered in the media? Because it has achieved the impossible: conveying a mood, an ambiance, a “vibe” that manages to attract and rally people.
Jordan Bardella: double language and double social media spaces
Political commentators have struggled to understand the strength of Jordan Bardella on social networks. While in debates, the RN candidate was seemingly battered by his detractors on substance, he gained points in public opinion every time. This paradox was explained in a video on LinkedIn by
:“It’s not the same thing to be technically good - and to be competent - and to be loved, and to be popular, and to be elected.”
Philippe Moreau Chevrolet
In other words, insisting on rationality, on technical arguments, would be almost futile. It was already discussed last May with Edgar Morin declaring that the “progress of knowledge has led to a regression of thought.” An assertion that echoes a 2011 study “The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks,” whose conclusions were (already) unequivocal: increasing scientific literacy increases opinion polarization.
Jordan Bardella understood the power of the graphical and visual shortcut rather than the written one. A strength we all intuitively use in our habits: a well-placed set of emojis will convey interest in another person, even be part of the game of seduction. A GIF sequence replaces a complex idea in seconds. The meme allows for propagating a mood more or less clearly without necessarily needing all the keys to the reading, of the message.
Jordan Bardella didn’t just use double language during election campaigns. He was one of the first to fully play the double time (and physical) space of social networks by decoupling classic political time (televised debate, press conferences, parliamentary work, etc.) from social media time. Some citizens only get informed through television; others only through social networks; a way for the RN to animate differently the different spaces where opinions are formed.
The social media heist of Rassemblement National
2.4 million views on TikTok for Jordan Bardella putting mustard in his sandwich, 3.1M views for talking about Moselle macarons. So many seemingly surprising examples in the midst of an ultra-tense political time for the Europeans and then the legislatives.
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The anecdotal allows for sharing content with low levels of controversy among ultra-wide targets who will share his videos humorously in discussion groups. In return, these engagement indicators will lead algorithms to push RN-compatible content upon reopening the app to non-militants through the logic of concatenation. A way to convey softer, more frequent messages that, through repetition, become part of people's daily lives.
It’s actually the comments that interest the most affected audiences: by checking the “mood” under TikTok videos, the RN manages to convey an ambiance inclined to create adhesion, similar to what we can observe with tabloids in the United Kingdom.
“For this reason, the comments section is not just a place to encourage readers to interact, but has also become a useful way for editors to judge where best to pitch future coverage, enabling them to understand what angles are working, but what might risk alienating their base.”
Dr. Chmielewska-Szlajfer, London School of Economics
Jordan Bardella and his staff also use traditional video editing techniques to pull out sound bites made to be shared from his interviews. A combination of futile x arguments that not only reach targets but make them (often involuntarily) participate in the amplification work through their interactions on the content.
This is precisely where the strength of the RN lies: not manipulating opinion in an obvious way but infiltrating the mundane, the ordinary, no longer just through writing or speeches, but now on popular aesthetic and semiotic references. Emotional. A mood machine. It doesn’t matter if local candidates are known or not: they are part of the RN ambiance.
The red rag and the gunmen to do the dirty work
Analysts and journalists have talked a lot about other RN cadres who would have been out of control like Roger Chudeau, and his monstrous statements against binational ministers. I unfortunately don’t think so. These allies of Jordan Bardella serve instead to nurture the most racist and radical fringes of the far-right, to reassure them in their convictions about the reality of the RN project, and to feed these sub-groups with content through the concatenation process of social networks like TikTok. Concatenation allows for real-time grouping of users into sides and feeding them precise content.
“Instead of categorizing content traditionally (e.g., cooking, fashion, cat, etc.), TikTok invents its own categories, its own “sides.” In other words, TikTok constantly analyzes emerging action sequences and suggests them to users similar to those who initiated these sequences. TikTok assumes some error in this system and corrects the criteria and audiences in real-time to whom to serve this increasingly precise content. Human creativity being limitless, users end up working for the network by offering these logical sequences; content creators, in turn, detect an opportunity and end up creating content for these new logical sequences. Logical sequences that often hit the mark either with people's deepest feelings or pre-existing cognitive biases.”
A great utility: cultures on social networks often cross like ships in the night. Zones become increasingly impermeable depending on users' tastes and affinities. This allows the National Rally to not only carry a less controversial image on television while exploiting the myriad of community layers on social networks by having their messages carried by “ambassadors” uncontrollable by democratic institutions. The social network experience for some layers of users is factually less racist concerning the RN, while for others, the conversations, the mood, are ultra-violent, xenophobic. Diverse experiences in the same spaces, and for the same party. A sad mood.
The number of the week: 54%
The Jean-Jaurès Foundation analyzed in detail a series of seven programs on CNews, Europe 1, and C8 between June 10 and 21.
35% of the 91 political guests listed on the three channels (TV and radio) represent or claim to be close to the far-right bloc. For the two shows hosted by Cyril Hanouna during this period, Touche pas à mon poste on C8 and On marche sur la tête on Europe 1, 54% of the political guests are from the far-right bloc.
The amazing links
“My phone is for me, but it is also for you.” A brilliant essay in Usurpator Mag
David Chavalarias delivers a network analysis of foreign interference in the legislative elections. To read at Politoscope.
Have a good week! My essay “Alive In Social Media” is now available on Amazon. And feel free to share this newsletter, like, comment, or keep sending me emails: these notifications are a joy.
So true yet so scary to see how branding used with bad intentions can be harmful…
Comments are definitely a mood gager. I often like to read the comments more than the caption of the post.