By Jessica Reed
As a young French citizen and a voter, I am very excited.
You see, the 2007 presidential elections are slowly getting closer: they always mean a dramatic increase of delicious stress and tension. And this time the French youth will finally be given a chance to choose between candidates who are under 70 years old (!), as an entire nation will say good night (and good luck) to President Jacques Chirac.
With all this excitement, 'official' blogs are now flourishing: the motto currently found on the french political blogosphere seems to be that if you run for President in 2007, chances are your PR agents will turn you into a 'bloggeur' (1).
Back in December 2005 Nicolas Vanbremeersch -also known as 'Versac'- wrote extensively (in french) about the emergence of a new 'e-democracy' and political blogs. His research hinted that out of the 3 millions of blogs found in the French blogosphere, only 125 were written by professional politicians. An ever-growing list can be found on this wiki. According to these statistics, professional political blogs are (unsurprisingly) mainly written by men (82%) from the conservative side of the spectrum, with topics mainly focused on local policies.
To date, none of those pages seem to be written by members of the current government. However it does not mean that the french political blogosphere isn't a cruel, luxuriant and highly entertainning jungle...
In the zoo of Politicalblogland, one can stumble upon Ex-republican prime ministers trying not to vanish into oblivion - as illustrated by Alain Juppé or Jean Pierre Rafarrin's blogs, or aspiring presidential candidates using the blogging platform as a campaigning tool (2). The socialist favourite Ségolène Royal (openDemocracy article) has a shiny new website on which she publishes a chapter of her new book every month; her major opponent Dominique Strauss-Khan has been leaving his written landmark on the web since 2004: he therefore wins the title of first french political blogger hands down.
Meanwhile, the Green-party's female leader, Dominique Voynet, lectures her readers on the impact of nuclear plants and encourages France's football team for the World Cup, as Jack Lang (wiki link, in english) - rumoured candidate for 2007 and ex Minister of Culture- rants about any and everything from internal waves of immigration and the Middle East to France's diplomatic role.
Are those blogs and their content all tainted with demagogy? You bet. But to see them try and be 'hip' and 'connected' is highly entertainning.
(1) As I understand a lot of french people still insist on spelling 'bloggers' the french way.
(2) I hope they were inspired by Howard Dean's grassroots e-campaign, but also learned from his mistakes...
