Netnographic Study of Marine Lepen’s Online Community Through Instagram Comments

Naomi Lear & Marième Cissé

COM 370

Paper #2

Prof. N. Barile

14.12.2018

Netnographic Study of Marine Lepen’s Online Community Through Instagram Comments

In the recent years, the French political party the Front National has seen an increase in popularity and a rejuvenation of ideology.  The Front National was founded in the 1970’s by Jean Marie Le Pen on a platform of anti-immigration, and was recently taken over by his daughter Marine Le Pen.  Originally a member of the Front National since 1986, Marine Le Pen has worked diligently to popularize the party throughout France by using a more socially acceptable rhetoric, increasingly populist tones, and revamping immigration plans since her election as president of the party in 2011 (Stockemer, 2017).

Le Pen has a background as a Member of European Parliament, a Regional Councillor, and a municipal councillor.  Under her presidency, the Front National has gained 60,000 members in three years between 2011 and 2014 alone (Stockemer, 2017).  In addition, Le Pen campaigned through two rounds of the French presidential election of 2017 until she lost to her opponent Emmanuel Macron (Résultats du second tour de la Présidentielle 2017, 2017).          

Le Pen’s political ideology is nationalistic and populist.  According to Dr. Daniel Stockemer (2017), she employs “the almost exclusive use of a republican rhetoric, populism and the redefinition of its anti-immigrant message.” She places an emphasis on policies that benefit the middle and lower classes in France, and tackles issues such as fair workers wages and social security.  Less openly xenophobic than her father, Le Pen still pushes for the strengthening of France’s borders in a response to the ongoing migration crisis.   Much like Donald Trump, she appeals to many people who are tired with standard politics by using simple, strongly worded rhetoric and providing simple solutions for complex issues.  Thus, Le Pen exemplifies a candidate of the populist wave currently crashing through Europe.  

Literature review

As past literature shows, there are many different ways of defining political participation. First, there is a clear distinction between the way people participate on and offline because of the different resources both necessitate (Bimber, 2000). Bimber (1999) found that the Internet makes it less time-consuming and inconvenient to participate than to participate offline. Hence, past research suggests that people may be more inclined to participate online due to its convenience. Moreover, despite the belief that younger generations participate less in political engagement, Weinstein & Wring (2002) found that younger people tend to be more skeptical and politically apathetic, which does however not mean that they do not participate or engage. On the contrary, other studies have shown that young people today are more likely to be attracted to non-traditional forms of political engagement (Zukin, Keeter, Andolina, Jenkins, & Delli Carpini, 2006), hence it is important to broaden the definition of political participation to the contemporary available means rather than focusing on party membership, attendance at political meetings, or voter turnout. Today, the internet has become a recognized medium for alternative and digital ways of political participation, which offers easy access to low-cost forms of participation (Bakker & Vreese, 2011). Svensson (2014) further differentiates three types of participation: participation that emanates from within representative democratic institutions, unofficial participation that aims at influencing public decision-making, and participation set in a more casual and popular culture sphere, that does not directly relates to political purposes. Since in this study, we will be focusing on participation through Instagram comments, we will be focusing on the latter. Hermes (2005) found that non-institutionalized online arenas that are not directed towards decision-makers are susceptible to becoming spaces for political participation. Hence, to understand political participation today, it is as important to examine the way people engage outside of institutionalized politics.

As social media, Instagram constitutes a good example of what Wright (2012) defines as a « third space » since it is, in effect, a non-political online space, which is however practically used by many to initiate political discussions. The social media is all the more interesting since Campbell’s (2007) research suggests that there was a wider variety of clashing political opinions on platforms that were not explicitly political, or directed to a particular political community.

Overall, a lot of research was conducted regarding the implications of online political participation on offline behaviors, or the ways people engage in political activity online. Similarly to Svensson (2014), who sought to understand what motivated participation in political discussion threads on the Scandinavian affinity website Qruiser, in this study, we aim at understanding what reasons motivated people to comment on pictures posted by Marine Le Pen on her official Instagram account. We focused on the type of message they wanted to convey. To do so, we observed and analyzed the ways in which her online community interacts and behaves. We wanted to understand if instagram comments can be considered as ways to participate in today’s political debate. Second, we sought to understand whether or not the comments posted by the populist leader’s followers depended on the type of content she posted. Despite the similar aims, our study differs from Svensson’s by focusing on a different, open and public platform, Instagram, and more particularly comments posted in reaction to one account’s posts, rather than actual conversation threads.

Method

Since the aim of our study was to observe and try to understand how Marine Le Pen’s online community interacts and behaves, we chose the nethnographic method. Kozinets (2011) defines netnography as a “form of ethnography adapted to the characteristics of online communities, that differs from ethnography in the way the researchers enter the studied culture, the way they collect data and in the ethical questions their study raises.

For this paper, we decided to study the comments on the official Instagram account of Marine Le Pen because it is one of the platforms she uses the most frequently. We analyzed the totality of the comments on the last three pictures she had posted as of December, 11, 2018. The three posts respectively had 221, 228 and 190 public responses, for a total of 639 analyzed comments. Hence, we relied solely on archive data and did not create any elicited any data. Based on previous literature, namely Svensson (2014), we created categories or characteristics to which we could associate every post. They consisted of three oppositions:

...