Investigating the Twitter network « Avec Zemmour »
The French presidential election are just 5 months away yet the French political scene is more fragmented than ever [1]. The second round of the Ipsos-Sopra Steria electoral survey revealed a weakened political left on one end of the political spectrum and a divided but powerful political right on the other. According to this poll, because no viable alternative to candidate Emmanuel Macron was found, ballots for the left are to be distributed between 7 candidates and only amount to 28% of voting intentions. Meanwhile the far right rallies up to 37.5% of vote intentions.
In this political context emerged the prospective candidate Éric Zemmour. The controversial essayist [2] obtains between 16% and 16.5% of vote intentions [3], placing him in the second round of the elections even though he did not officially present his candidacy. Nevertheless his campaign is well launched through his meetings across the country for the promotion of his new book and through the media craze on the topic of his potential candidacy.
Thus, Predicta Lab conducted an analysis of the network in support of Éric Zemmour on Twitter in order to better understand who are his supporters and how they organize on social media.
The nature of the network
To do so we identified all the Twitter accounts including “Avec Zemmour” (“with Zemmour”) in their name or pseudo and extracted their last 1,000 tweets starting from October 25th, 2021. This data gathered 80 Twitter accounts (Appendix 1) who posted a total of 15,062 tweets between January 1st 2021 and October 25th2021. The publication of these tweets spreaded over that period in the following way (Figure 1):
There is a steep increase in activity starting from August 2021, with a peak at 398 tweets posted on October 20th . The start of this periode coincides with the promotion of Éric Zemmour’s new book La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (France did not Say its Last Word) published on September 15th [4].
The subjects of the network
The hashtags most frequently used in these tweets are shown in Figure 2. It is no surprise that the hashtag “#Zemmour” and “#jeSoutiensZemmour” (“#IsupportZemmour”) are used the most, they show the first objective of the Twitter accounts selected. Moreover the 3rd hashtag on this podium is “#Zemmour2022” indicates that this support for Zemmour does not come only in a general sense rather it is set in the context of the upcoming elections. Thus at least 16.1% of the tweets analysed come in direct support to Zemmour as a candidate for the presidential elections.
A sentiment analysis informs us about the nature of these tweets. This procedure shows the polarisation of the tweets shared on a scale from -1 to 1 [5]. The tweets scoring closer to -1 express a negative message and the tweets scoring closer to 1 express a positive message. Figure 3 shows the majority of tweets collected share a positive but moderate sentiment, with 80% of tweets with a polarity between 0 and 0.49.
The most retweeted tweets (Figure 4) reflect the main concern of Zemmour’s potential voters: immigration [6]. They also share concerns about sovereignty and freedom of speech but the subject of delinquency, which is a concern for 51% of these voters [7], is not presented here.
The communities of the network
In order to visualize the organisation of the network, we uploaded our collection of tweets to the Graphistry software [8]. The result in Figure 5 shows a network made of 3,820 nodes, each of them representing a Twitter account. These nodes can be one of our “Avec Zemmour” account, an account mentionned or retweeted by them or an account retweeting or mentionning the “Avec Zemmour” accounts. The 10,745 edges connecting the nodes are as many retweets and mentions. The more connections an account has, the large is his node. Using the Louvain [9] method this network is divided into 23 communities made of accounts that interact more frequently with each other. In Figure 5, each community is represented in a different colour.
The network supporting Éric Zemmour counts a few particularly active accounts. Graphistry measures the “degree” of activity for each account under two aspects: the “degree_in” which counts the tweets and comments posted by an account and the “degree_out” which counts the number of times one is retweeted or mentionned by another account. Both measures add up to the “total degree”. Figure 6 shows which accounts have the highest degrees in each type as well as their score.
The most retweeted and mentionned accounts (degree_out) are the accounts of political personnalities and public medias. Éric Zemmour’s official account [10] is head of the list, followed by the right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles [11] and the account for the BFMTV channel [12].
Nevertheless, the most important accounts in total are also those who post and retweet the most (degree_in). Their display names are the following, in the order of the first column : « LR avec Zemmour », « March Chrapas », « 🇫🇷 Expat avec Zemmour 🇫🇷 », « La France avec Zemmour », « Les indépendants avec Zemmour ».
In addition to being very active, these accounts are the core of the largest communites making up the network “Avec Zemmour”. The user @n_bonert, is part of the largest of these communites which is made of 373 nodes (Figure 7). We can see from the size of the nodes that @n_bonert is by far the most active account in this community.
Likewise, @Ygaulois is the center of the third largest community within the network (Figure 8).
In both communities we find the same model of community centered around a single extremely active account surrounded by many more discret accounts. This model is also displayed by the communities of the other accounts main accounts of the network: @ZemmourFrance, @Marchrapas, and @astab01985296. The most active supporters of Zemmour on Twitter thus mainly interact within their own bubble of connections and rarely interact between themselves.
Nonetheless, the second largest community in the network does not fit this model (Figure 9). Made of 348 nodes, this community counts several very active members interacting with each other: @ FDEavecZemmour, @LesA_Zemmour, @FemmesZemmour, @DroiteZemmour. On Twitter their respective names are displayed as the following: : « Les Français de l’étranger avec Eric Zemmour », « Les Aventuriers avec Zemmour », « Les Femmes avec Zemmour » and « La Droite Avec Zemmour » (Respectively: « The French from abroad with Eric Zemmour”, “The adventurers with Eric Zemmour”, “The women with Zemmour”, “The right with Zemmour”).
Domains owned by « Les Amis de Zemmour »
A first association called « Les Amis de Zemmour » was created in 2012 with the aim to promote and defend “the literary and publishing work of Éric Zemmour” [13] however it is the association created May 11th2021 carrying the same name that is of interest here [14]. This new association is dedicated to political activities such as the support and financing of electoral campaigns. They owns multiple domains (Figure 10), all registered to the email address admin@lesamisdericzemmour.com and attached to the postal address 18 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, 75010, Paris where was the head office of the association before it relocated last October.
Among the 46 domains, 17 correspond to the names of Twitter accounts that we collected or are attached in their Twitter biographies (in yellow). For exemple, we find « Les militaires avec Zemmour » under the pseudo @DefenseZemmour, « Les Gilets Jaunes avec Zemmour » under the pseudo @GJauneZemmour and « Les agriculteurs avec Zemmour » under the pseudo @ZemmourLes. This number rises to 23 if we add the domains shared in tweets. This mirroring between the domains of “Les Amis de Zemmour” and the Twitter network “Avec Zemmour” seems to indicate that the association is managing several accounts of the network. It is especially likely for the Twitter accounts that are part of the community Figure 9. In that community, we find 7 accounts that are closely connected to the association:
- Les Femmes Avec Zemmour (@FemmesZemmour)
- Les Français de l’étranger avec Eric Zemmour (@FDEavecZemmour)
- La Droite Avec Zemmour (@DroiteZemmour)
- Les Gilets Jaunes avec Zemmour (@GJauneZemmour)
- Les Agriculteurs avec Zemmour (@ZemmourLes)
- Avec Eric Zemmour (@ZemmourEricFRA)
- Homo 🌈 avec Zemmour (@HomoAvecZemmour)
The word cloud Figure 11 shows the hashtags most often used in the tweets analysed. There again we find the influence of the association and its websites (red underline).
The analysis of the Twitter accounts “Avec Zemmour” reveals a network made of several communities whose activity is structured according to two models. Either the activity is organised around one isolated but very active account, either it is maintained by a number of accounts managed by a single group, Les Amis de Zemmour.
À la croisée des chemins (at a crossroads)
The organisation of the network “Avec Zemmour” on Twitter did not happen independently of the potential candidate. We find Éric Zemmour’s official website croiseedeschemins-ez.fr (Figure 12) in the list of domains owned by the association Les Amis de Zemmour (Figure 10). The columnist’s unofficial campaign is thus well on its way on all fronts: on TV, through the promotion of his book and now through social medias.
Appendix 1
[1] Mestre, A. (22 octobre 2021). Election présidentielle 2022 : un paysage politique plus morcelé que jamais. Le Monde. Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2021/10/22/election-presidentielle-2022-un-paysage-politique-plus-morcele-que-jamais_6099463_823448.html
[2] Dassonville, A. (18 mars 2021). CNews devra payer 200 000 euros d’amende après des propos d’Eric Zemmour contre les migrants. Le Monde. Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2021/03/18/la-chaine-cnews-sanctionnee-d-une-amende-de-200-000-euros-pour-des-propos-d-eric-zemmour-contre-les-migrants_6073606_3236.html
[3] Finchelstein, G. and Teinturier, B. (22 octobre 2021). Election présidentielle 2022 : l’illusion d’optique de la radicalité. Le Monde. Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2021/10/22/election-presidentielle-2022-l-illusion-d-optique-de-la-radicalite_6099480_823448.html
[4] Amazon. (2021). La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot Broché — Livre grand format, 15 septembre 2021. Amazon.fr. Retrieved fromhttps://www.amazon.fr/France-pas-dit-son-dernier/dp/2957930501
[5] Chugh, A. (4 novembre, 2018). Sentiment Analysis using Python. Data Science Blog. Retrieved from https://data-science-blog.com/blog/2018/11/04/sentiment-analysis-using-python/
[6] Teinturier, B. (22 octobre 2021). Présidentielle 2022 | Éric Zemmour, une percée et des limites. Ipsos. Retrieved from https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/presidentielle-2022-eric-zemmour-une-percee-et-des-limites
[7] Teinturier, B. (22 octobre 2021). Présidentielle 2022 | Éric Zemmour, une percée et des limites. Ipsos. Retrieved from https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/presidentielle-2022-eric-zemmour-une-percee-et-des-limites
[8] Graphistry. (2021). 100X Investigations. Graphistry.com. Retrieved from https://www.graphistry.com
[9] Neo4j. (2021). Louvain. Neo4j Graph Data Science. Retrieved from https://neo4j.com/docs/graph-data-science/current/algorithms/louvain/
[10] @ZemmourEric. (2021). Eric Zemmour.Twitter.com. Consulté sur https://twitter.com/ZemmourEric
[11] @Valeurs. (2021). Valeurs actuelles. Twitter.com. Consulté sur https://twitter.com/Valeurs
[12] @BFMTV. (2021). BFMTV. Twitter.com. Consulté sur https://twitter.com/BFMTV
[13] Direction de l’information légale et administrative. (2021). Résultats de recherche. Le journal-officiel.gouv.fr. Retrieved from https://www.journal-officiel.gouv.fr/associations/detail-annonce/associations_b/20120010/1132
[14] Direction de l’information légale et administrative. (2021). Résultats de recherche. Le journal-officiel.gouv.fr. Consulté sur https://www.journal-officiel.gouv.fr/associations/detail-annonce/associations_b/20210019/1341
[15] @ZemmourEric. (2021). Eric Zemmour. Twitter.com. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ZemmourEric
