What influence is Russia having on the French presidential campaign?

The Russian influence on the elections has been discussed by many, particularly in connection with Trump's election. The official Russian propaganda outlets Sputnik and Russia Today are also often mentioned. But how much influence does Russia actually have? Who is spreading this information? How much influence do the propagators have over the content of the presidential election? Find out from Brandwatch and Visibrain.

The findings

Sputnik and Russia Today

Sputnik barely covers the French presidential election. On the contrary, Russia Today does, and with enormous success: 145,017 different people were reached. However, this success must be tempered by the fact that the number of people who have had more than one interaction with the two Russian media outlets remains quite confidential. (less than 15,000 individuals)

Russian propaganda relays

The relays of Russian propaganda are mainly grouped around the Fillon, Marine Le Pen and Asselineau communities. It is interesting to note that despite the support for Russia, Mélenchon does not seem to be represented in the communities.

Mainly anonymous

Most people who interact do so under a pseudonym (90%), which raises serious questions.

Russia Today and Sputnik do not replace other media

The "Western" media are well represented in the most followed accounts. At least for the Fillon and Asselineau communities. Not at all for Marine Le Pen's accounts, which only seem to follow Russian media.

One thing in common: Macron

All the communities have one thing in common: a negative propaganda campaign against Macron. In all 3 communities, it's the most tweeted word, while all the big, well-shared articles are negative ones about Macron. The difference in the discussions is marked by the candidates they support.

I. Sputnik and RT French

The first stage of my investigation began with an analysis of the French-language accounts of Sputnik and Russia Today. To do this, I collected two and a half months of activity on these accounts in order to see the content posted and the users affected.

1. Sputnik

Activity around Sputnik attracted an audience of 57,337 different people in the form of retweets. The gain in followers (net followers) was fairly limited over the period. Sputnik's main themes are Russia, Syria, the USA and Ukraine. There is no real focus on the French presidential election.

The majority of those who interact are men, but the most interesting thing is that we have less than 10% of people interacting whose gender can be determined. This means that all the rest of the audience have a pseudonym on the Twitter social network. So they're not using their own identity. 2. Russia Today

As far as Russia Today is concerned, the audience in the form of retweets is quite simply enormous: 145,017 different people reached. And the worst thing is that Russia Today's editorial line is essentially centred around France and the presidential election. Among its favourite subjects: Hollande, Fillon and Macron.

The proportion of pseudonyms is also quite enormous.

II. Isolating RT/Sputnik fans

The second stage of my work was to gather together the users who had been captured many times. There are only 14,792 individuals with two interactions. When we take 10 interactions with Sputnik and Russia Today, we only have 6006 profiles identified. I focused on these 6006 profiles to analyse how these people followed each other. The bigger the dot, the more it is followed in the ecosystem. The colour symbolises the community to which it belongs. There are 3 main communities.

A community very close to Sputnik and Russia Today: the UPR and Asselineau

This community is mainly made up of UPR activists. There are also the main media outlets, straddling the line between the Republicans and the UPR, a sign that they also follow the mainstream media, unlike the identitarian communities.

A Republican community - Fillon

A number of accounts support François Fillon.

An identity community - FN

These are essentially Marine Le Pen supporters.

The influencers in these spheres.

There are both well-known players in the patriosphere and in the field of patriots, but also traditional media, which shows that the latter are nonetheless part of this alternative information stream. 1 Valeurs Actuelles 2. Stalker69 3. Le Figaro 4. Kimjongunique 5. Le Monde

6. Mediapart 7. Sebastien Jallamion 8. A man of goodwill. 9. Jpro732 10. Jacques Sapir

III. What are they talking about in general?

1. The most active.

For the next stage, I placed the 100 most active towards Sputnik and Russia Today on a Brandwatch panel, i.e. those with more than 265 mentions/RT towards these main media, in order to see their overall activity, not just on the presidential election. Their activity is quite simply colossal, twittering up to 180,000 times a week. Most of the mentions are to promote Marine Le Pen. There are also some #EnMarche tweets. But these tweets are far from positive: In the most mentioned/retweeted tweets are once again Marine Le Pen, Russia Today and Sputnik. Once again, Emmanuel Macron is mentioned in a negative light: The most shared articles are clearly Russian influence strategies to "frame" certain events.

2. By community, on the presidential election

I then looked at each of the communities to see what they had in common.

a) The most Russian community around Sputnik, Russia Today and UPR/Asselineau

There is also a fair amount of activity. Macron is the most targeted candidate in conversations. Otherwise, we can see that we are well within the Asselineau community. The hashtags include asselineau, marron and Frexit. So it's no surprise to find Asselineau's tweets among the most shared: In the articles, Russia Today scored the highest: This hegemony of Russia Today can also be seen in the most shared domains:

b) The identity community/Front National

They are twice as active as the UPR. This activity is once again very focused against Macron: That's why, apart from Frexit, the hashtags include the Mohamed Saou controversy, which has hit the centrist candidate hard this week. In the top tweets, we mainly find content from fandetv and tweets against Macron (almost exclusively that). The same goes for the most shared articles: all related to Emmanuel Macron: The most shared domain is... frdesouche. To be honest, if Le Parisien and Nice Matin hadn't published bad articles about Macron, they would certainly be a little further down the ranking.

The Fillon community

On the Fillon side, Macron is also the most tweeted word: Same thing in hashtags amid François Fillon campaign hashtags: In the top tweets, it's quite interesting to see that there's an anti-Fillon in the bunch who clearly switched sides during the right-wing primaries. Mélenchon and Macron are the most attacked by tweets: In articles too, Macron and Mélenchon are mainly attacked: The most widely read areas are Le Figaro, Valeurs and Le Point. Russia Today and Sputnik are not among them.