[Commlist] cfp: The 2022 French Presidential Election: towards a Reinvention of Democratic Processes?

*CALL FOR PAPER*

*The 2022 French Presidential **Election**: towards a Reinvention of 
Democratic Processes?*

*_________***

**

*International Conference, Nice, Université Côte d’Azur, EUR CREATES*

*29-30 juin 2022, Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen*

*_________***


“/Like a thunderclap/”. Fifteen years after Lionel Jospin uttered these 
words, shaken by his defeat in the first round of the 2002 presidential 
election, they regained their relevance in 2017, when the Socialist 
Party was almost erased from the map of French politics. Its candidate 
Benoit Hamon, totaled only 6.35% of the votes cast in the first round, 
after a selection process of "open primaries" to all citizens.


Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 victory has most often been attributed to a very 
controlled political communication campaign, combined with the skillful 
exploitation of a deleterious political context. He was able to bypass 
the usually indispensable transmission belt: the political party[1] 
<applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftn1>. By creating 
an ad hoc militant structure (“En Marche”), Emmanuel Macron had 
succeeded in turning the political spectrum upside down and winning the 
election. He was notably helped by the team which had contributed, five 
years earlier, to the victory of François Hollande, by mapping electoral 
France[2] <applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftn2>.

In the fall of 2021, the 2022 French presidential election seems to be 
placed under the paradoxical sign of certainty and confusion. Barring a 
huge surprise, Emmanuel Macron appears certain to avoid the fate of his 
predecessor. His term of office, though burdened by the pandemic linked 
to COVID-19, should not prevent him from representing himself with 
chances of a new victory. As for the diffuse atmosphere of confusion, it 
concerns rather political parties which do not seem to have recovered 
their capacity to fulfill their role. Six months before the electoral 
deadline, Anne Hidalgo, the socialist candidate, hardly appears able to 
put her party in working order again, and does not seem to care about 
truly building up a political program. Likewise, the Republicans are 
reduced to a sham of "primaries” with an electorate limited to those… 
who will have kindly paid 30 euros for party membership in time. 
Finally, "Rassemblement National", which one might have thought 
dedicated to the service of Marine le Pen, seems to curl up as and when 
her voting intentions indicated by the polls decline. To add to this 
confusion, journalist and polemist Eric Zemmour seems to achieve a 
theoretical breakthrough though an undeclared candidate without precise 
partisan affiliation. By a succession of calculated provocations, he is 
surfing in the media agitation of the news television channels and 
social networks.

As a result, the mechanisms of political communication that accompany 
electoral processes, pillars of democracy, raise many questions. 
Shouldn't we get around this belief in the reliability of public opinion 
polls, which has been questioned for a long time, and even now leads to 
candidates withdrawal (François Hollande in 2017) or to the precipitous 
manufacturing of others?[3] 
<applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftn3> What role to 
assign to political parties, especially during an election period? 
Should they be reinvented in order to resume their mediating function, 
essential in a society that social networks seem to fragment more and 
more, the new "hybrid media system" exposed by Andrew Chadwick even 
putting the cohesion of some countries at stake, like the United States 
or the United Kingdom?[4] 
<applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftn4> And how, 
precisely, to take advantage of the rise of social networks other than 
by promoting candidates serving only their person or ideas? Aren’t we at 
the antipodes of our democracies founding ideas, based on both sides of 
the Atlantic on principles inherited from an 18th century seeming more 
and more distant? How to overcome the ease of a generalized recourse to 
political marketing favoring more and more the personalization of 
campaigns, forgetting the political ideas, and putting off political 
programs for arguments based only on the audiovisual charisma of the 
personalities facing the electorate ?

The 2022 French presidential election seems to feed more than ever, 
beyond its intrinsic result, the problem of reinventing the democratic 
process, a reality that France seems to share with many other countries 
presumed to share the same principles, starting with the United States.

This conference will be an opportunity to make a first assessment of the 
various political communication campaigns that will have been 
implemented, all along the course of the 2022 presidential election, and 
to try to infer how to renovate the democratic processes.

Contributors will be expected to analyze the communication strategies 
mobilized and their vehicles, from posters to meetings, campaign clips 
to social networks and other devices invented by political marketing, 
examining their adequacy to the right realization of the essential 
process of our democracies, the consultation of the citizen, in France 
during the major vote, the presidential election.

The questions raised will be the subject of the international conference 
on comparative political communication to be held in *Nice, on June 28 
and 29, 2022*, at the initiative of the Sic.Lab Méditerranée Research 
Laboratory of the Université Côte d'Azur (www.siclab.fr 
<http://www.siclab.fr/>) with the help of the Center for Comparative 
Studies in Political and Public Communication (www.ceccopop.eu 
<http://www.ceccopop.eu/>). This scientific event will bring together 
scholars and communication professionals at the *"Centre Universitaire 
Méditerranéen", on the famed /Promenade des Anglais/.*

This conference is organized by Philippe J. Maarek, member of Sic.Lab 
Méditerranée and Professor at the University of Paris Est Créteil 
(UPEC), director of CECCOPOP, former president of the Research Sections 
in Political Communication of IPSA and of IAMCR and by Nicolas 
Pelissier, Professor at the Université Côte d'Azur, Director of Sic.Lab 
Méditerranée (UPR 3820), and director of the "Communication and 
Civilization" book series at L'Harmattan.

The event will be bilingual, French-English. Colleagues wishing to 
present a paper are invited to send a request to participate before 
February 27, 2022 to the following email address: (ceccopop /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(ceccopop /at/ gmail.com)>.

Proposals should include an abstract of 250 to 500 words (one or two 
pages) and a CV of one page. They will be the subject of a double-blind 
evaluation by the Scientific Council members.

*/Scientific Direction and Organization/**//*

*Philippe J. Maarek*, Université Paris Est – UPEC, Sic.Lab. Méditerranée 
(UPR 3820) and CECCOPOP – www.ceccopop.eu <http://www.ceccopop.eu/>

&
*Nicolas Pelissier,* Université Côte d'Azur et Sic.Lab. Méditerranée 
(UPR 3820) - https://siclab.fr <https://siclab.fr/>

*//*

*/Scientific Board/*

*Paul Baines, University of Leicester, United Kingdom*

*Camelia Beciu, Université de Bucarest, Roumania*

*Donatella Campus, Università degli studi di Bergamo, Italy*

*Ann Crigler, University of Southern California, USA*

*Eric Dacheux, Université de Clermont Auvergne, France*

*Alex Frame, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon,  France*

*Elizabeth Gar**dère, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, France*

*Gilles Gauthier, Université de Laval, Canada*

*Lutz Hagen, Université Technique de Dresde, **Germany***

*Christina Holtz-Bacha, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität 
Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany*

*Karolina Koc-Michalska**, Audencia Business School, France*

*Patrizia Laudatti, Université Côte d'Azur, France*

*Darren Lilleker, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom*

*Philippe J. Maarek, Université Paris Est - UPEC, France*

*Eric Maigret, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, France*

*Pascal Marchand, Université de Toulouse 3, France*

*Lars Nord, Midwestern University, Sweden*

*Nicolas Pelissier, Université Côte d'Azur, France*

*Brigitte Sebbah**, Université Toulouse 3, France*

*Marina Villa,** Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy*

*Małgorzata Winiarska-Brodowska, Jagellon University, Poland*




------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] <applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftnref1> About 
the French 2017 Presidential election, see for instance Maarek, P. J., & 
Mercier, A. (2018)./2017 La présidentielle chamboule-tout (La 
communication politique au prisme du dégagisme)/(L’Harmattan éd.); 
Perrineau, P. (2017)./Le vote disruptif (Les élections présidentielles 
et législatives de 2017)/. Presses de Science Po.; Théviot, A. 
(2019)./Médias et élections : Les campagnes 2017 primaires, 
présidentielle et législatives françaises/. Septentrion; 
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (2019)./Le débat Le Pen/Macron du 3 mai 2017 : Un 
débat disruptif/. L’Harmattan.

[2] <applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftnref2> See 
/in/ Maarek, P. J., & Mercier, A. (2018) the interview by Philippe J. 
Maarek with Guillaume Liegeyu,at the time founding partner of the 
Liegey-Muller-Pons agency and "strategic advisor" of Emmanuel Macron 
campaign.

[3] <applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftnref3> See 
for instance, Bon, F. (1974)./Les sondages peuvent-ils se 
tromper?/Calmann-Levy;  Blondiaux, L. (1998)./La fabrique de l’opinion : 
une histoire sociale des sondages/. Seuil.

[4] <applewebdata://BF2C61B1-3246-4520-806B-D732819FE325#_ftnref4> See 
Chadwick, A. (2017)./The Hybrid Media System (Politics and Power)/(2e 
édition). Oxford University Press.

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