Coronavirus: youtubers mobilize social networks much more than politicians

No more zincs and coffee machines: since the start of confinement, social networks have become one of the only places to exchange opinions, questions and opinions. And the French interacted much more with the content distilled by the youtubers than with the official announcements.

The ranking was established by the social media monitoring platform Synthesio, after two months of monitoring around words related to the coronavirus between March 1 and the end of April. The number of mentions of personalities on Twitter, the number of average interactions and the number of actual displays for each of its publications were taken into account. And in this little game, it is Kylian Mbappé who comes out on top of the most influential personalities on Twitter, before the parody account “God” and Emmanuel Macron.

Mbappé in front of… God and Macron

You have to go down to 31st place to find another political figure: Marine Le Pen. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in 52nd position, two places in front of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, and far ahead of the official Elysée account (87th place). That of Olivier Véran, Minister of Solidarity and Health, only points to the 105th position, just behind the account of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Between these accounts, we find Cyril Hanouna (20th) or Nabilla Vergara (22nd), but also many profiles of personalities who have built their communities around Instagram or Youtube.

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Over the same period, in the United States, the ranking highlights personalities much more widely from the traditional political and media seraglio: Barack Obama ahead of Donald Trump, then two instagrammers, mobilized in particular for fundraising. Next are Democrats Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Melania Trump, comedian Jimmy Kimmel and finally the future candidate for the White House Joe Biden.

The youtubers, mobilized to enforce confinement

For Aurore Legentil, specialist in listening to the web and social networks at Synthesio, these differences among the most influential profiles on social networks, as surprising as they may seem at first glance, can be explained "by the mobilization youtubers around the very clear instruction: Stay at home ”.

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This video, viewed more than 2 million times on the profile of Norman Fait Des Vidéo alone, has been shared by dozens of star YouTube accounts.

Why is the same phenomenon not observed across the Atlantic? The sometimes controversial volubility of the American President as well as the electoral context in the United States have greatly contributed to making the publications of political figures more visible and commented on.

By aggregating the most used emoticons over this period, we also have a summary of the tone of social networks. And there again, France and the United States stand out: on the French side, there is the red dot, indicating urgent or important information that comes to mind, as well as the emoticon covered with a mask. In the United States, you have a red heart and a smiley scratching your chin and raising your eyebrow, indicating doubt in relation to information…