French candidates bank on social media

Can an election be won on social media? That question is being increasingly asked in France, before the first round of the presidential election.

The French are very much online now: 75% of people surf the web while 25 million have Facebook accounts, out of a total population of 66 million, of whom 43 million are voters.

“The truth is that nobody has yet worked out how to change a ‘like’ on Facebook into a real vote,” declared Fleur Pellerin, digital economy adviser for socialist candidate Francois Hollande.

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