Do you hear the people sing? Comparison of synchronized URL and narrative themes in 2020 and 2023 French protests

Abstract

Introduction: France has seen two key protests within the term of President Emmanuel Macron: one in 2020 against Islamophobia, and another in 2023 against the pension reform. During these protests, there is much chatter on online social media platforms like Twitter. Methods: In this study, we aim to analyze the differences between the online chatter of the 2 years through a network-centric view, and in particular the synchrony of users. This study begins by identifying groups of accounts that work together through two methods: temporal synchronicity and narrative similarity. We also apply a bot detection algorithm to identify bots within these networks and analyze the extent of inorganic synchronization within the discourse of these events. Results: Overall, our findings suggest that the synchrony of users in 2020 on Twitter is much higher than that of 2023, and there are more bot activity in 2020 compared to 2023.