Local ePolitics Reputation Case Study

TL;DR

This paper examines how low-budget candidates in a French mayoral election used Web tools to manage their online reputation, highlighting security and legal issues involved in their digital campaigns.

Contribution

It provides a case study on local political online reputation management, analyzing the tools used and associated security and legal challenges.

Findings

Candidates effectively used Web tools for campaign promotion.

Security vulnerabilities and legal issues were identified in the online strategies.

The study highlights the impact of Web 2.0 on local political campaigns.

Abstract

More and more people rely on Web information and with the advance of Web 2.0 technologies they can increasingly easily participate to the creation of this information. Country-level politicians could not ignore this trend and have started to use the Web to promote them or to demote their opponents. This paper presents how candidates to a French mayor local election and with less budget have engineered their Web campaign and online reputation. After presenting the settings of the local election, the Web tools used by the different candidates and the local journalists are detailed. These tools are evaluated from a security point of view and the legal issues that they have created are underlined.