YELLOWPOL - The Yellow Vests Movement Impact on the 2019 European elections: online/offline polarization

Triggered last October by the 80km/h speed limit on country side roads and the rising price of gasoline, the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests (YV) has turned into a proliferating social movement, active online and offline, disrupting and polarizing the French political debate ever since. A host of studies are exploring its origins, its claims and its followers, at Sciences Po Bordeaux (Bedock et al.2018), Sciences Po Grenoble (Guerra et al., 2018), Lille University (Le Lann et al.2018), Cevipof (Rouban, 2019) and Fondation Jean Jaurés (Fourquet and Manternach, 2018). The focus of our project is different, questioning what the movement does to the French political polarization both in term of discussions and electoral competition. To what extent do the YV’s ideas, combining calls for social justice (taxing the rich, fighting inequalities, increasing wages and purchase power) and political discontent (anti-elites, anti-representative democracy, promoting horizontal and direct procedures such as the RIC/Citizen initiative referendum) influence and polarize public opinion, party politics and elections?

The project includes two working packages:

• WP1: Political polarization on social media
• WP2: Political polarization in elections

the team

• Caterina Froio (Sciences Po, CEE), Principal Investigator
• Nonna Mayer (Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS), Principal Investigator
• Dominique Cardon (Sciences Po, Medialab)
• Jean-Philippe Cointet (Sciences Po, Medialab)
• Anja Durovic (Sciences Po, CEE)
• Florence Ecormier Nocca (Sciences Po, CEE)
• Emiliano Grossman (Sciences Po, CEE)
• Florence Haegel (Sciences Po, CEE)
• Omer Faruk Metin (Sciences Po, CEE)
• Pedro Morales Ramaciotti (Sciences Po, Medialab)
• Olivier Rozenberg (Sciences Po, CEE)
• Nicolas Sauger (Sciences Po, CEE)

To know more

This project is financed by Sciences Po as part of the projects selected by the Scientific Advisory Board.