Les réseaux sociaux et l’échange entre l’homme politique et les internautes : le cas de Facebook après les élections présidentielles en France

The purpose of this article is to show how social networks, and more specifically Facebook, are used by politicians and their supporters. This is achieved through a detailed analysis of exchange of posts between politicians and surfers in the period following the presidential election campaigns in France of 2007. It is shown how politicians take advantage of Facebook, despite its initially being a decentralized social network, connecting people without a political or hierarchic purpose. The article attempts to show some of the consequences of such an exploitation of a public network for the public sphere and asks how much leverage there is for the surfers/citizens in moderating political marketing on Facebook