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Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:36:20 EDT
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Subject: [vel] Second Life and French politics
Don McLaughlin pointed this out to me this morning!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032902
540.html?referrer=email
French Politics in 3-D on Fantasy Web Site
Presidential Hopefuls Build Presence for Avatars on Second Life
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 30, 2007; A01
PARIS, March 29 -- In a battle between push guns and pig grenades, the
exploding pigs won.
The clash started on a January morning when protesters attacked the
cyberspace headquarters of extremist French presidential candidate Jean-Marie
Le Pen in
the popular 3-D Internet fantasy world Second Life.
Le Pen security forces responded with push guns, whimsical digital weapons
that tossed bodies through the air "like rag dolls," according to one witness.
Protesters fought back with pig grenades, firing fat pink porkers that exploded
in neon pink splatters. When the shooting ended, Le Pen's headquarters lay in
ruins, deserted by staff and guards.
The confrontation in Second Life -- the parallel online universe where
players cloak their alter egos in cartoonlike bodies -- demonstrated the rising
impact of the newest cyber-venue for politicians trying to promote real-world
campaigns.
All four major candidates in France's presidential election have opened
virtual headquarters in Second Life, an interactive forum that allows
inhabitants
-- called avatars -- to engage in debates, attend political rallies and take
part in protests in a multidimensional world that makes traditional campaign Web
sites seem quaint and antiquated.
"The emergence of political headquarters represents the next generation of
Internet-based political campaigning," Wagner James Au, a Second Life blogger
who witnessed and reported the attack against Le Pen's cyberspace headquarters,
wrote in an e-mail interview.
For now, the numbers are small. Campaigns report that Second Life has
estimated daily visit numbers of up to 20,000 for S?gol?ne Royal, 11,000 for Le
Pen,
10,000 for Nicolas Sarkozy and 7,000 for Fran?ois Bayrou.
But increasingly, politicians in France and across Europe are discovering
what businesses have already recognized: If they build a virtual headquarters in
cyberspace, real people will come.
"There is something distinct about communication in Second Life," said
Margaux Gandelon, a 20-year-old journalism student who helped create its
headquarters for Bayrou, who is running as an alternative to the ruling party's
Sarkozy
and the Socialists' Royal in the April 22 French presidential election. "People
don't behave the same way as when you meet them on the street -- they are
more open to discussions."
Interest in the French presidential campaigns has become so intense that
visits to the cyber-headquarters helped give France the second-highest number of
Second Life avatars of any country in February, according to the site's
records. Only the United States registered more avatars on the site, which
claims
more than 5 million registered participants.
"The French are by far the most passionate about real-world politics in
Second Life," Au said. "The U.S. candidates' sites are like ghost towns, for the
most part, while the French headquarters for Le Pen and S?gol?ne Royal have been
quite active."
Among the U.S. presidential hopefuls, Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Barack Obama and John Edwards are campaigning in the virtual universe, and
Edwards's headquarters has been vandalized.
Is a virtual world created as an escape from everyday hassles really the
place for partisan politics?
When Antonio Di Pietro, Italy's transport and infrastructure minister,
recently announced plans to set up an office on a tropical island in Second
Life,
residents staged a protest. "It doesn't seem right to make this a photocopy of
real life," an avatar sheathed in black velvet complained to the Italian
newspaper La Stampa. "We get enough politics there already!"
Last fall, Guillaume Parisi, a member of the youth branch of the National
Front party, helped persuade the 78-year-old Le Pen to become the first French
presidential candidate to open a headquarters in Second Life.
Le Pen, who stunned France in 2002 by winning enough votes to reach the
runoff election, has been convicted of calling the Nazi gas chambers "a detail"
of
World War II -- Holocaust denial is a crime in France -- and for inciting
racial hatred by saying France was in danger of being overrun by Muslims.
"Second Life allows us to talk to various people from a lot of different
countries," said Parisi, 24. "They realize that we are far from the caricature
of
Nazis that people believe. It's great for our image abroad."
French avatars tried to persuade the Internet site's creator,
California-based Linden Lab, to refuse to sell Le Pen a spot on Porcupine, a
Second Life
island created as a shopping mecca. Opposition avatars picketed his
glass-fronted
headquarters, and the morning when the protest turned violent, Le Pen's Second
Life location became so overloaded by avatars trying to rush to the online
scene that the clash took on a slow-motion, dreamlike quality and many were
knocked off-line.
"Every time we organize a public event, we expect far-left militants to come
and demonstrate against us," said Parisi, who has since rebuilt the
headquarters in another virtual location on the site. "Second Life is not
different."
Other candidates have encountered problems on the cyberspace campaign trail.
"The headquarters are so open that we see extreme behavior," said Loic Le
Meur, a French blogger who helped open the virtual office of Sarkozy, the ruling
party candidate, on Sarkozy Island, where campaign volunteers hand out virtual
T-shirts and pizza to visitors.
"Some people come with grenades or guns. A few days ago, we even got a woman
character wearing a G-string! We've had to implement a new rule banning
weapons and encouraging people to dress properly."
Campaign Internet strategists say the Second Life headquarters for now appeal
to a relatively small base of technologically savvy voters. But in a campaign
in which only a few points separate Sarkozy, Royal and Bayrou, campaign
officials said they can't afford to dismiss the several thousand voters who
visit
their virtual offices -- far more than the number who visit their real world
headquarters.
"It's not a mass communication phenomenon, but we reach people who wouldn't
have gone to meetings or rallies," said Gandelon, Bayrou's Second Life
coordinator. "We talk to a lot of undecided voters and also activists from other
parties."
The campaigns attempt to create cyber-headquarters that reflect the
personality and politics of the candidates.
Bayrou's headquarters includes a farm with cows, barns and a tractor,
reflecting his roots as the son of farmers and his hobby raising thoroughbreds.
On
any given day, a visitor might find a Bayrou activist wearing an orange T-shirt
emblazoned with "Sexy Centrist" riding a horse.
The Second Life offices of Royal, on Bretton Island, are built of wood to
reflect her concerns for the environment, according to Beno?t Thieulin, 34, who
heads her Internet campaign.
Just like the real world, campaigns have to expend manpower to maintain their
Second Life headquarters. Three Bayrou supporters spent 50 hours each over
three weeks to construct the headquarters, which now requires 10 people working
two to three hours a day to manage. Fifteen Sarkozy-supporting avatars guard
over his cyber-headquarters 24-7.
Thieulin, the Internet coordinator for Royal's campaign, said the greatest
benefit of the virtual headquarters has been the media interest it has
generated. He described Second Life as "part of a wider Web strategy," adding,
"We try
to be everywhere online."
Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.
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