The scenario of the 2017 French presidential elections is repeating itself, with Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen qualifying for the second round of elections. The winners of the first round have 15 days to convince the rest of the voters, who abstained from voting or who voted for other candidates, to give them their vote in the next round. The far right, represented by Marine Le Pen, is this time very close to the Elysée, and Macron will have to convince voters from right and left forces to vote for him. What are the methods used by the latter to win these elections? and are they legal?
As part of this interesting topic, the Burkina Press Agency published a wide-ranging investigation, this particularly interesting article published under the title: “African trolls vote Macron on social networks”.
Coinciding with the French election campaign appeared an investigation into the activity of a certain agency named “Agence de SMM et de développementenAfrique”. The survey was conducted on the basis of a file that appeared on the internet which presents a media plan. Probably, this media plan was created by the same organization “Agence de SMM et de développementenAfrique” for a group of employees from Mali, led by Mr. IbidounOladélé Landry. According to the captures of the NetAfrique media article document, this media plan is a practical manual for working with groups on Facebook and Instagram: Belle France, De France, Rire24Fr, Jeunesse de France.
It should be noted that all these means and groups conduct their activity only during working days and publish 3-4 publications per day, adding both political and entertainment content. In total, these accounts have around 30,000 followers. 15,000 on the Belle France page, 7,000 on the De France page, 7,000 on the Rire24FR page and 500 on the Jeunesse de France page. These pages are duplicated on Instagram, but they have a less significant number of subscribers. Here are the links to these pages: Bellefrance_fr, 2france.fr, Rire24.fr, Jeunesse.de.france.
All analyzes have shown that these pages are clearly creating content according to a well-conceived and orchestrated media plan from the Elysée, the first of which is the denial of negative information about Emmanuel Macron, publications explaining how Ukrainian refugees are doing in France, publications indicating the effectiveness of the measures taken by the French government to combat Covid 19, and other publications which would arouse and shade public opinion.
While examining the pages, an interesting thing to catch our attention: in the section “Transparency of the page”, it was noticed that at least one of the administrators of the group is in Mali, on the other hand other members have hidden their location. However, as of the writing of this article, all admins have hidden their location.
From all these facts, it can be concluded that there is a certain agency named “Africa SMM and Development Agency” which has posted job vacancies on different recruitment sites in Africa to recruit staff to make political and election posts on Facebook.
It should be noted that collaborating with this kind of suspicious agency can be dangerous for SMM specialists in Africa. This kind of activity can cause problems with the law. We definitely do not recommend participating in this kind of work.
Thus, according to the latest news from the Republic of Mali, the competent authorities, upon knowledge of this news, have opened a wide-ranging investigation in the hope of finding this criminal network and bringing it to justice.
