Le Monde opens channel on Snapchat to invite young people to debate ahead of elections

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Getting younger generations interested in traditional media, whether digital or print, is still complicated, despite the fact that the pandemic has brought younger people closer to digital newspapers to receive reliable information. But we must continue to look for formulas so that they know the means and use them.

Le Monde, in this regard, has just launched a channel on Snapchat with the intention that young people use it to express their concerns and account for their problems just over three months before the presidential elections.

According to the French newspaper, for more than five years, “a whole department of The World he has dedicated himself to producing information for young readers. Less than three months before the presidential elections and in the midst of a pandemic that has particularly affected them, we are reversing the tide: it is young Snapchat users who will use Le Monde to speak, to bear witness to their aspirations, drawing the world in which they want to live, in the Snapchat channel “Speak Up”” It is the second channel that Le Monde opens on Snapchat. In the conventional channel already has 1.5 million followers.

Very high abstention rate among young people aged 18 to 25

Young French people between the ages of 18 and 25 form by far, the largest contingent of voters. Specifically, five million voters. And yet, “they have also become the ones who abstain the most: 87% did not participate in the 2021 regional elections. In 2017, only 62% of them voted in the two rounds of the presidential election (versus 76% attendance on average).”

Le Monde wonders whether this refusal to vote is an indication of young people’s disinterest in public affairs. “The series of demonstrations on the climate of recent years, the mobilizations, on social networks, in favor of Black Lives Matter or in support of the persecuted uighurs, do not indicate asyi. Nor our million and a half Snapchat followers”, he answers the newspaper to himself.

They did not vote because they feel forgotten in the democratic debate

Le Monde asked young people for a special news report why they abstained in the last elections and the message received by journalists was unanimous: they feel forgotten in the democratic debate.

Le Monde, he explains, ” has decided to lend its voice to these young people who feel forgotten. With this Snapchat channel, we will draw up a kind of inventory of the opinions of young people, with them, on issues that are close to them. Every week, a topic, a debate, arguments. Eleven episodes to portray a generation, invite them to debate, but also help them choose when it comes to expressing themselves through the ballot box.”

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