How to get young people interested in politics? In the Vrai du Faux Junior, the meeting for decrypting and verifying information carried out with middle and high school students, the students wonder about the functioning of an application which has been a hit in recent weeks: the application Elyse.
Elyze is an application designed to try to get young people interested in the programs of presidential candidates. The user selects among hundreds of proposals those with which he is the most in agreement. At the end of the course on the application appears the candidate or candidates who a priori correspond(s) the most to him – candidates declared or not to date moreover.
Launched in early January, the app has been downloaded over a million times and has since faced some rumors and criticism. To the students of Paul Bert high school in Paris and Jules Ferry college in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois in Essonne to disentangle the True from the False.
“I read that the Elyze application encountered security vulnerabilities and that it would resell our personal data, is this true?” Ludmila asks. “I have heard that the Elyze application would use our personal data”, also said Aloys. “For check, he adds, we could ask the CNIL or the two founders of the application.”
When contacted, the CNIL, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties, replied that it had been alerted, that it “cannot comment on the compliance of this application as it stands“, additional information being necessary. In general, this type of application must provide strong guarantees to protect the data of its users: a high level of security, a very limited data retention period, and perfect transparency vis-à-vis -to its users (what data is collected? For what purposes? Who has access to this data? …) The CNIL adds that compliance with these obligations is particularly necessary when sensitive data (data which reveal the person’s political opinions or trade union membership in particular) are processed. The collection of this data is in principle prohibited, except in exceptional cases, for example if the explicit consent of the persons is obtained.
Grégoire Cazcarra, one of the founders of the application, wants to be reassuring: “Initially, we offered users anonymously and completely optionally to fill in some information on which we would have found it interesting to work with research centers, think tanks. But despite our explanations, despite the fact that we guarantee not to never sell this data to campaign teams, some users remained concerned.” For “reassure everyone“, he adds, the designers of Elyze have decided to delete all data.
Who are the founders of the app? “I read on The echoes that the Elyze app was created by Grégoire Cazcarra and Gaspard Guermonprez and on the daily The world it would be François Mari. So I wonder who are the real founders of this application because the names of the creators change according to the sites? Manuel wonders.
“Initially we are two co-creators, replies Grégoire Cazcarra , Francois and I. And Wallerand and Gaspard joined us some time later. We are a bunch of friends. And behind there are a dozen volunteers in a movement called “Les Engagés” which is a partisan movement that has been trying to interest young people in politics for almost five years now. We are a whole team mobilized on Elyze.”
Week after week and given its success, the Elyze application has been closely scrutinized by the candidates’ campaign teams, by Internet users and has been the subject of criticism. “I heard on Twitter that the Elyze application favored the candidate Emmanuel Macron. Is it true that it can influence the vote of young people, especially 16-24 year olds?” Anais asks.
“I completely reassure you on this: no candidate, neither Emmanuel Macron, nor any other is favored”, answered him Gregoire Cazcarra. “All have the same number of proposals on the application and are put on the same footing. It is true that a bug had been identified a few weeks ago in the event of a tie on the application where some candidates arrived before the others, a bug that we quickly corrected by implementing a ‘tie’ feature if two candidates obtained exactly the same number of votes on the application.”
Camille has a similar question: “Would the app influence users? Will they rely on the results instead of going to see the programs of the candidates themselves? Grégoire Cazcarra stresses that this is a question for him “super important”. “We do not have calling, he says, to issue a voting instruction, that is to say to explain to any young person for whom he must vote. That’s why we encourage users, in addition to the application, to read the programs of the candidates when they are revealed, to follow the news of the campaign in the media, in short to multiply the sources of information. We see ourselves above all as a gateway to this election for those who are not interested in politics, or even who do not intend to vote and it is they whom we hope to remobilize by the presidential election. of April.“
While an extensive survey published by thehe Institut Montaigne highlights a strong “political disaffiliation” of young people, who are very critical of the current political functioning, the Does the success of this application demonstrate that young people at the same time only want to take an interest in political issues?
“We must indeed be wary of ready-made ideas”, confirmed Anne Muxel, research director at CEVIPOF, the political research center of Sciences Po, and author of the book Politically young. “It is totally false to say that young people are not interested in politics. They are not depoliticized. On the contrary, they are looking for understanding, benchmarks, elements of knowledge that would allow them to better understand what is debated today in French society and more broadly in the world – if only through their questions and concerns for environmental and ecological issues.
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What often comes out when talking to this age group, she adds, “it’s their desire to have elements to understand political debates and contemporary political issues. What they want is to be given material to think about, material to situate themselves in politics, material to understand the political programs and ideas of the candidates who are running. From this point of view, she comments, the Elyze application “responds to many of their requests, their expectations to better identify themselves in the political universe where they want to express themselves.