"In France on Sunday, the flan was decidedly in the oven, while the tomato was surprisingly green. By the same token — according to Twitter, at any rate — the temperature in Budapest hovered near 25 degrees" this is the opening line for the New York Times article "For Results, Twitter Gets Out Early Word, in Code" by Scott Sayare. This is about Twitter being used to get around the laws that the French government has to stop the Media
In France Media sites will be fined if they post the results of an election before 8p.m. The reason for this it because the poles do not close until eight. Other countries though do not abide by these rules and give an unofficial count of the votes and a projected winner.
To fight this law the people of France took to Twitter in code to talk about the results of the presidential race. As the New York Times decodes the Twits as such
"The flan stood for François Hollande, the Socialist favorite, who finished the evening in the lead, with about 28 percent of the votes in the first of two rounds of voting. (Before losing weight for his presidential bid, the jovial Mr. Hollande had been known in some circles as “Flanby,” a brand of jiggly French custard.) The tomato was the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose Left Front party was largely composed of communists — thus the red fruit reference. He finished with a disappointing 11 percent."
This is important to understand because social media could be changing the way voting is. In a CNN article by Alice Antheaume titled "Why social media will reveal French election winner," she talks about how social media is changing the way of politics but not how we might think.
Antheaume wrote
"The 2012 campaign has proved a pivotal moment in political history: for the first time, the Web and social media are part of all candidates' strategy -- from Nicolas Sarkozy (center right) to Hollande (center left), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (far left) to Marine Le Pen (far right) and Eva Joly (Green)."
This shows that politicians are using social media to help try to win votes. Sometimes this has been proven affective but more often than not, they have not figured out to make a facebook "like" into a yes vote. According to Antheaume she believes that ""Can an election be won on social media?" is: in France in 2012, most probably "no". However, the question: "Can social media predict the name of the next French president?" calls for a positive answer." I agree with her on this but i also believe that in time social media sites will start to show pull for certain politicians.