ABSTRACT
The chapter analyses the Twitter discourse of French president Emmanuel Macron and runner-up Marine Le Pen during the 2017 campaign. Two elements were in the center of the analysis: the construction of ‘the people’ and national identity. Macron referred to the people without using the term, and instead utilized ‘citizens’. Le Pen, on the other hand, constructed many of her messages around a populist understanding of ‘people’. Second, both conveyed a cultural, principally inclusive concept of national identity in their tweets. Finally, neither candidate used uncivil language in a very high number of tweets showing that Twitter can be used for argumentative political discourse. This result prevents views according to which Twitter is detrimental for political discourse.
