Elections in France

Le Pen follows Trump's lead on social media bombardment

Domination of social media was a key weapon in Donald Trump's rise to the US presidency, and now France's far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, is looking to follow suit, analysts say.

Le Pen has more than a million followers on both Twitter and Facebook, giving her a bigger social media platform than any other candidate for the French presidency.

Her party, the National Front (FN), is a veteran presence on the internet -- it was the first political group in France to launch a website, back in 1996.

Now the party is trying to use the digital world to trump mainstream rivals and bypass the traditional media, "to speak directly to the public."