A former president in prison, 6,574 videos published, millions of views… let’s stop counting views for a moment and instead compare competing social strategies.
This analysis is based on social data collected via Tubular Labs, the global benchmark for video measurement. This Media Scan was conducted on 31 October 2025.
On 25 September 2025, Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in prison over Libyan funding of the 2007 campaign.
On 21 October 2025, he was incarcerated at La Santé prison.
This was a historic first, unprecedented in the Fifth Republic and in Europe and the volume of video coverage reflected that fact.
In 2023, there were 1,988 videos published by 808 accounts mentioning Sarkozy.
In 2024, the volume remained high: 1,702 videos, 771 accounts.
Then came 2025, and everything changed on a massive scale: 6,574 videos, 1,665 accounts, three times more content than in 2023 and nearly four times more publishers.
And the views followed suit.
In 2025, videos related to Sarkozy alone will have accumulated 212 million views on Instagram, 177 million on TikTok, 87.1 million on Facebook and 61.3 million on YouTube.
But simply counting views tells us nothing about the relative success of competing editorial models or short/long term strategic approaches.
Nor about the attention they attract… or lose.
What can we learn from them? How can we make these figures actionable? What do they tell us about media strategies on social networks?
To find out we started by selecting the ‘News and News politics’ category, which represents 2,054 videos from 623 accounts, accounting for 183 million of the 212 million views on Instagram, or 86% of the total. For this first Media Scan exercise, we then narrowed down the analysis to 18 media outlets (see the list in the methodology section).
From information to narrative
A former president in prison is a historic event in France, but from a media perspective it is highly revealing. On that day, the media did not all tell the same story, did not speak to the same audience, did not all seek to inform. What they did all try to do, in different ways, was to capture attention. Some editorialise, others polarise, and many seek to impose a narrative: their narrative.
So with France having the lowest level of trust in the media among Western countries (29% according to the Reuters Digital News Report 2025), and some assuming that they are addressing a single community, or even wanting to speak on its behalf, we can see that there is not a single dominant editorial model on social media. Rather what we find are four distinct strategies, four ways of capturing attention, of retaining it… or not.
What we’re looking for here is not ‘who won the battle for views’, but what types of media have managed to survive and thrive in an environment where the algorithm decides the first glance, but the audience decides the second.
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18 media outlets, one event, four ways of existing in the news feed
Media Scan’s analysis covers 18 media outlets. Brut, BFMTV, CNEWS, Le Monde, TF1 Info, France Inter, Quotidien, Blast, Mediapart, HugoDécrypte and others that published, relayed, contextualised, editorialised… the same subject, at the same time, but with radically different performances.
It is not the facts that change; the facts remain the same for everyone.
The treatment, however, differs notably across platforms.
The result of that, importantly, is that engagement does not grow at the same rate across all media outlets. When we compare ER7 (the impact of a video over one week) and ER30 (the impact over time, i.e. 30 days), a clear dividing line emerges.
Some media outlets win the short-term battle: they capture attention, perform well in the feed, then disappear almost as quickly. CNEWS, for example, dominates in the moment, but only partially converts this visibility into lasting relationships.
Others follow the opposite trajectory. Blast, France Inter and Le Monde do not explode immediately, but rise steadily and eventually surpass those that shone in the early days. Their model is not based on surprise, but on persistence. In a world where trust is gaining value as a currency, and retention is a key tool for conversions to subscriptions, this is a key understanding.
This gap between immediate impact and lasting impact is one of the most important lessons of this study. It shows that the question is no longer just ‘who gained visibility’, but what time frame a media outlet chooses to serve.
The four models of social presence that are emerging
A) The hot impact model (strong immediate reach, low engagement)
Objective: occupy the field, saturate the feed, gain raw visibility.
Like Brut, BFMTV, Le Parisien, and TF1 Info, which publish a lot, get views quickly (decent ER7), but don’t turn that visibility into lasting attention (low ER30).
This model works in the short term, but stops as soon as the flow slows down.
The logic: publish more rather than hold back.
B) The video performance model (fewer posts in the top, but well optimised)
Like C à Vous, Quotidien, and Le Figaro, whose posts appear less often in the top, but whose videos ‘work’ well: good ER7, good views/post ratio, little loss.
Here, performance does not come from volume, but from balance: publishing at the right time, with the right angle, on the right platform.
These are the media outlets that know how to do more with less, but do not dominate the flow.
C) The deep engagement model (low at the start, strong over time)
Like Blast, Mediapart, Le Monde, and France Inter, which never win the battle in the early days (modest ER7), but end up overtaking several competitors over time (strong ER30).
Their audience does not react immediately, but stays, comments, shares, and returns.
This is the slowest model… but also the most stable if you are willing to focus on the long term.
D) The algorithmic affinity model (explosive in the short term, variable in the long term)
Such as CNEWS, HugoDécrypte, Ce Soir and certain LCI formats, which achieve high ER7 peaks because they embrace the codes of scrolling: short rhythm, embodiment, polarisation.
Some maintain their position for 30 days, others fall behind.
Its strength is immediate, its weakness is structural: it depends on the distribution system, not on audience loyalty.
What these four models say about journalism in 2025
What is striking, beyond the difference in editorial lines, is the difference in strategies and the way they exist on social media.
In fact, what are these media seeking to maximise?
Some focus on presence, others on performance, others on relationships, and still others on algorithmic exposure.
Everyone talks about views, but not all views are equal.
This study shows that publishing more does not guarantee anything, that deep engagement does not protect against digital silence, and that virality has no memory.
In the end, each one reveals how it wants to be useful: to inform, mobilise, occupy the field, convince or rally a community around a narrative.
The 5 lessons from this case study
- The algorithm creates the information hierarchy before the editorial teams do.
- High-performing media outlets know what they expect from social media.
- Format is no longer an aesthetic choice, but a strategic one.
- Loyalty does not come from the subject matter, but from the tone, narrative and values of the media brand.
- The future does not belong to media outlets that shout loudly, but to those that know how to vary the intensity and finely control the impact of their content.
The real challenge is no longer visibility, but editorial relationships.
The question is no longer: ‘How can we get more views?’
The real question has become:
What kind of attention should your media provoke and what kind of editorial relationship do you expect?
Nowadays, the most balanced formats are often surpassed by more partisan or entertaining content. Influence is therefore determined by algorithmic criteria, which need to be better understood.
Contact us to learn more about the study and the impact of these media by platform: contact@upgrademedia.fr
Tubular Labs
Tubular Labs is the leading platform for analysing video content on social media. With a collection and classification engine that covers millions of videos per day on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and other channels, Tubular measures what media outlets are publishing and, more importantly, how audiences are responding.
The Media Scan Methodology
The analysis is based on a corpus of videos published around Nicolas Sarkozy’s imprisonment in 2025. The data was collected via custom creator lists on Tubular Labs in order to study actual presence strategies: publication volume, reach, 7-day engagement (ER7) and 30-day engagement (ER30).
The study covers 18 French media outlets: BFMTV, Blast, Brut, C à Vous, CNEWS, C Ce Soir (LCP), C dans l’air, France Inter, HugoDécrypte, LCI, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Le Parisien, Libération, Mediapart, Paris-Match, Quotidien and TF1 Info, analysed on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Not all media outlets analysed operate with the same resources, teams or objectives. Media Scan does not measure content quality, but rather how each media outlet exists within the attention economy.
This study does not seek to determine ‘who won’, but rather which editorial model works depending on the time, platform and type of attention sought.
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