Emmanuel Macron has been called a saviour: of Europe, of liberalism, and indeed of “progressives” the world over. The hallmarks of his presidential campaign have been well documented: an insurgency from the vacant centre-ground, a party built from scratch that managed to win a sweeping majority in the French parliament, and a slick communications strategy to consolidate a polished image.

This last aspect has won him the adulation of the international media: most notably for his détournement of Donald Trump’s electoral slogan, in which Macron called on Trump to “make the planet great again” in response to the latter’s repugnant decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement.

But the “saviour” image he has conjured among neoliberal centrists the world over is one-dimensional. The dimension missing from this conventional account is crucial: namely, the way in which Macron’s domestic image has changed since becoming president – both because of, and in spite of, his extraordinarily calculated communications strategy.

His victory marked an abrupt turning point. Gone were the chummy interviews with journalists and the down-to-earth friendliness of the campaign trail – President Macron’s inauguration was marked by an icy, authoritative look that was here to stay.

This new image is what Macron himself has described as the “Jupiter” model. Keen to mark himself out from his predecessor François Hollande (who wanted to be seen as a “normal president”), Macron’s communication team opted for Jupiter, the Roman sky god, as the symbol of the new president’s style: all-powerful, aloof, removed from the daily cut-and-thrust of politics.

The aim, according to the president himself, is none other than to found “a new form of democratic authority” based on a “universe of symbols” that can stand in for France’s traumatic loss of a monarchic head of state.

Key messages are diffused via carefully staged set-pieces in which Macron refuses to answer any journalistic questions outside the topic of the day – which is, of course, the topic of his choice. Access to the Élysée and interviews are meted out sparingly. Lengthy communication is kept to a minimum – an image, so the cliche goes, is worth a thousand words. Hence tweets of the strapping young president being winched from a helicopter on to a nuclear submarine, or the seemingly never-ending handshake with Trump. Such moments are highly orchestrated and endowed with explicit meaning (“support for the military” or “resolve on the world stage”) by his press team for anyone who didn’t pick up on the heavy hints in the images themselves.

It took six years for Blair to lose the sheen of youthful popularity. It has taken Macron less than six months

Despite this supposedly fresh Jupiterian branding, such micro-managed communication is nothing new. It places Macron in a long line of dashing saviours of late capitalism: from Tony Blair to Barack Obama, both of whom controlled their image to the letter. And yet, much has changed in politics since Blair, and even Obama, were first elected. The rules of the game are different. In an era of social media, as argued by the sociologist William Davies, politicians are no longer able to control their images with such precision.

Rather than diffusing their messages exclusively through painstakingly staged set-pieces at moments of their choosing, they are subjected to a constant 360-degree scrutiny online – including the traces of their past that form a kind of internet archive to which everybody has access. In such an environment authenticity rules. Figures such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn (and Trump, in a markedly different way), who have long, well-documented histories of campaigning for social justice, emerge victorious. Robotic performers are exposed.

Macron’s careful presentation is indeed wearing thin. His defiance in the face of opposition to his neoliberal labour law reforms – manifested most jarringly in his recent live televised signing of the executive orders to push these reforms through – looks at best anachronistic, at worst arrogant. The desire to be seen as a serious reformer cannot hold under the weight of contradiction contained in simultaneous cuts to public spending and plans to scrap a tax on the assets of the country’s wealthiest 350,000 households, worth €5bn a year to the public purse. This latest policy was enough to earn him a front page branding him a “hero of the rich” in Libération last week.

Given the readily available details of Macron’s career as an investment banker, this may not come as such a surprise. The French president can fine-tune his communications right down to the shape of his eyebrows – but he cannot escape his past: a relentless online archive that “actively pursues us”.

It took six years for Blair to lose the sheen of youthful popularity. It has taken Macron less than six months: his approval rating dropping more steeply than any French president since Jacques Chirac in 1995. Clearly, the established truths of spin doctor wizardry no longer hold, leaving France’s youngest president already looking like the old guard.

• Gabriel Bristow is an activist and writer, currently based in Paris