Flows of communication and ‘influentials’ in Twitter: A comparative approach between Portugal and Spain during 2014 European Elections

Abstract

The research about the concept of influence on Twitter is still underdeveloped. This work is a theoretical and empirical approach on how politicians are engaging with citizens and/or journalists, and how these social conversations are framed under specific topics and users. The idea of new influentials on political communication in the new media ecosystem, as some studies found (Dang-Xuan et al, 2013), can offer empirical pursuit of the suggested ‘two-step flow model’ as applied to the agenda-setting process (Weimann et al., 2007) in the case of the microblogging for campaigning online. Following the recent research about how politicians try to reach their potential audience (Vaccari and Valeriani, 2013; 2013a), this paper analyses the social conversations on Twitter driven by politicians, the main topics in these political conversations and the kind of flows of communication (direct or indirect) between politicians, journalists and citizens. This research explores the differences and similarities about influence on Twitter during European elections in two countries with similar political and economic contexts: Portugal and Spain.

Populismo de extrema derecha y redes sociales en España

“…Entre las interacciones más estudiadas se encuentra el retuit, que implica la difusión de un mensaje a través de las líneas de tiempo de la comunidad de seguidores (Guerrero-Solé, Pujadas, et al, 2022). A pesar de que ha habido cierta controversia con la interpretación que recibe esta interacción (Boyd et al, 2010;González-Bailón et al, 2014;Hemphill et al, 2013), se ha concluido que puede ser entendida como una forma de respaldo en el marco de las discusiones políticas (Amaral et al, 2016;Guerrero-Solé, 2017;Guerrero-Solé y López-González, 2019;Williams et al, 2015). Por este motivo, esta investigación también analizó los retuits del tuit publicado por Rosalía.…”

Politicized celebrities against far-right on Twitter. Political preferences and activity of users retweeting Rosalia’s anti Vox tweet after the 2019 general elections in Spain

“…Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, among others, are nowadays means for politicians to publish and share their messages (López-López & Vásquez-González, 2018), as well as to interact with citizens without the mediation of media outlets. In particular, politicians have adopted Twitter as one of the main tools for effectively interact in real-time with their audiences (Vergeer & Hermans, 2013;Graham, Jackson & Broersma, 2014), and citizens have also adopted the microblogging platform as a way for them to express their political attitudes and preferences (Amaral, Zamora, Grandío & Noguera, 2016;Hosch-Dayican, Amrit, Aarts & Dassen, 2016;Said-Hung, Prati & Cancino-Borbón, 2017;Cifuentes & Pino, 2018). Since social networks interactions are considered to follow a filter buble logic (Pariser, 2012) and can thus be easily used to reveal users' preferences, a considerable part of the research in Twitter has been focused on the uncovering of latent attributes of the users, in particular their political preferences (Guerrero-Solé, Corominas-Murtra & López-González, 2014;Fang, Habel, Ounis & MacDonald, 2019), or their political activity online (Bruns & Highfield, 2013;Gelado-Marcos, Rubira-García, & Navío-Navarro, 2019).…”

“…Retweeting, which means spreading a certain message across the timelines of one's community of followers, has been one of the most analysed interactions in Twitter. Despite there has been a controversy around the interpretation of the retweet (boyd, Golder & Lotan, 2010;Hemphill, Otterbacher & Shapiro, 2013;González-Bailón, Borge-Holthoefer & Moreno, 2014), most of the studies show that when it comes to political discussions, retweeting can be understood as a form of political endorsement (Conover, Ratkiewicz, Francisco, Gonçalves, Flammini & Menczer, 2011;Williams, McMurray, Kurz & Hugo Lambert, 2015;Amaral et al, 2016;Guerrero-Solé, 2017;Guerrero-Solé & López-González, 2019).…”

Capítulo 5. Las cifras de la cibercampaña de las Elecciones Generales de abril de 2019

“…Numerosas investigaciones han estudiado la utilización de las redes sociales en la comunicación política y electoral en España. Es el caso de diversos trabajos sobre las Elecciones Generales de 2011 (Castillejo;Semova, 2012;Zamora-Medina;Zurutuza-Muñoz, 2014;Sabés, 2015;Gamir Ríos, 2016), las Elecciones al Parlamento Europeo de 2014 (Congosto, 2015;López García et al, 2015;Pérez-González, 2015;Amaral et al, 2016), las Elecciones Generales de 2015 (López García, 2016;Machado Flores;Capdevilla Gómez, 2016;Roca, 2017;Gamir Ríos et al, 2017;Roca, 2018) y las Elecciones Generales de 2016 (Casero-Ripollés et. al., 2016b;López-Meri et al, 2017;Casero-Ripollés, 2018;Zugasti Azagra, 2018).…”