‘Follow the closing of the campaign on streaming’: The use of Twitter by Spanish political parties during the 2014 European elections

Abstract

The results of the elections to the European Parliament of 25 May 2014 marked a before and an after for Spanish politics. This influential European campaign took place at a moment when Internet use was well established as a tool, with political parties and candidates actively using social media. This article aims to research whether Spanish parties are using Twitter to develop interactive communication, or simply for broadcasting messages. Thus, the Twitter activity of various political parties during the 2014 European campaign is content-analysed. Results indicate that activity seems to depend on ideology, that parties are revealed to be committed to unidirectional communication/broadcasting, and that debate on Twitter is fundamentally between the politicians themselves. On a theoretical level, our data are in line with the idea that the normalisation hypothesis tends to prevail.

Postverdad y discurso intimidatorio en Twitter durante el referéndum catalán del 1-O

“…Aunque el uso político de Twitter ha sido analizado especialmente en el contexto estadounidense, en los últimos años en España se ha desarrollado un número considerable de trabajos que abordan este tema desde múltiples perspectivas (Fernández Gómez, Hernández-Santaolalla & Sanz Marcos, 2018), incluyendo el contexto catalán (Pérez-Curiel & García-Gordillo, 2018). Así, se ha abordado la figura del candidato (Criado, Martínez-Fuentes & Silván, 2013), de los fans políticos (Hernández-Santaolalla & Rubio-Hernández, 2017), o de fenómenos como la interacción (Ramos, Fernández Gómez & Pineda, 2018;Zugasti Azagra & Pérez González, 2015) o la viralidad (Congosto, 2015). En cuanto al propio debate político generado en Twitter, algunos autores verán la red como una oportunidad para incrementar la "calidad democrática" a partir de la diversificación de voces (Moya Sánchez & Herrera Damas, 2015, p. 8), mientras que otros afirman que esta funcionaría como una mera "caja de resonancia" (Gruzd & Roy, 2014), reforzando la polarización ideológica, pues los usuarios harían uso de la exposición selectiva para acercarse a aquellos canales cuyas opiniones ya comparten.…”

Ideological Consumerism in Colombian Elections, 2015: Links Between Political Ideology, Twitter Activity, and Electoral Results

“…Further studies in other countries and societies should test this same hypothesis and contribute with the theoretical progress of this field that is still in an early phase. 31 In any case, the conclusion that regardless their ideology, politicians in election campaigns convey an homogeneous message that prevents their differentiation from others has not been found in any previous research of Colombian electoral studies 19 , 20 , 32–34 or in Canada, 6 Switzerland, 7 Italy, 11 Germany, 35 United States of America, 36 Spain, 37 India, 38 or elsewhere.…”

Understanding the European Public Sphere: a review of pending challenges in research

“…Literature in the field of communication positively appraises the institutional actions to communicate the European Union (see, for example, Aiello, 2012;Schmitt et al, 2015). Nevertheless, a structural approach has also been adapted in this area of research, which states that the debate on social networks of EU issues is made in national terms (Ramos-Serrano et al, 2018). Likewise, knowing the EU does not necessarily mean developing favorable attitudes towards the European integration (Marquart et al, 2019).…”