Participation and topics of discussion of Spaniards in the digital public sphere

Abstract

Since the seventies, in Western democracies, communication technologies and current social networks have attracted academic debate on the ability of these devices to promote an extension of the public sphere. The recent launch of Twitter, as well as other social networks, has produced an extensive discussion about their ability to promote the different dynamics of public participation to the mediated public space. This study seeks to explore the discussion on topics involving Spaniards in the digital public sphere, looking specifically at the participation in Twitter and two digital newspapers: elpais.com and elmundo.es. Through an analysis of their quantitative and qualitative content, 633 comments published on both Spanish most read online newspapers, and on their social profiles on Twitter have been studied. On the second phase, 240 Trending Topics have been collected, and their correlation with the themes of the barometers of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) has been analyzed. Our research suggests that Spaniards do not generally discuss about their political concerns on Twitter. The main themes listed in the CIS Barometer -immigration, education, social issues, the government and individual parties or politicians, etc.-correspond to the topics registered in the online newspapers debate, but not in the social network. In general terms, the discussion of the Spaniards on Twitter is focused on soft news and the argumentation of their opinions is rather limited.

Are parliaments using social media? A comparative and longitudinal study applied in American and European countries (2010, 2105 and 2017)

“…The results of the study denote a high interest for promoting that information reaches more users, but a null enthusiasm when it comes to talking about more complex and interactive communication processes (Fuchs, 2014;Lynch et al, 2017;Sunstein, 2017). Parliaments have thrown themselves into a positioning of their themes in social networks despite the private interests they manifest (Calvo and Domínguez, 2016;Van Dijk, 2011) and promote the privatization of the public sphere (Giraldo-Luque, 2015) mediated by the commercial framework of the platform.…”

“…Calvo and Campos-Domínguez (2016) also introduce different contradictions between the commercial interests of networks and the transparent character a political conversation in the network must have, an idea exposed, besides, by Fuchs (2014) and Giraldo-Luque (2015).…”

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“…Recent research on democracy has been taxonomic (Maleki y Hendriks, 2016), defining (Muñoz, 2016), reflections on the concept itself (Sim y Krishnasamy, 2016;Tebaldi y Calaresu, 2015) or reviews of specific political contexts (Christensen, 2019;Fuchs y Roller, 2018;Repak, 2016;Calvo y Campos, 2016). However, all of these studies identify the need for an accompanying citizen of public administration.…”

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“…En este caso con la pretensión de comprender las estrategias argumentativas usadas para expresar apoyo o rechazo a expresiones multiétnicas y multilingüísticas en la esfera pública de patriotismo en la sociedad americana. En la bibliografía analizada se han identificado diferentes artículos donde se usan como fuente periódicos en línea junto a otras fuentes, se trate de estudios basados en Twitter o en big data (por ejemplo, Calvo & Calvo-Domínguez, 2016).…”