Political candidates in infotainment programmes and their emotional effects on Twitter: an analysis of the 2015 Spanish general elections pre-campaign season

Abstract

Tomás Baviera (1974) is professor of marketing at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He holds a BA in Telecommunications Engineering from the same university, as well as a PhD in Communication from the University of Valencia. He is part of the University of Valencia's research group Mediaflows, which focuses on political communication. He is visiting professor in the Master's in Social Communication of Scientific Research at the Valencian International University. He has held various positions overseeing two Colegios Mayores (residential colleges) affiliated with the University of Valencia, through which he has promoted education in the liberal arts.

Mediatisation in Twitter: an exploratory analysis of the 2015 Spanish general election

“…Through this practice, the user shares their comments and opinions with other users, while watching a TV programme. Twitter is a tool particularly apt at broadening the experience of watching the political talk shows (Giglietto and Selva 2014, Ceron and Splendore 2018, Baviera et al 2019) and the candidate debates (D'heer and Verdegem 2014, Freelon and Karpf 2015, Tremayne and Minooie 2015, Vaccari et al 2015, Shah et al 2016, Vergeer and Franses 2016. Some investigations shed light on citizen support and mobilisation towards popular political accounts, such as voter-candidate and party engagement (Vaccari and Nielsen 2013, Kratzke 2017, Yang and Kim 2017.…”

Who Learns in Information Rich Contexts? The Informative Effects of the 2015 Spanish Electoral Campaign

“…The novelty, interest, and uncertainty about the election, together with the new political actors, led to intense media coverage of the campaign and the introduction of new media formats. The general increase of infotainment on both public and commercial Spanish television channels is well documented (Baviera et al 2017; López-Rico and Peris-Blanes 2017). The 2015 electoral campaign strengthened the prominence of infotainment.…”

“…The same strategy was immediately adopted by all the other political parties when the election campaign started. The dynamic of television appearance became extremely intense during the 2015 election campaign, and the generalized presence of political candidates in infotainment programs produced a new media phenomenon (Baviera et al 2017; Lancaster 2017: 926; López-Rico and Peris-Blanes 2017).…”

“…First, the average frequency (in quartiles) of watching a list of talk shows. A second specification distinguishes between two types of infotainment: (1) “standard infotainment,” those programs that primarily focus on social and political news and (2) “occasional infotainment,” programs that do not normally discuss politics but invited politicians during the campaign and talked mainly about personal issues (Baviera et al 2017; López-Rico and Peris-Blanes 2017). 8 The two variables provide the average frequency (in quartiles) that the respondents watch infotainment from each of the two types.…”

Politics, lies and video tapes: Non verbal cues and signals in the age of 'fake news'

“…Ideological bias certainly affects perceptions, as does partisan identity, regarding the presence and relevance of nonverbal behaviour. Furthermore, it is often incumbent for effective politicians to mask or accentuate certain behaviours in the services of their political and personal goals (Baviera, Peris, & Cano-Orón, 2017).…”