Presence and specificity of the political communication of the Catalan independence leaders on Twitter in the 2017 regional elections

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i1.11065

Keywords:

Political communication, Twitter, Catalan elections, Spanish politics, Catalan independence

Abstract

The regional elections in Catalonia held on 21 December 2017 received wide media coverage, far beyond Spanish media, due to separatist tension in that territory and was one of the main topics in most of the world’s media. Within this process social networks, especially Twitter, obtained crucial relevance given the interest aroused by the political leaders’ publications, since in those elections the debate transcended the usual ideological divisions of right and left and became a struggle between constitutionalists and separatists. This paper analyses the presence and influence of the main candidates of the Catalan political parties on Twitter. To achieve this, a mainly quantitative, mixed methodology based on big data was carried out where all the tweets issued by the candidates during the electoral campaign were analysed.

Author Biographies

Javier Bustos Díaz, ESIC Business and Marketing School

Assistant Professor at ESIC Business and Marketing School with a degree in journalism (2012) and Master”s in research in journalistic communication (2013). In his academic career he has published eight articles within the Scimago Journal & Country Rank focused on political communication, especially within social networks. Likewise, he has published a dozen book chapters on political communication, as well as on new audiovisual platforms and television, for publishers such as Tirant lo Blanch, McGraw-Hill, Gedisa, Tecnos or Pyramid among others.

Francisco Javier Ruiz del Olmo, University of Málaga

Full Professor at the University of Málaga, Spain. She develops her teaching and research work at the Faculty of Communication Sciences. She investigates communicative models of contemporary audiovisual media and forms of audiovisual representation, as well as their technical and social uses; a second line of research relates to communication and new media. Both lines of work have the common priority interest in qualitative methodologies in audiovisual analysis.

Miguel Nazario Moreno Velasco, University of Málaga

Experienced developer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industries. Skilled in Python, data science, data engineering, Java, JavaScript and Apache Spark. Strong engineering professional with a grade focused in industrial eengineering from Universidad de Málaga. After obtaining advanced analytics on big data Master”s (UMA), supported Data Science and Data Engineering reseach projects for the the Audiovisual Communication and Advertising department of the Communication Sciences faculty in Málaga.Co-tutor and technological support in StopHateCrimes, an ambitious project awarded for entities as Ministerio del Interior.

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Published

2020-12-23

How to Cite

Bustos Díaz, J., Ruiz del Olmo, F. J., & Moreno Velasco, M. N. . (2020). Presence and specificity of the political communication of the Catalan independence leaders on Twitter in the 2017 regional elections. First Monday, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i1.11065