The usage of Twitter from the Spanish media during the elections

  1. Fenoll, Vicente 1
  2. Cárcamo-Ulloa, Luis 2
  3. Saez-Trumper, Diego 3
  1. 1 Universitat de València (España)
  2. 2 Universidad Austral de Chile
    info

    Universidad Austral de Chile

    Valdivia, Chile

    ROR https://ror.org/029ycp228

  3. 3 Pompeu Fabra University (Spain)
Show affiliations +
Journal:
Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico

ISSN: 1988-2696

Year of publication: 2018

Issue: 24

Pages: 1223-1238

Type: Article

DOI: 10.5209/ESMP.62211 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico

Sustainable development goals

Abstract

Traditional media sources have adopted Twitter as a canal to broadcast information across digital audiences. This study has the objective of analyzing the characteristics of the tweets published by Spanish media sources during the twelve months in which presidential electoral processes took place. This was done to test the differences in the use of this platform, according to the content of the coverage, and the phase in which it was published. Our research uses a quantitative methodology, where we used computerized content analysis for Twitter publications that different media made during 2015 and 2016. Our results revealed a promotional use of tools such as the hashtag, or mentions in media with less followers. At the same time, political information was characterized by containing a higher use of mentions and statements by the candidates, especially during the election campaigning, favoring the creation of echo chambers in the political Twittersphere.

€ View funding

Funding information

This paper is financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness under the framework of R&D+i funds of the National Plan “Communication flows in processes of political mobilization: media, blogs, and opinion leaders” (CSO2013-43960-R and CSO2016-77331-C2-1-R) and by the Chilean Ministry of Education (Fondecyt 1150545), National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT)

Funders

Bibliographic References

  • Adams, Paul (2012): Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web. Berkeley, CA, New Riders Publishing.
  • Alonso-Muñoz, Laura; Marcos-García, Silvia; y Casero-Ripollés, Andreu (2017): "Political leaders in (inter) action. Twitter as a strategic communication tool in electoral campaigns". Trípodos, 39, 71-90. Retrieved from http://www.tripodos.com/index.php/Facultat_Comunicacio_Blanquerna/article/view/38 1/435
  • Bakshy, Eytan; Hofman, Jake M.; Mason, Winter A.; and Watts, Duncan J. (2011): "Everyone's an influencer: quantifying influence on Twitter". In Proceedings of the fourth ACM international conference on Web search and data mining, February, 65- 74). ACM. Doi: 10.1145/1935826.1935845
  • Baviera, Tomás (2017): "Técnicas para el análisis del sentimiento en Twitter: Aprendizaje Automático Supervisado y SentiStrength". Dígitos. Revista de Comunicación Digital, 3 (1), 33-50. Retrieved from http://revistadigitos.com/index.php/digitos/article/view/74/39
  • Baviera, Tomás; García-Ull; Francisco José; y Cano, Lorena (2017): "Twitter: ¿protagonismo vicario?". In López, Guillermo y Valera, Lidia (Eds.): Pantallas electorales. El discurso de partidos, medios y ciudadanos en la campaña de 2015. Valencia, Editorial UOC, pp. 167-192.
  • Bruns, Axel, & Burgess, Jean (2012): "Researching news discussion on Twitter: New methodologies". Journalism Studies, 13 (5-6), 801-814. Doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2012.664428
  • Carrera Álvarez, Pilar; Sainz de Baranda Andújar, Clara; Herrero Curiel, Eva; y Limón Serrano, Nieves (2012): "Journalism and Social Media: How Spanish Journalists are Using Twitter". Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 18 (1), 31-53. Doi: 10.5209/rev_eSMP.2012.v18.n1.39353
  • Chadwick, Andrew (2013): The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759477.003.0004
  • Chen, Hsin-Liang & Moeller, Robin A. (2014): "A New Research Agenda on Mass Communication, Social Informatics, and Children’s Literature in US: Implications for Researchers in Asia-Oceania Region". In Du, J; Zhu, Q.; & Koronios, A. (Eds.): Library and Information Science Research in Asia-Oceania: Theory and Practice. Hershey, PA, IGI Global, pp. 165-185. Doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-5158-6.ch010,.
  • Congosto, Mariluz (2014): "Viralidad de los mensajes en Twitter en las Campañas Electorales". In III Congreso en Comunicación Política y Estrategias de Campaña, Santiago de Compostela (Vol. 24, pp. 1-19). Retrieved from: http://ictlogy.net/bibliography/reports/projects.php?idp=2723〈=es
  • Conway, Bethany Anne; Kenski, Kate; and Wang, Di (2013): Twitter use by presidential primary candidates during the 2012 campaign. American Behavioral Scientist, 57 (11), 1596-1610. Doi: 10.1177/0002764213489014.
  • Dokoohaki, Nima; Zikou, Filippia; Gillblad, Daniel; and Matskin, Mihhail (2015): "Predicting Swedish Elections with Twitter". In Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining 2015, August, pp. 1269-1276). ACM. Doi: 10.1145/2808797.2808915.
  • Fenoll, Vicente; García-Ull, Francisco José; y Rodríguez-Ballesteros, Paula (2016). "Valoración de candidatos en Twitter durante procesos electorales. El caso de las elecciones autonómicas valencianas de 2015". In Proceedings of the V Congreso Iberoamericano de Comunicación, July, pp. 595-605. AE-IC. En: http://www.madrid2016.org/wpcontent/ uploads/aeic2016madrid_comunicaciones_vdef_ok.pdf
  • Gamir, José; Cano, Lorena; y Calvo, Dafne (2017): "La campaña electoral de 2015 en cifras. La presencia en la blogosfera, Facebook y Twitter de los cabezas de lista provinciales de PP, PSOE, Podemos y Ciudadanos". In López, Guillermo & Valera, Lidia (Eds.): Pantallas electorales. El discurso de partidos, medios y ciudadanos en lacampaña de 2015. Valencia: Editorial UOC, pp. 41-58.
  • García-Gavilanes, Ruth; Kaltenbrunner, Andreas; Sáez-Trumper, Diego; Baeza-Yates, Ricardo; Aragón, Pablo; y Laniado, David (2014): "Who are my audiences? a study of the evolution of target audiences in microblogs". In International Conference on Social Informatics Springer International Publishing, November, pp. 561-572. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-13734-6_39
  • Garrett, R. Kelly & Danziger, James N. (2011): "The internet electorate". Communications of the ACM, 54 (3), 117-123. Doi: 10.1145/1897852.1897881
  • Gladwell, Malcolm (2006): The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Boston, Little, Brown.
  • González-Bailon, Sandra; Borge-Holthoefer, Javier; y Moreno, Yamir (2013): "Broadcasters and hidden influentials in online protest diffusion". American Behavioral Scientist, 57 (7), 943-965. Doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2017808.
  • Graham, Todd; Jackson, Dan; and Broersma, Marcel (2016): "New platform, old habits? Candidates’ use of Twitter during the 2010 British and Dutch general election campaigns". New Media & Society, 18 (5), 765-783. Doi: 10.1177/1461444814546728
  • Groshek, Jacob & Al-Rawi, Ahmed (2013): "Public sentiment and critical framing in social media content during the 2012 US presidential campaign". Social Science Computer Review, 31 (5), 563-576. Doi: 10.1177/0894439313490401.
  • Hilbert, Martin; Vásquez, Javier; Halpern, Daniel; Valenzuela, Sebastián; and Arriagada, Eduardo (2016): "One step, Two step, network step? Complementary perspectives on communication flows in Twittered citizen protests". Social Science Computer Review. Doi: 10.1177/0894439316639561.
  • López García, Guillermo (2016): "‘New’ vs. ‘old’ leaderships: the campaign of Spanish general elections 2015 on Twitter". Communication & Society, 29 (3), 149-168. Doi: 10.15581/003.29.3.149-168.
  • López García, Guillermo; Cano, Lorena; y Argilés, Laura (2016): "Circulación de los mensajes y establecimiento de la agenda en Twitter: el caso de las elecciones autonómicas de 2015 en la Comunidad Valenciana". Trípodos, 39, 163-183.
  • Lowry, Dennis T.; Xie, Lei T.; and Witte, Oliver R. (2008): "Agenda-setting and rhetorical framing by semantic proximity: A new computerized approach to the analysis of network TV news". In Radio-TV Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention. Chicago, IL, August. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/m9jo5j (2017-02-11)
  • Luo, Jiao; Meier, Stephan; and Oberholzer-Gee, Felix (2012): No news is good news: CSR strategy and newspaper coverage of negative firm events. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School.
  • Márquez, Lucía (2017): ¿Son los debates electorales la nueva Eurovisión? Análisis del seguimiento de dos eventos masivos a través de Twitter. Dígitos. Revista de Comunicación Digital, 3 (1), 137-162.
  • Meeks, Lindsey (2016): "Aligning and Trespassing: Candidates’ Party-Based Issue and Trait Ownership on Twitter". Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 93 (4), 1050-1072. Doi: 10.1177/1077699015609284
  • Newman, Nic & Levi, David A. L. (2013): "Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013: Tracking the Future of News". Retrieved from: ttps://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20News%20Report% 202013.pdf
  • Newman, Nic; Levy, David A. L.; and Nielsen, Rasmus K. (2016): "Reuters Institute digital news report 2016". Retrieved from: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital-News-Report-2016.pdf
  • Pallarés, Sandra y García, Carmela (2017): "Análisis comparativo del discurso de Mariano Rajoy en Twitter durante las dos campañas electorales de 2015: las autonómicas del 24M y las generales del 20D". Dígitos. Revista de comunicación digital, 3 119-136.
  • Retrieved from: http://revistadigitos.com/index.php/digitos/article/view/82/42 Puebla, Belén & Gomes-Franco, Flávia (2015): "Estrategias comunicativas de la prensa en Twitter. Una comparativa entre España y Portugal". Disertaciones. Anuario electrónico de estudios en Comunicación Social, 8 (1), 163-185. Doi: 10.12804/disertaciones.01.2015.07
  • Puentes-Rivera, Iván; Rúas-Araujo, José; & Dapena-González, Borja (2017): "Candidatos en Facebook: del texto a la imagen. Análisis de actividad y atención visual". Dígitos. Revista de Comunicación Digital, 3 (1), 51-94. Retrieved from: https://revistadigitos.com/index.php/digitos/article/view/81
  • Quevedo Redondo, Raquel; Portalés-Oliva, Marta; y Berrocal Gonzalo, Salomé (2016): "The image useTwitter during the 2015 municipal election campaign in Spain". Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 71, 85-107. Doi: 10.4185/rlcs-2016-1085en.
  • Sáez-Trumper, Diego (2011): "La información en Internet: Breve estado del arte para discutir el poder de los usuarios v/s los medios tradicionales de comunicación en la red". Revista Austral Ciencias Sociales, 20, 71-79. Doi: 10.4206/rev.austral.cienc.soc.2011.n20-05
  • Sáez-Trumper, Diego; Meira, Wagner; and Almeida, Virgilio (2011): "From total hits to unique visitors model for election’s forecasting. Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Web Science 2011, pp. 1-2. New York, NY, Association for Computing Machinery. En: http://www.websci11.org/fileadmin/websci/Posters/WebSci2011-Saez-Trumper.pdf.
  • Sáez-Trumper, Diego; Castillo, Carlos; and & Lalmas, Mounia (2013): "Social media news communities: gatekeeping, coverage, and statement bias". In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM international conference on Conference on information & knowledge management, , October, pp. 1679-1684. ACM. Doi: 10.1145/2505515.2505623
  • Requejo, José Luis y Herrera, Susana (2014): "Retroceso en la creación de comunidad entre los diarios generalistas españoles en Twitter (2011-2013)". Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 20 (1), 229-249. Doi: 10.5209/rev_esmp.2014.v20.n1.45229.
  • Tous Rovirosa, Anna; Rivero Santamarina, Diana; Meso Ayerdi, Koldobika; y Larrondo Ureta, Ainara (2015): "Ambient Journalism in Spain. How Twitter and NREs are redefining agenda setting in El País, El Mundo, La Razón, ABC and La Vanguardia". Trípodos, 36, 35-54. Retrieved from: http://www.tripodos.com/index.php/Facultat_Comunicacio_Blanquerna/article/view/24 1/197
  • Tumasjan, Andranik; Sprenger, Timm O.; Sandner, Philipp G.; and Welpe, Isabell M. (2010): "Predicting elections with twitter: What 140 characters reveal about political sentiment". ICWSM, 10(1), 178-185. Retrieved from: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM10/paper/view/1441
Data source: Dialnet