Affective harmony between politicians and network users: the national strike in Colombia, 2021

Abstract

Social networks have generated a hybrid public sphere with a growing attention to the role of feelings in public discourse. For politicians, networks are useful for generating environments of individual and collective feelings, rather than giving reasons and promoting public dialogue. The objective of this research is to analyze if there is affective harmony between the messages of political leaders and the response they provoke in the networks. For this, the posts of the main Colombian politicians were studied, during the demonstrations of the National Strike, of 2021 and the emotional reactions that they provoked on Facebook. After the study, the affective congruence between the messages and the reactions was verified and that the online public discourse is based more on sharing emotional criteria, than on a rational deliberative line.