Electoral microblogging: The uses of Twitter by Podemos and Ciudadanos and its leaders Pablo Iglesias and Albert Rivera in the Spanish general elections of 2016

Abstract

The general elections of 2016 were atypical because they represented the first electoral repetition of our democracy as a consequence of the inability to form a government after the December 2015 elections. In this context, the use of Twitter by emerging political actors is studied. These political actors impeded the formation of government by ending with the bipartisan system that dominated the political system since the Spanish democratic transition. The research objectives are: to analyze the contents disseminated during the electoral campaign by the actors analyzed. Investigate the similarities and differences between the messages disseminated by the parties and, by the leaders, observing which actors managed to viralize their contents more. For the development of the research, a mixed methodology is used. The results reveal that the main functions by which parties and political leaders use Twitter in the electoral campaign are: the counter campaign and self-promotion.