Abstract

This research analyzes the use of Twitter by the four main Spanish political parties in the electoral campaign of December 2015. It delves into the tendencies of the tweets, published from the official accounts of the parties and the candidates, and those hashtags or tags that became national trending topics. It discovers that they emphasize the stylistic role of the candidate and use quinine humor, with the aim of humanizing the candidate and bringing him closer to the audience. According to the conclusions, getting the most virality does not ensure electoral victory, but the trends of the studied period yield interesting recommendations for political communication.

Abstract

YouTube is a social network where videos of all topics are created and consumed. In this article we propose a classification of the most watched political information content on YouTube Spain. We will analyze the power and characteristics of these contents in a sample of 1,443 videos that were trending topic for 143 days. We will use a methodology based on content analysis to observe the frequency, user interaction, creative activity of authors, presence of infotainment features and journalistic quality on political videos. The results showed a lower frequency of visualization, interaction and prosumer activity in the videos of political information. We also found that most of the videos lack of plurality and no sources were consulted in them. This scene is a challenge for journalists, whose mission of verification and sort out of information acquires, in this context, a great importance.