Democratic Participation on Social Media?: The use of Twitter along the 2012 Basque Election

Abstract

On arriving in Spanish politics, Twitter promised to warm up the rulers-ruled relationship and stimulate the political debate in the context of  Politics 2.0, expectations that —according to the conclusions of this paper— did not come true in the 2012 campaing for the regional Basque elections. Specifically this article analyzes the activity developed in Twitter by the main candidates for this election —@iurkullu, @lauramintegui, @patxilopez y @basagoiti— identifying the kind of message, its origin, its goals and the degree of interaction and hypertextuality. The results of such analysis prove that in this campaign Twitter was not a tool for Politics 2.0: Activity turned out to be low; there was not dialogue between rulers and ruled since the conversations were scarce, sparse and irrelevant; and the hypertextual advantages of the tool were not taken as tweets habitually did not include links. Neither was used for opinion creation, nor for debating, nor for spreading original political materials, and was instead used to support the traditional campaign close to the  broadcasting style of the traditional media. The differences among the four candidates could not be explained by ideological or territorial parameters, they correspond to diverse traditional campaign tactics, without an individual Politics 2.0 strategy.