Different Twitter strategies of the main Spanish political leaders in the 2019 general elections of April (28A)

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to explore the use made of the social network Twitter by the four main political leaders during the electoral campaign carried out between April 12 and April 26, 2019. Their timeline was analyzed, both quantitative (of their participation), and qualitative (categorizing the tone, orientation or theme addressed). The corpus of this study is composed of a total of more than 700 contents whose results show: 1) the existence of a political communication strategy on Twitter; 2) the interaction and dynamization of dialogue with different strategies and intensity; 3) self-promotion through the text itself, audiovisual material and shared links with the aim of promoting, mainly, campaign activities; 4) a high percentage of messages that do not correspond to the concerns of your target audience, although with differences between the candidates. The existence of a strategic use of Twitter is demonstrated in which there is still a wide margin to exploit the interactive potential and whose electoral context has revolved around a promotional monologue closer to its thematic agendas than to the subjects of interest of its electorate.