Global Spaces for Local Politics: An Exploratory Analysis of Facebook Ads in Spanish Election Campaigns

Dafne Calvo, Lorena Cano-Orón and Tomás Baviera
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Dafne Calvo: Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication, University of Valencia, Av. de Blasco Ibáñez, 32, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Lorena Cano-Orón: Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication, University of Valencia, Av. de Blasco Ibáñez, 32, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Tomás Baviera: Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Faculty of Business Administration and Management, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera, s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain

Social Sciences, 2021, vol. 10, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: Sponsored content on Facebook has become an indispensable tool for implementing political campaign strategies. However, in political communication research, this channel is still unexplored due to its advertising model in which only target audiences are exposed to sponsored content. The launching of the Facebook Ad Library in May 2018 can be considered a turning point in this regard, inasmuch as it now offers users direct access to ads paid for by political parties, among other advertisers. This paper analyzes some aspects of the strategies implemented by six national parties during the campaigns running up to the two general elections held in Spain in 2019, by performing an analysis on a corpus of 14,684 ads downloaded directly from the Facebook Ad Library. It also provides evidence of the different emphasis placed by the parties on sponsored content. For its part, an analysis of ad scheduling shows how the publishing of ads was stepped up as polling day approached, while also revealing the practice of posting political content way in advance of election campaigns.

Keywords: political communication; election campaign; political parties; Facebook ads; electoral advertising; 2019 Spanish general elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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