The Negative Campaign on Telegram: The Political Use of Criticism during the 2021 Community of Madrid Elections

Alejandra Tirado-García ()
Additional contact information
Alejandra Tirado-García: Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, Av. Vicent Sos Baynat, s/n, 12071 Castellón de la Plana, Spain

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: Mobile instant messaging services have become a standard tool for political actors in communicating with citizens, especially during electoral campaigns. Telegram predominates in this context of disintermediated communication with the electorate. This platform enables parties to issue electoral information while taking advantage of this private space to criticize their adversaries. They do it with messages linked to negative emotions that generate a deeper impact on the audience, although they imply risks such as political polarization. This research analyzes the use of criticism to the adversary by political parties on Telegram during the electoral campaign. For this purpose, a descriptive study with an exploratory purpose was chosen, and a quantitative content analysis was carried out on 710 messages published on Telegram by the main political parties that stood for the elections to the Community of Madrid held in 2021. These parties are the PP, Ciudadanos, Podemos, Más Madrid, and Vox. The PSOE has been excluded as they did not make any publication during the analyzed period. The results show that criticizing the adversary is an emerging communication strategy in political parties on Telegram. Unlike other social media such as Facebook, the attacks on rivals are used on this platform mainly by the parties in the government, who focus their criticism on the president of the Spanish state. The attacks are mainly directed at the professional trajectory of their rivals and question the credibility of any action carried out by them.

Keywords: political communication; polarization; criticism; mobile instant messaging services; Telegram; Community of Madrid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/2/93/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/2/93/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:12:y:2023:i:2:p:93-:d:1065376

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().