Agenda-setting and power relations during the 2018 Colombian election campaign on Twitter

ABSTRACT

This paper presents research data about features of discourses held on Twitter regarding the last presidential campaign in Colombia (2018) based on the agenda-setting theory. This case study had a quantitative research approach. The sample includes 62 Trending Topics and 620 tweets that were selected according to criteria of relevance and influence. A method of systematic content analysis was applied to gather data on sources and contents of messages using SPSS software statistical analysis. Five important findings are highlighted: 1. Traditional mass media were mainly responsible for defining the agenda on Twitter. 2. Within the context of the agenda outlined by the media, it was citizens who monopolised the discussion, thereby playing a key role in topic dissemination, candidates’ visibility, framings, and assessments. 3. The main topic of discussion was the campaign debate itself rather than programmatic measures. 4. No correlation between the positioning and visibility of the candidates in Twitter and the electoral results could be observed. 5. Positive/non-aggressive tones prevailed over negative/aggressive ones.

KEYWORDS:

• Election campaign
• agenda-setting
• content analysis
• social networks
• Twitter
• Colombia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Joan Pedro-Carañana, PhD, Complutense University of Madrid. He is interested in the role of media, education and culture in the reproduction and transformation of societies. Joan is co-editor of three volumes: Talking Back to Globalization (Peter Lang), The Propaganda Model Today (University of Westminster Press) and El Modelo de Propaganda y el Control de los Medios (Comunicación Social). He has published in the International Journal of Communication, tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, Global Media Journal, and Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, among other international journals.

Sergio Alvarado-Vivas, Ph.D. in Communication and social sciences, Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC), Spain. He is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Uniminuto (Bogotá). He has over six years of experience teaching in postgraduate degrees on communication, development and social change. He has published on different topics about digital communication and is particularly interested in political communication and social media campaigns, as well as in digital art and transmedia storytelling as a way of reflection of social phenomena.

Juan Sebastián López-López, PhD in Communication and Social Sciences, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain. He is Fellow Researcher at the Instituto de Estudios Socio-Históricos Fray Alonso de Zamora (Universidad Santo Tomás). He is interested in the performative turn in cultural sociology and its applications in new media studies. Juan has published in Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, Anàlisi. Quaderns de comunicación I cultura, Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales and Análisis. Revista Colombiana de Humanidades, among other journals.

Data availability statement

The data set associated with the paper can be found in: Alvarado Vivas, Sergio; Pedro Carañana, Joan; López López, Juan Sebastián (2020), ‘Colombian Election Campaign on Twitter (2018)’, Mendeley Data, v1https://doi.org/10.17632/kftxhnvjgz.1.

Notes

1 Political and citizen movement that supported Antanas Mockus’s candidature (President) and Sergio Fajardo (Vice-president). It was thus named because it was the Green Party’s political platform that supported the candidature, and also due to the viral, emotional, and decentralised nature provided by their supporters.

2 The processes to construct media agendas as well as the mutual influences between different agendas have also been called agenda-building (Cobb and Elder 1971; Lang and Lang 1983, 1991; Rogers and Dearing 1988). Because most agenda-setting studies have focused on the influence of the media on the public agenda (Rogers and Dearing 1988), several scholars have used the term ‘reverse agenda-setting’ to refer to the fourth phase of agenda-setting scholarship (Kim and Lee 2006, McCombs 2004). According to McCombs (Trigueros and Lacasa-Mas 2018, 58), the core idea of the agenda-setting perspective is the study of the transfer of salience from any agenda to any other. Thus, both agenda-building and agenda-setting are valid terms to investigate who and how is Twitter’s agenda constructed. In addition, the concept agenda-melding has been used to study how publics meld different agendas using different mixes of media sources (Vargo et al. 2014). This concept may also be applied to the study of how Twitter’s agenda is created by a combination of sources.

3 According to Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1997) negativism is understood as recourse to controversy and scandal as a form of attacking a political adversary. Furthermore, negativism is oriented to promoting abstentionism among undecided voters, to aligning loyal voters, and polarising the electorate.

4 For an assessment of media and political negativism, see research by Moy and Scheufele (2000), Djupe and Peterson (2002), Sampedro and Pérez (2009), Rodríguez Díaz, López-López, Alvarado-Vivas and Martínez (2012), Geer (2012), and Craig (2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [grant number CSO2017-82109-R] and Universidad Santo Tomás (Bogota, Colombia) [grant number 20480010].