The Un-Connectivity of Connective Parties: Analyzing the Online Interaction Patterns of Unidos Podemos in Spain

Abstract

Connective parties (Bennett, Segerberg, and Knüpfer 2018) are supposed to create a new scenario in online political communication. They are conceived as new political subjects, characterized by reciprocal communication flows across social networking sites (SNSs), and the creation of fluid online relationships between “connective representatives” and their constituents. This paper focuses on the Spanish connective party “Podemos” to test this hypothesis, by comparing the communicative styles of Spanish Members of Parliament (MPs) on Twitter, depending on their reference party and the interlocutor they are interacting with. Our results show that Podemos MPs are not more inclined to interact with ordinary citizens than MPs from other political parties, and this provides further evidence against the idea that SNSs could strengthen the relationship between representatives and citizens, at least in the case of Spain. Instead, SNSs appear to be used as tools for the one-way transmission of messages from political parties and representatives, leading to the conclusion that they play an important role in spreading political messages to large audiences and in political campaigning, but not in fostering deliberation.

Keywords:

• Connective parties
• normalization theory
• online interaction
• representatives
• witter

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefano De Marco

Stefano De Marco is a social psychologist and obtained a Ph.D. in Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid. He also earned a MA in Constitutional Law at the Political and Constitutional Research Institute (Spanish Ministry of Presidency). He has been working at the National Sociological Research Center (Spanish Ministry of Presidency) and in the Advanced Social Studies Institute (Spanish Ministry of Research). He is currently Assistant Professor at University of Salamanca, faculty of social sciences. His researches focus on digital divide and digital inequality, digital political participation and citizenship implications in political processes.

José Manuel Robles

José Manuel Robles holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid. His field of research is the information society and knowledge and, crucially, digital political participation and political theory and inequalities digital technology (digital divide). He has directed research projects, among others, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), the Ministry of Science and Technology (National Research Plan) or the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) where he worked for several years coordinating the area of Information Society and cooking. He is currently professor in the department of Sociology Section III of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Borja Moya-Gómez

Borja Moya Gomez is actually a researcher at the Department of Geography, Faculty of History and Geography, Complutense University of Madrid. He holda a PhD in Geography and his researches focus on Big Data and Open Data Analysis, as well as Spatial Analysis and Geographic Information Systems

Daniel Gomez (UCM)

Daniel Gomez is Professor at the Department of Statistics and Operational Research III, Faculty of Statistics, Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Complutense University since 2003 and actually he is leading the Spanish research project TIN2006-06190 and the UCM research team (14 members) “Sistemas de ayuda a la decision con preferencias difusas.” His research topics include: Social Network Analysis, Fuzzy Sets, Game Theory, Image Processing, Machine learning.