Political candidates in infotainment programmes and their emotional effects on Twitter: an analysis of the 2015 Spanish general elections pre-campaign season

ABSTRACT

The infotainment format offers candidates an informal setting to show a more personal side of themselves to the electorate, opening themselves up to potential voters. An example of media hybridisation, social networks users can immediately comment on infotainment television programmes, a process known as second screening. These second screeners tend to be especially active in politics. This paper analyses the immediate emotional reaction of these users as they watch infotainment programmes that air during the campaign or pre-campaign seasons and feature political candidates as guests. We have confirmed that second screeners react more emotionally towards the candidate when his or her party is mentioned, and less emotionally when the host displays an aggressive attitude through his or her non-verbal communication. When issues related to the candidate’s personal lives are discussed, users’ emotional reactions improve slightly. The relevance of this research stems from the fact that we are witnessing the consolidation of a politics that increasingly strays from ideological questions, and instead focuses on more emotional and personal issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional public sphere
• political infotainment
• Twitter sentiment analysis
• second screening
• personalisation of politics
• 2015 Spanish general election

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate very much the accurate commentaries of the two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have helped authors to improve the quality of their research. The authors thank Mike Thelwall and David Vilares for their useful assistance on the use of SentiStrength. The authors also are grateful to Emilio Giner for his contribution to the data mining process, and to Joaquín Aldás for his valuable assistance in the methodology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tomás Baviera (1974) is professor of marketing at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He holds a BA in Telecommunications Engineering from the same university, as well as a PhD in Communication from the University of Valencia. He is part of the University of Valencia’s research group Mediaflows, which focuses on political communication. He is visiting professor in the Master’s in Social Communication of Scientific Research at the Valencian International University. He has held various positions overseeing two Colegios Mayores (residential colleges) affiliated with the University of Valencia, through which he has promoted education in the liberal arts.

Àlvar Peris (1976) holds a PhD in Communication from the Universitat de València where he teaches in 2002 in the Degree in Audiovisual Communication and in the Official Master in Audiovisual Content and Formats. His work is focused on the analysis of TV and other audiovisual contents, as well as on the media construction of identities. He is the author of several scientific papers published in academic journals, monographs and collective books on communication, cultural studies and history. He has been a visiting professor at Duke University (USA) and at The University of Nottingham (UK).

Lorena Cano-Orón is currently undertaking her PhD research in the University of Valencia with a pre-doctoral fellowship of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FPI program grant). She is a member of the research groups Mediaflows and ScienceFlows. She holds a BA in Media Communication by the University of Valencia, qualification by which she received the Extraordinary Award. Also, she has completed a Master in Communication and Journalism Research from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and she earned a master’s degree in Interculturality, Communication and European Studies from the University of Valencia.

ORCID

Tomás Baviera http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2331-6628

Àlvar Peris http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2323-2766

Lorena Cano-Orón http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4270-1924

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under Grants CSO2013-43960-R and CSO2016-77331-C2-1-R.