In April 2019, VOX, a far-right populist party, won seats for the first time in the Spanish parliament. VOX successfully used social media to participate in the electoral debate and to establish a more direct link with its followers. We investigated how the VOX online community was structured during the election campaign and to what extent the most influential profiles spread the party’s messages. We accordingly analysed two samples, one composed of tweets and retweets that used the hashtags #28A, #28Abril, and #28AbrilElecciones, and the other composed of metaphorical expressions identified in tweets by influencers. Applying social network analysis to the first sample, we studied the form and structure of the network and identified key profiles in the VOX community, i.e., influencers, builders, and bridges. Using critical metaphor analysis with the second sample, we identified the main frames used by VOX influencers to explore whether they reproduced the party’s populist discourse. We found that the VOX online community in 2019 did not only include party supporters or members but was composed of varied profiles. For this reason, the populist metaphorical framing used by the VOX leadership was only partially disseminated.
In the context of the political instability shown by the calling of four general elections between 2015 and 2019, the populist party Vox gained parliamentary seats for the first time in a country that, thus far, had always remained outside of European trends. When populism, and especially the presence of far-right parties, are taken into account as a potential barometer of the health of representative politics, it is paramount to understand how these organizations build their discourses and spread them on social media. To identify the main ideas that guided Vox’s online campaign and how its community is defined, we analyzed both the morphology of the community (n1 = 1,674,681) and discourses on Twitter during the two 2019 campaign periods. The samples used (n2 = 511, n3 = 746) are made up of all the tweets posted by Vox, its presidential candidate Santiago Abascal, and the main profiles of the online community. We used critical metaphor analysis, which allows us to qualitatively approach the content of the messages and establish whether the characteristic features of populist political communication are present. The results show that, in both campaigns, the organization’s strategy was developed from the metaphorical frames of “the progressive dictatorship” as opposed to “living Spain/tradesmen/the Spain of common sense,” threatened by “wild immigrants,” “coup plotters,” and “fake media.” This framework was partially distributed among its online community. Resumen En un contexto de inestabilidad política –marcado por la convocatoria de cuatro elecciones generales entre 2015 y 2019–, el partido populista Vox ha conseguido entrar en uno de los parlamentos que hasta el momento se le había resistido y que lo mantenía alejado de la tendencia de crecimiento de la extrema derecha en Europa. La consideración del populismo y de la presencia de partidos de extrema derecha como un barómetro potencial de la salud de la democracia representativa hace necesario entender cómo estas formaciones construyen su discurso y cómo lo diseminan a través de las redes. Con el objetivo de identificar las ideas fuerza que guiaron la campaña online de Vox y de conocer cómo se articula su comunidad analizamos tanto la morfología de la red (n1=1.674.681) como su discurso en Twitter durante los dos periodos de campaña electoral en 2019. Las muestras (n2=511) y (n3=892) se componen de la totalidad de tweets publicados por Vox, por su candidato a la presidencia, Santiago Abascal, y por los principales perfiles de su comunidad online. Se han analizado siguiendo la metodología del Critical Metaphor Analysis, que nos permite aproximarnos de forma cualitativa al contenido de los mensajes y establecer si los rasgos característicos de la comunicación política populista están presentes en los mismos. Los resultados muestran que la estrategia de la organización en ambas campañas se desarrolló bajo los marcos metafóricos de “la dictadura progre” como oposición a “la España viva/del pladur/del sentido común”, amenazada por “salvajes”, “golpistas” y “medios fake” y que esta estructura se difundió parcialmente entre su comunidad online.
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