“I’ve Got a Little List”: Spotifying Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

Gorzelany-Mostak, Dana

doi:10.3998/mp.9460447.0009.202

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Just as George W. Bush appeared before the media in 2000 while Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" was playing, in recent electoral campaigns it has become common practice for candidates to resort to melodies, choruses, cover songs, or any other type of musical rhetoric as a persuasion strategy often reserved for livening up rallies and creating advertisements without thinking of other options (Aguirre, 2021). Spotify and the creation of playlists have finally come to be used in Spain to broaden a candidate's horizons in ways similar to that of former US President Barack Obama (Gorzelany-Mostak, 2015;Zepeda et al, 2011), who in 2012 started a trend that has been followed in the US by Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, among others (Alaminos-Fernández, 2021;Kasper & Schoening, 2016). Following the shadow of American influence, Spanish political campaigns have been inspired to use playlists in ways first tested in the US (Negrine & Papathanassopoulos, 1996).…”

Section: Popular Music and Politics: The Rhythm Of A Campaignmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music as Soft Power: The Electoral Use of Spotify

Redondo

Rebolledo

Sierra

2023

MaC

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The changes brought by new technologies and the ensuing rapid development of the communication field have resulted in an increasing number of studies on politicians’ use of the internet and social media. However, while election campaigns have been the predominant research area in political communication scholarship, music has not yet been taken as an object of study alongside spectacularisation and politainment. Aside from some preliminary studies, systematic research on music in politics is scarce. The literature holds that music is a universal language. Music in politics can therefore be deemed to be an identification tool that can help politicians connect with voters and bring together positions between the different actors of international relations. This is an exploratory study about the use of music in political campaigning. It is focused on the role played by the Spotify playlists created by the main political parties in recent election campaigns in Spain. The initial hypothesis is that some of the candidates strategically selected songs to be shared with their followers. A quantitative content analysis (<em>N</em> = 400) of some Spotify playlists showed that there were significant differences in the selection of songs among the different political parties. This research contributes to the understanding of how Spotify has been used for electoral campaigning, as well as shedding some light on the current communication literature on music and politics.

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