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Citation: Fontenla-Pedreira, J.;
Maiz-Bar, C.; Rodríguez-Martelo, T.
Use of Twitter during Televised
Election Debates: Spanish General
Election (28 April 2019) vs. French
General Election (24 April 2022).
Societies 2023,13, 70. https://
doi.org/10.3390/soc13030070
Academic Editors: Paulo Carlos
López-López, Daniel Barre-do-Ibáñez
and Erika Jaráiz Gulías
Received: 21 January 2023
Revised: 1 March 2023
Accepted: 7 March 2023
Published: 14 March 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
societies
Article
Use of Twitter during Televised Election Debates: Spanish
General Election (28 April 2019) vs. French General Election
(24 April 2022)
Julia Fontenla-Pedreira *, Carmen Maiz-Bar and Talia Rodríguez-Martelo
Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, School of Communication, University of Vigo,
36005 Pontevedra, Spain
*Correspondence: julia.fontenla.pedreira@uvigo.es
Abstract:
Social media have become key in political communication, playing a crucial role in election
campaigns due to their fast, ubiquitous communication. This paper focuses on the comparison of the
use of the social network Twitter in Spanish and French public and commercial television stations,
during the last televised debates held during their general elections (2019 and 2022). It seeks to find
whether conversation and interaction with their audiences take place, and whether these meet the
dialogic principles set forth by Kent and Taylor adapted to Twitter by Ribalko and Seltzer to include
usefulness of information, generation of return visits and dialogic loop preservation. To do this, the
content of the general Twitter profiles of two French television stations, together with their profiles
focused on informative content, were analyzed before, during and after the televised election debate
held on 20 April. Likewise, the Twitter profiles corresponding to two Spanish television stations,
together with the profiles corresponding to their news programs, were studied before, during and
after the televised election debates held on 22 and 23 April. After screening all their posts, those
referring to the debate and generating the largest engagement figures were selected, in order to
compare the topics covered in the televised debates with those covered in Twitter. The results reveal
that the information-focused accounts originate more posts whose content is linked to the televised
debates, in contrast with the general accounts. Furthermore, both the unidirectionality of their
content, and the lack of dialogue and interaction between these accounts and their audiences, become
apparent, in addition to the minimal occurrence of “debate about the debate” flow among users.
Keywords:
election debates; election campaigns; political communication; social media; Twitter; France2;
TF1; FranceInfo; TF1Info; RTVE; Atresmedia; Telediario; Canal24h; Antena3Noticias; laSextaNoticias
1. Introduction and Literature Review
1.1. Political Communication within the Digital Environment
The French scenario surrounding digital communication media is different from many
other countries. First, digital-born media are more prominent than in other European
countries. Likewise, legacy media, particularly newspapers, have a historically weaker role
in countries such as Germany or the United Kingdom [
1
]. Printed newspapers have had a
more limited reach than in most of Northern Europe and, although television is still the
most important and most frequently used news source in that country, the general audience
has certainly aged [
2
]. Furthermore, since the emergence of social media, French citizens
have turned to these from the start, and currently 80% of them state that they receive news
via the social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook.
Bearing in mind this context and the characteristics of the digital media, such as their
versatility, it can be argued that they have instantly turned into a useful medium to develop
communications and modern political campaigns. Websites have become obsolete, given
that they only allow connections with informative pages, unilaterally fed by the specific
Societies 2023,13, 70. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13030070 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/societies
Societies 2023,13, 70 2 of 15
political party, while social media have reached potential voters, who are not interested in
politics and do not visit political blogs or websites.
The use of social media has, with greater ease, led internet users to interact with
politicians, political clips, or any kind of propaganda, by means of resources provided
by the social media: image galleries, stories, reels or any other post format. An internet
surfer who is connected for leisure purposes to a video sharing platform, such as YouTube,
Instagram or TikTok, for instance, will be eager to see the most popular posts. These
videos, provided that they are well designed and labelled, may receive a high score in the
social media classification system [
3
]. This way of reaching voters was one of the specific
strengths of the 2008 Barack Obama campaign, when his so-called “friends” uploaded
YouTube videos with entertaining content to boost his campaign, such as “Obama Girl” or
“I have a crush on Obama”, which politically uncommitted American citizens watched in
order to share and have a good time [
4
]. At the same time, different music videos, some of
the specifically propagandistic clips such as “Yes we can!”, prepared by Will.i.am (a member
of Black Eyed Peas), engaged Obama’s supporters in the same way that the website NSTV
had engaged Nicolas Sarkozy’s supporters one year earlier, in France. Nowadays, political
online resources available to social media users are more and more elaborate, captivating
both politically committed users, and others who were undecided but curious.
The Debate on Twitter across Europe
Elections in different European countries are good illustrations of the way election
campaign models are evolving, as well as the role of new technologies in this evolution,
and their capacity to create new proposals and information pathways [
5
]. Several studies
account for the use of Twitter in elections to institutions such as the European Parliament,
or even its use by members of different parliaments [
6
,
7
]. According to Daniel, Obholzer
and Hurka [
8
], parliament members mainly tweet during the weeks when parliamentary
and committee meetings are held, and “high district magnitudes and preferential voting
lead to less frequent communication” via that specific social network [
9
]. The same authors
add that both larger voter figures in a constituency and the general prevalence of social
media in a particular country positively correlate with more active members of parliament
on Twitter. Furthermore, they also state that younger politicians—and their parties—are
more likely to be active on Twitter, and that, when considering their ideology, “green”
parties tweet the most, while far right parties tweet the least.
From a different perspective, authors such as Larsson determine that the degree of
activity of politicians on Twitter is closely related to their age, being the youngest the ones
who tweet the most. Larsson also indicates that their activity increases along with the
number of users that they follow and the percentage of individuals using the internet in
their countries [10].
Other studies cover the goals behind the politicians’ use of Twitter; for instance,
a qualitative study by Frame and Brachotte [
11
] includes interviews with five French
politicians and determines that Twitter was mainly used “to interact with voters, journalists,
stakeholders and other politicians and to disseminate information” (p. 1), as well as to
monitor current events or the public opinion. As for Spain, studies carried out by López-
Meri, Marcos-García and Casero-Ripollés [
12
] claim that politicians use Twitter mainly to
promote their policy proposals.
Research papers from Germany, such as the one by Stier et al. [
13
] on Twitter and
Facebook, point out that politicians use Facebook to provide detailed communications, to
mobilize voters, and for longer posts including photos and videos, while Twitter is used
for disseminating news, keeping in touch with journalists and quickly reacting to events.
The studies published by Haman and Školník on the use of Twitter by politicians are
also of interest, and reveal that most members of national parliaments, in most European
countries, own profiles on this social media platform: almost every member of the West
European parliaments has an active Twitter account. On the contrary, parliament members
in post-communist countries seem to be less interested in Twitter and tend to use other
Societies 2023,13, 70 3 of 15
communication platforms; “exceptions can be found both in the West (Portugal and small
monarchies) and in the East (Poland)” (p. 8).
Haman and Školník also state that the politicians’ activity level is higher in Western
European countries and lower in post-communist countries, being those levels closely
related to the percentage of Twitter users in each country.
1.2. Election Debates in France: Before and After
Election debates have been studied from different perspectives throughout history,
focusing on aspects such as their regulation [
14
], development, formats and staging [
15
],
media interest [
16
], or information management and verification [
17
]; and have varied in
their characteristics depending on the parliamentary systems of each country. In Western
Europe, for instance, election debates were introduced in television programming almost at
the same time as in the USA, becoming true media events. The one-on-one duel confronta-
tion format has generated expectations for an exciting event, in which entertainment values
interfere, and even rule, over the political and informative functions of the debates [18].
In France, ever since the first debate between François Mitterrand and Valery Giscard
d’Estaing, held in 1974, televised debates between the two candidates to the final round of
the elections have become one of the main events in the presidential campaigns. Likewise,
the strong correlation between the best performance in the debate, and the results of the
election, made these debates seem decisive. But looking back into past French presidential
debates, it becomes apparent that, most times, they did not modify the election results,
as compared to previous survey results. It seems that the leader in those surveys usually
performs better in the debate, as compared to his/her rival. 2017 was particularly relevant
in this aspect, given that not one, but 11 televised debates took place, including, for the first
time, two debates before the first round of the elections [
19
]. The same author highlights
that the role of television during the campaigns, particularly televised debates, is far from
vanishing, even with the rise of Internet and social media.
The use of new digital trends underwent a major turnaround in the way election
debates were understood in France. The negative result of the 2005 European Constitution
election was partly attributed to the digital campaign, which received more attacks than
compliments; these attacks were led by blogs, created by anonymous citizens, while most
traditional and political media rooted for a positive vote [20].
It was in 2007 when presidential candidates Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy
created complete websites, and the 2012 presidential campaign confirmed that the political
communication specialists used all the facilities of the social media, that is, they sought
to take advantage of interactivity in all its possible forms [
21
]. The victory of Ségolène
Royal in the socialist primary elections was a consequence of the penetration of internet
into politics: a system of “friendly” blogs was implemented, attached to her main website,
“Désir d’avenir”. On the side of Nicolas Sarkozy, her main rival, a Web-TV, NSTV.com
(Nicolas Sarkozy Télévision) received high audience shares during the campaign, and
became a new internet political television model (Maarek, 2014). This reinforced the idea
that internet television was an unavoidable communication tool in most countries with
democratic elections, while television is still the main channel for citizens to receive their
political information [22].
1.3. Election Debates in Spain: Before and After
The current Spanish environment is characterized by the breakaway from a two-party
system and by political digital communication strategies [
23
–
26
]. These turn the debate
into an essential tool, both for political parties and for society and democracy.
In Spain, from 1993 and up to now, a total of 12 televised election debates have been
held among presidential candidates; nevertheless, if we bear in mind that the party leader
Mariano Rajoy was not involved in two of them, 10 debates should really be considered [
27
].
This is a very low number, taking into account that, from the first democratic elections
to the first televised election debate, in 1993, 16 years had gone by. 15 more years would
Societies 2023,13, 70 4 of 15
have to pass until the next debate, between the PP candidate, Mariano Rajoy, and the PSOE
candidate, Rodríguez Zapatero, was held in 2008 [28].
The new party system led to a multi-party environment in 2015 [
29
], modifying the
format of the debates, opening them to more candidates. This went from the traditional
“one-on-one” between PP and PSOE, to a debate with four participants when Podemos
and Ciudadanos were included, and then to five participants when Vox burst onto the
scene—which gave rise to disturbances, obstacles and challenges for traditional parties and
for the Junta Electoral Central (JEC—Central Election Board), the organization in charge of
settling the disputes caused by this new political environment.
Castromil and Rodríguez [
30
] state that, when considering the two traditional parties
(PP and PSOE), it was the PP that rejected the new debate format, as Mariano Rajoy declined
the invitation to participate in a debate with Sánchez, Iglesias and Rivera, requesting to go
back to the traditional “one-on-one” and leaving the emergent parties aside. This changed
when the PP realized that the four-participant format could ran the risk of becoming a
three-participant format, so they went for an intermediate format. On the one hand, they
wanted to avoid the costs of not being present in the debate, and on the other hand, they
did not want to discredit Rajoy, who was opposed to the new format. The solution to
the problem was to send the government vice-president, Soraya Sáez de Santamaría, to
the debate.
Similarly, when the 2019 campaign took place, the current president Pedro Sánchez
decided to attend the debate held by the privately-owned station Atresmedia, including
the new party Vox (a five-participant format that was finally forbidden by the JEC), instead
of accepting the proposal from the public station RTVE, which did not involve Vox, as his
strategy involved demonstrating the possible pact and coincidence of interests between
Vox, PP and Ciudadanos [31]. Finally, two debates were held back-to-back: April 22nd on
RTVE and April 23rd on Atresmedia.
1.4. Televised Election Debates and Interaction in Social Media
Traditional audiences have been transformed, resulting in the need to examine new
formats for the relationship between television and its audiences [
32
]. For that reason, new
metrics have been incorporated into the analysis of the television environment, as different
measurement data must be taken into account [
33
]. These new metrics pose a challenge for
the communication strategies of both political parties and television stations [
34
], which
leads to new ways of generating content and engaging users.
One of these social media metrics is, specifically, engagement, initially considered
as the attention towards an object and the symbolic representation of subjective mental
states [
35
], via social media tools (mainly “like”, “share” and “comment”). These may be
recorded and classified for their subsequent measurement. Their use gave rise an academic
debate regarding their political adaptation as a user response index based on comments
in social media, as well as a quantitative tool for measuring audience participation and
interaction with digital content.
Different authors suggest combined formulas to calculate engagement indexes, rang-
ing from adding up the number of “likes”, “shares” and “comments”, divided by the
number of messages [
36
]; dividing the same numerator by the number of followers [
37
] or
using as a denominator the number of messages divided by the number of followers [
38
].
In any case, social media interactions are not only the occasional ones shared on user
profiles, but also the number of times that this content is commented, receives a “like”, or is
shared by other people. In these interactions, elements such as mentions or hashtags help
to increase the dialogue.
Hashtags, for instance, organize debates concerning specific topics or events, structure
the digital conversation, and encourage interaction [
39
], but they are also used and shared
by political parties to promote digital mobilization with a real influence on the political
agenda, while mentions enable ways to interact with other users. Political hashtags gained
momentum in events such as the 2009 Iran presidential election; in fact, #iranelection was
Societies 2023,13, 70 5 of 15
the number one trending topic that year [
40
]. The value of a political hashtag has its origins
in the real-time nature of the shared information.
Furthermore, it is important to highlight that, in the social media era, the strict equality
regulations regarding candidate speaking times on television have become obsolete, and
the content has become the cornerstone to achieve engagement. This has encouraged
political parties from many countries, such as France, to request modifications to the
election regulations.
1.5. Political Engagement, Intentional or Accidental Exposure?
The possibilities that social networks offer for sharing information and interacting
with other users, turn them into individual and personalized spaces, through which any
prosumer user can cause different effects on other people, independently of the fact that
they belong to their group or friends or are complete strangers. These effects subsequently
originate new repercussions, depending on the use that the recipients make of that informa-
tion [
41
]. A new range of possibilities for reflection opens up here, from the simple activity
consisting on acting as observers or readers, throughout sharing a “like”, being the latter the
behavior preferred by the audiences regarding political parties, as it involves less pressure
and commitment. This is the seed for the debate about whether social media contribute to
spreading the emotions regarding political content. The “social buttons” reflect, according
to some authors, volatile and weak affective states, and a low-responsibility commitment,
different from commenting and sharing information [
42
], which only has the so-called
influencers as its real competitors [43].
Nowadays, political debate is increasingly common in social media. Nevertheless,
some moral ideas and feelings spread faster than others, and even in a more detailed way.
Expressing emotions is key for disseminating ideas [
44
], both moral and political, in social
media, a process that Knoll et al. call “moral contagion”.
Internet users perform different activities depending on their motivations, such as
intentional searches for political information. This intentional exposure happens when a
person feels the need to receive political information and actively searches for it, deploying
all tools within reach. For instance, users may rely on the search function within the social
media sites, scan their own information sources looking for that political content [
45
], look
within Facebook news platforms, or visit the profile of a political party or candidate [46].
But they can also “accidentally” find the information, when the content is shared by
people within their close circle. This way, a person who is not interested in politics only
needs to be connected to a group of politically engaged people to be regularly presented
with political data and information.
Furthermore, Knoll et al. state that, in the context of an election campaign, people
also want to interact with entertainment content in social media, that is, the seek social
interaction without political nuances, feeling the need to find information or expression not
related to politics, or work on non-political parts of their identities. Nevertheless, the drive
to find non-political expression and to work on non-political aspects of their identity lead
to accidental exposures. Obviously both exposure modes, intentional and accidental, are
conditioned by different factors: on the one hand, the features of the networks surrounding
each user, on the other, the interconnections between their acquaintances, the degree of
literacy of the network users, and the social media algorithms.
Bearing in mind the first factor, it is important to mention that users can nowadays
actively manage their networks, hiding posts or blocking users, unfriending other people
or simply not following them anymore. In this sense, Zhu et al. [
47
,
48
] point out that
those users with strong political ties filter their news sources in a more active way and,
consequently, are exposed to information sources that are more in line with their way of
thinking. On the contrary, users with a more heterogeneous network in terms of contacts
will also have more varied information, thus increasing the possibilities of participation
and political exposure [49].
Societies 2023,13, 70 6 of 15
Considering that intentional exposure involves actively looking for information,
Knoll et al. write that this process is influenced by the literacy degree of the internet
users regarding digital culture, that is, their ability to access, understand, assess and create
content in social networks. Lee et al. [
50
] argue, for instance, that some users may be more
proficient at identifying high quality political information in their search for news, while
others, with specific political interests, only come across low-quality information, such as
“populist politicians” [51].
In addition, it is important to bear in mind another factor that determines the individ-
ual’s exposure to political information: the personalization of content. The social media
algorithm exposes users to information related to their preferences, or taking into account
other shared information, that is, considering his or her previous browsing history, and
the information included in his or her profile [
52
,
53
]. All this creates a cluster that causes
internet users to be more or less exposed to specific political content [
54
], and with this
comes the “affection” towards certain content resulting from this need for entertainment
and emotional experiences.
In this sense, Knoll et al. indicate that, depending on the needs and emotional states
of individuals, they may intentionally or accidentally expose themselves to political infor-
mation; for instance, users who experience feelings of anxiety have a tendency to engage
with different political views, and intentionally expose themselves to that information [
55
].
Other authors, such as Lagares et al. [
56
], point to the importance of emotional fram-
ing, particularly negative framing, as a generator of political commitment and political
opinion [57,58] and, last but not least, as a political polarizing element [59].
2. Objectives and Methods
The general objective (GO1) of this paper is to observe and track, both with quantitative
and qualitative perspectives, the presence, audience and conversation in the general Twitter
profiles of the publicly owned Spanish and French television stations RTVE and France2,
and the privately owned Atresmedia and TF1. Likewise, the profiles corresponding to their
news programs (Telediario, Canal24h, Antena3 Informativos, LaSexta Noticias, France Info
and TF1 Info) before, during and after the televised election debates held on 22 April—
RTVE—and 23 April—Atresmedia (for the 28 April 2019 election), and 20 April 2022 (TF1
and France2) will also be analyzed.
The dates chosen are therefore the day when the debates were held, the day before
and the day after, that is, 21–23 April for RTVE; 22–24 April 2019 for Atresmedia; and 19–21
April for the French debate. As for France, the stations were chosen because the election
debate was a joint production by both stations.
After screening all their posts, those specifically referring to the debate and generating
the largest engagement figures were selected, in order to compare the topics covered in the
televised debates with those covered in Twitter. The results reveal that the information-
focused accounts originate more posts whose content is linked to the televised debates, in
contrast to the general accounts. Furthermore, both the unidirectionality of their content,
and the lack of dialogue and interaction between these accounts and their audiences,
become apparent, in addition to the scarce occurrence of “debate about the debate” flow
among their users.
4539 posts were screened for content using the social listening platform “Twlets”. The
hypothesis propounded by Fontenla-Pedreira et al., who argued that the public stations
do not participate—via social media—in the dialogue and interaction with internet users,
and that they only use those platforms for dissemination purposes, and to enable the
broadcasting of the content of their programs, not to encourage debate. Taking those
previous research papers into account, the following specific objectives (SO) are established:
•
Specific Objective 1—SO1: To analyze, from a quantitative perspective, the presence,
activity and audience of the content during the day of the debate, the day after, and
the day before, on the social media platform Twitter, for the abovementioned accounts,
focusing on similarities and differences in their activity.
Societies 2023,13, 70 7 of 15
•
Specific Objective 2—SO2: To study whether the posts from the different channels
included in the sample generate Twitter conversations, according to some of the
dialogic principles set forth by Kent [
60
] and adapted to Twitter by Ribalko and
Seltzer [
61
], to include usefulness of information, generation of return visits and
dialogic loop preservation. Maintaining the dialogic loop enables the determination
of conversation and interaction by two means: either asking the users questions, or
responding to comments provided by the users.
•
Specific Objective 3—SO3: To analyze the inception of agenda-setting, with the pur-
pose of verifying whether the topics and content posted on Twitter by the television
stations match the main interests of the users, revealed by their comments in that
social network. For content analysis, the five posts with the largest engagement figures
were used, selected from each station on the pre-determined dates.
3. Results
3.1. Quantitative Analysis
Tables 1–3depict the posts included in the analyzed Twitter profiles, as well as those
with debate-related content and their engagement figures. Tables 4–6detail the candidate
mentions, while Tables 7–9show the use of hashtags and Tables 10–12 illustrate the recorded
sentiment-related information.
Table 1. Posts including content related to the 20 April 2022 Presidential Debate.
TV Station Total Sampled
Tweets
Tweets Including
Debate-Related
Content
Post-Debate Average
Engagement
France2 152 23 0.2
TF1 380 97 0.5
France2 Info 489 158 0.7
TF1 Info 563 308 0.8
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 2. Posts including content related to the 22 April 2019 Presidential Debate.
TV Station Total Sampled
Tweets
Tweets Including
Debate-Related
Content
Post-Debate Average
Engagement
RTVE 132 35 0.3
Telediario 356 110 0.6
Canal 24 h 204 112 0.5
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 3. Posts including content related to the 22 April 2019 Presidential Debate.
TV Station Total Sampled
Tweets
Tweets Including
Debate-Related
Content
Post-Debate Average
Engagement
Atresmedia 289 42 0.5
Antena3 Noticias 465 143 0.7
laSexta Noticias 663 190 0.8
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Societies 2023,13, 70 8 of 15
Table 4. Candidates mentioned—French Debates 22 April 2022.
TV Station Macron Mentions Le Pen Mentions No Mentions
France2 42% 40% 18%
TF1 39% 41% 20%
France2 Info 44% 45% 11%
TF1 Info 47% 46% 7%
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 5. Candidates mentioned—Spanish Debates 22 April 2019.
TV Station Pedro
Sánchez
Pablo
Casado
Pablo
Iglesias
Albert
Rivera
No
Mentions
RTVE 12% 17% 21% 32% 18%
Telediario 11% 16% 20% 34% 19%
Canal 24 h 15% 19% 22% 29% 15%
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 6. Candidates mentioned—Debate 23 April Atresmedia.
TV Station Pedro
Sánchez
Pablo
Casado
Pablo
Iglesias
Albert
Rivera
No
Mentions
Atresmedia 10% 10% 13% 37% 30%
Antena3
Noticias 8% 17% 22% 36% 17%
laSexta
Noticias 12% 19% 12% 32% 25%
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 7. Hashtags used by each TV station—French debate 22 April 2022.
TV Station #DebatMacronLePen #LeDebat2022 #Présidentielles2022
France2 90% 92% 40%
TF1 91% 95% 53%
France2 Info 89% 90% 45%
TF1 Info 93% 96% 45%
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 8. Hashtags used by each TV station—Spanish debate 22 April 2019.
TV Station #ELDEBATEenRTVE #Debate22A #EleccionesGenerales
RTVE 93% 90% 30%
Telediario 94% 92% 33%
Canal 24 h 94% 89% 29%
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 9. Hashtags used by each TV station—Spanish debate 23 April 2019 Atresmedia.
TV Station #ElDebateDecisivo #DebateAtresmedia #EleccionesGenerales
Atresmedia 92% 91% 30%
Antena3 Noticias 93% 94% 41%
laSexta Noticias 96% 95% 32%
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Societies 2023,13, 70 9 of 15
Table 10.
Sentiment towards the candidates, measured using user comments—French Debate
22 April 2022.
TV Station Sentiment towards Macron Sentiment towards Le Pen
France2 Neutral Neutral
TF1 Neutral Neutral
France2 Info Positive Negative
TF1 Info Neutral Positive
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 11.
Sentiment towards the candidates, measured using user comments—Spanish Debate RTVE
22 April 2019.
Sentiment
TV Station Pedro Sánchez Pablo Casado Pablo Iglesias Albert Rivera
RTVE Neutral Neutral Negative Negative
Telediario Neutral Neutral Negative Negative
Canal 24 h Neutral Neutral Neutral Negative
Source: Prepared by the authors.
Table 12.
Sentiment towards the candidates, measured using user comments—Spanish Debate
Atresmedia 23 April 2019.
Sentiment
TV Station Pedro Sánchez Pablo Casado Pablo Iglesias Albert Rivera
Atresmedia Neutral Negative Positive Negative
Antena3
Noticias Neutral Negative Positive Negative
laSexta Noticias Neutral Neutral Positive Negative
Source: Prepared by the authors.
3.2. Content Analysis: Posts with the Greatest Engagement Figures
Twitter comments on the posts included in the television stations analyzed are limited,
particularly on the days before and after the debate. During the debate itself, the number of
comments increases, and the criticism of the candidates towards each other fires up Twitter.
3.2.1. Posts with the Greatest Engagement Figures—French Election Debate 2022
In the case of France, the content of the tweets includes the allegations that both Marine
Le Pen (Rassemblement Nacional) and Emmanuel Macron (La République en Marche) level
against each other throughout the entire election debate.
The false start of the candidate Marine Le Pen monopolized the users’ attention during
the first minutes of the debate, wondering whether it would be the main event of the
evening. Le Pen, whose turn it was to speak first, started during the initial credits, then
and jokingly said “I started too early”. User comments were immediate: “Le Pen’s false
start would involve being disqualified in an athletic competition”; “a false start for Marine
Le Pen, who thought that she had been given the floor when credits started. That is called
“speaking to the void” . .. #Debat2022”.
The users who commented on the profiles analyzed considered the beginning of the
debate “slow” and “boring”, until the topic of the Ukraine war emerged, causing the first
clash between the candidates, who engaged in a true fight. This was one of the contents
that raised the interest of the users, highlighting Macron’s accusation to Marine Le Pen of
“depending on Russian power” “and Mister Putin” due to the fact that she had borrowed
Societies 2023,13, 70 10 of 15
money from a Russian bank: “You talk to your banker when you talk about Russia, that’s
the problem Madame Le Pen” was the sentence used by Macron to attack the extreme
right-wing candidate, referring to the loan that she had received from a Russian bank. Le
Pen replied stating that it was a false accusation, showing as evidence one of her tweets
supporting Ukraine, written back in 2014 and printed in large format—which caused
the first “laughs” among the users. Her words were tweeted by all television stations,
and retweeted by many users. She responded that she was “an absolutely and totally
free woman”.
Twitter users also reacted when Macron accused his opponent of wanting to leave
the European Union and never seeing “French leaders defending French interests” in the
EU. The fight went on as Le Pen said “Don’t fall for conspiracy theories”, to which the
République En Marche candidate replied “Coming from you, I find it attractive”.
Memes also swept the attention of the users, who commented, on the profiles of the
television stations analyzed, that Marine Le Pen called Macron the “Mozart of finance”,
referring to his economic mismanagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, other
memes referred to the moment when Le Pen accused Macron of being a “climate hypocrite”
and supporting “the worst of punitive ecology”, while he called her a “climate skeptic”
because of the reduction in taxes that would be applied to fossil fuels.
During the two and a half hours of the debate, comments on Twitter focused on
the attitudes of both candidates: while Macron was associated with adjectives such as
“aggressive”, Marine Le Pen was linked to a firmness- and resistance-filled aura. Twitter
did not forgive Macron either; his body language during the debate, with both elbows on
the table, his chin cupped in his hands and frowning, led to many memes as well: “Your
psychiatrist for 2 h, but he still gets the 60
€
in the end”, “Me when there are no chips left in
the canteen #debatemacronlepen #presidential2022”.
Furthermore, the comments of the social media users did not sideline any of the
candidates, the main sentiment being neutral regarding their words. Nevertheless, the
posts assigned the Rassemblement national candidate, Marine Le Pen, a more defensive
attitude, while Macron was considered to be more relaxed. Comments indicate that Marine
Le Pen presented a friendly, smiling countenance that appeared hypocritical and distant
when facing her opponent.
In addition, although to a lesser extent, tweets regarding the attacks on the proposals
of their opponents regarding incentives to increase salaries and bonuses also prevailed,
mutually accusing each other of leading citizens to believe that those increases would be
applied automatically.
Another moment that grasped the interest of users on all of the social networks
analyzed of was a new accusation by Le Pen to Macron, stating that his work has been
based on “betraying the French spirit and the Republic”, and “creating a civil war” based
on the ban on the veil in public spaces.
There was no shortage of comments from users towards the two journalists moderating
the debate, Gilles Bouleau (TF1) and Léa Salamé(France 2), who limited themselves to
controlling the time of the speakers and maintaining the order of the interventions, without
interrupting or verifying facts. This restrained position was not at all appreciated by users,
and comments were heard on the network through mockery: “Gilles Bouleau has the worst
hidden fake job in the world”, “the poor time masters”. “Gilles Bouleau repeats <We are
the keepers of time!> . .. calm down tiger!”.
Finally, the tweets most commented by users during the day after the debate revolved
around who had won the dispute.
3.2.2. Posts with the Greatest Engagement Figures—Spanish Election Debates 2019
In the case of RTVE, the debate held on 22 April 2019, the tweets corresponding to
its first minutes concentrated on the arrival of the candidates at the filming set, focusing
on the presence of women only from the cleaning sector when filming the first scenes,
or the “not formal” outfit of Pablo Iglesias. He was also heavily criticized because of his
Societies 2023,13, 70 11 of 15
luxurious house, given that one of his tweets from 2012 was revived, where he questioned
the apartment that the former Ministry of the Economy, Luis de Guindos had purchased;
the Unidas Podemos leader had asked internet users “would you entrust the economic
policies of your country to someone who spends 600,000€on a luxury penthouse?”.
Likewise, the Ciudadanos and PP candidates, Albert Rivera and Pablo Casado, were
the targets of many of the contents created by the users. On the one hand, the objects
that Rivera used for his presentations were called “Doraemon’s magic pocket”, and this,
together with the posters that he used, made it easier for social media users to create
image mockups with the articles that he used, mentioning his then-girlfriend, the singer
Malú, restaurant menus or an ID that users called “the very-Spanish ID”. Regarding Pablo
Casado, most of the comments concerned the scandal regarding his master’s degree from
the Juan Carlos I University.
Memes about the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, were also present,
although they were fewer than those devoted to the other candidates. The most commented
topic concerned his trips in the Falcon plane, which he usually uses for his travels.
When focusing on Atresmedia and its debate held on 23 April 2019, the first minutes
were also commented, particularly comparing the arrival of the Ciudadanos leader, Albert
Rivera, in a high-end Lexus car, while Pablo Iglesias arrived by taxi.
As in the previous debate, Albert Rivera was the target of many comments, due to
all the objects that he used in his speeches: “Rivera, an unboxing please”; “Rivera has
Diogenes syndrome”; “Is that a lectern or a street market? “. Tweeters also criticized his
several interruptions to other candidates’ speeches, and the performance of the moderators.
Although Santiago Abascal did not participate in the debate (he was invited by
Atresmedia, but the Central Election Board forbade his participation due to proportionality
regulations, which depend on the results from previous elections), some of the posts
with the largest engagement figures mention the Vox leader, focusing on his statements
regarding this absence. His proposal about reinstating a compulsory military service was
also highlighted, but comments mostly focused on Abascal’s words, such as: “Get the f***k
back to work, stop talking about military service and saying you will do things that you
haven’t done up to now, like working for instance”; “I think the military service idea is
ridiculous. But a few months spent working in customer-facing positions would be good
for everyone”; “Wow . . . do as I say, not as I do . .. good example”.
4. Discussion of Results and Conclusions
Taking into account the results of this research paper, and bearing in mind its first
specific objective, it becomes apparent that the Twitter profiles with specifically informative
content (that is, Telediario, Canal 24 h, Antena3 Noticias and la Sexta Noticias, for Spain;
and TF1 Info and France Info, for France) were those which generated the most content
regarding presidential debates. When considering the generalist profiles, the number of
posts was lower and mostly limited to the day when the debate was held. On the contrary,
the news-related accounts did generate a great amount of content, leading to internet user
reactions, although the social media managers did not respond to those comments, even
if these were disrespectful and should have been deleted, particularly those posted to
publicly-owned television stations, that is, RTVE and France2.
Regarding the second specific objective, concerning dialogic principles, the inclusion
of useful information was more intense in the cases of Telediario, Canal 24 h, Antena3
Noticias and la Sexta Noticias (Spain), TF1 Info and France Info (France). The generalist
profiles (RTVE, Atresmedia, TF1 and France2), used self-glorification strategy, with self-
promotion elements about the debate, its broadcasting times, its staging or its sections, good
examples of the non-existence of dialogic loop preservation. As fot the generation of return
visits, all the profiles used hashtags (#DebateRTVE, #ElDebateDefinitivo, #DebateAtres-
media, and #EleccionesGenerales in Spain, and #DebatMacronLePen, #LeDebat2022 and
#Présidentielles2022 in France), frequently, and combined them in their posts, managing to
bring many users back to their profiles. All the profiles analyzed met the dialogic princi-
Societies 2023,13, 70 12 of 15
ples concerning useful information and return visit generation, via their mentions of the
candidates and parties, as well as the above-mentioned labels. Nevertheless, no interest
was shown in generating conversations between televisions and users.
As for the third specific objective, to examine whether the agenda-setting of the
television stations matched the main interests of the Twitter users, this research revealed
that the content posted by the journalists, and the headlines highlighted by the television
stations did not match, in most cases, the criteria of the users. This gave rise to divided
opinions within the audiences, who often questioned the selection criteria of the media
representatives. Memes and mocking tones were frequent in the user responses.
This information confirms the hypothesis that states that the dialogue and the con-
versation about the content posted by the different television stations, analyzed on the
occasion of the televised election debates, does not exist, as confirmed by previous research
papers on other candidate debates in the past.
Further research could seek to explain how politicians can engage in conversations
with their voters while participating in election debates, or to determine cultural differences
and similarities among different countries, considering both border proximity, and cultural
and linguistic proximity. Nowadays, social media deliver messages to potential voters in
a quick and effective way, and politicians are very aware of that fact; this could lead to
more open dialogues and possibly to an online election debate system where the citizens
participate through the classical direct question model.
Author Contributions:
Methodology, J.F.-P.; Investigation, C.M.-B. and T.R.-M.; Resources, T.R.-M.;
Data curation, J.F.-P.; Writing—original draft, J.F.-P.; Writing—review & editing, C.M.-B.; Supervision,
J.F.-P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding:
This article is a result of the projects: “Fakelocal: Map of disinformation in the Autonomous
Communities and local entitie of Spain and its digital ecosystem” (Ref. PID2021-124293OB-I00),
funding by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the State Research Agency (AEI) of the Government of
Spain, and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Commission. “DEBATrue:
Fight against misinformation and value criteria in electoral debates on Television and Digital Media:
verification platform and blockchain” (PDC2021-121720-100), of the Spanish State R+D+i Program to
carry out concept tests, within the State Program Challenges of Society and the State Program for Scientific,
Technical and Innovation Research. “Valcomm: Public audiovisual media before the platform ecosystem:
management models and evaluation of the reference public value for Spain” (PID2021-122386OB-I00),
funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the State Research Agency (AEI) of the Government of
Spain, and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Commission.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Compiled data has been included in methods and results sections.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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