Medios de comunicación, información política y emociones hacia partidos políticos en España

Abstract

Media, and in recent years social media, are a space for political confrontation that generate a framework for the interpretation of democracy and affections. Their consumption directly affects citizens attitudes, reinforcing previous beliefs and building both a cognitive and emotional framing. From this viewpoint, emotions are constructed and circulate socially within the framework of political communication. The objective of this article is to investigate the extent to which and the conditions under which media and social media determine citizens’ emotions towards the different political actors in Spain. To this aim, a analysis has been carried out using the Post-Election Survey for the November 2019 General Elections. As main results, it is shown that citizens who consume political information in Spain through any type of media present a more active emotional profile, with a greater presence of negative emotions than positive ones and, with a greater intensity of aversion on the internet. Moreover, the different supports have their own characteristics, highlighting the activation of enthusiasm towards left-wing parties on television and a generalization of negative emotions towards all formations and candidates on social media, especially on Twitter.