The campaign in 140 characters. Use of Twitter by Spain´s main political parties´ candidates before the 2016 general elections in Spain

Abstract

The main aspects of Twitter use by the Spanish main political parties (PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos and Podemos) during the electoral campaign, prior to the June 2016 elections, are determined. After doing a content analysis on all the tweets generated by the candidates (n = 2,207), we conclude that the majority of patterns detected in the use of Twitter by other countries´ politicians do not apply to the Spanish case: in Spain the opposition´s candidates are as much active as the president of the Government, and the candidates of the emerging formations are as much prolific as those from traditional parties, among other conclusions. Regarding previous elections, the results also show a change of strategy in the use of social networks by the new parties.