Political leaders on YouTube: Information and politainment in the general elections 2016 in Spain

Abstract

This research addresses the study of YouTube in the electoral campaign of the General Election on June 26th, 2016 (26J) in Spain. Through a methodology of descriptive analysis of contrasted content, a sample of 80 videos of the political leaders were examined: Mariano Rajoy, Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Iglesias and Albert Rivera. The objectives of the research were to identify if there was a difference in media consumption between the electoral campaign period and the permanent campaign. Therefore, it could be established whether the response of the prosumers was unequal in terms of participation and to investigate in categories such as thematic of videos and authorship. The results reveal that the videos which contain politainment in the permanent campaign category are the most consumed, while the most viewed videos in the electoral campaign are on informative questions. The prosumers are passive: they neither produce nor participate actively.