Emotions and engagement in political digital competition in Spain’s 2023 general election
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between emotions and engagement in political digital competition during Spain’s 2023 general election, based on posts on X by Pedro Sánchez, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Santiago Abascal, and Yolanda Díaz. Methodologically, it combines social network analysis and engagement trends (data extracted using Fanpage Karma) with an emotions analysis based on the NRC Emotion Lexicon, which identifies polarity and eight discrete emotions according to Plutchik’s theory. The results show that posting volume does not predict interaction: Díaz was the most active, but Sánchez captured the highest engagement levels. Peaks in interaction were explained mainly by offline events (interviews and debates) that reignited the digital conversation. Regarding emotional content, negative emotions showed limited variation (disgust was marginal; anger hovered around 10%; fear was more salient for Feijóo and Abascal), while positive emotions – especially trust – dominated consistently. The bivariate analysis suggests moderate associations between emotions and engagement (fear and sadness for Feijóo; disgust for Sánchez and Abascal) and evidence of a synchrony between Sánchez and Díaz that was consistent with inter-community emotional contagion.
Keywords
electoral campaigns, emotions, engagement, Spain, social mediaReferences
BALL, W. J. (2005). «From community engagement to political engagement». PS: Political Science & Politics, 38(2), 287-291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096505056507
BALLESTEROS HERENCIA, C. A. (2019). «La representación digital del engagement: Hacia una percepción del compromiso a través de acciones simbólicas». Revista de Comunicación, 18(1), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.26441/RC18.1-2019-A11
BANDERA, N. (2023). «Evaluando el cumplimiento de promesas electorales: El caso de PSOE-Unidas Podemos, año 2020». ANDULI: Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales, 24, 173-201. https://doi.org/10.12795/anduli.2023.i24.08
BARANOV, A. V. (2023). «The coalition interaction in the government of Pedro Sanchez in Spain (2020-2023)». Latinskaya Amerika, 10, 79-93. https://doi.org/10.31857/S0044748X0026959-3
BLASSNIG, S.; UDRIS, L.; STAENDER, A. y VOGLER, D. (2021). «Popularity on Facebook during election campaigns: An analysis of issues and emotions in parties’ online communication». International Journal of Communication, 15, 21.
BRADY, W. J.; WILLS, J. A.; JOST, J. T.; TUCKER, J. A. y VAN BAVEL, J. J. (2017). «Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks». Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313-7318.
CAMBIA, E.; SCHULLER, B.; XIA, Y. y HAVASI, C. (2017). «New Avenues in Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis». IEEE Intelligent Systems, 28(2), 15-21. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2013.30
CERON, A.; CURINI, L. y IACUS, S. M. (2015). «Using sentiment analysis to monitor electoral campaigns: Method matters – evidence from the United States and Italy». Social Science Computer Review, 33(1), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439314521983
CHOI, J.; LEE, S. Y. y JI, S. W. (2021). «Engagement in emotional news on social media: Intensity and type of emotions». Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 98(4), 1017-1040. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020959718
CRESPO, I.; GARCÍA-ESCRIBANO, J. J.; MORA, A.; CLAVERO, E.; GARCÍA-PALMA, M. B.; GARRIDO, A.; MANZANERA, S.; MAYORDOMO, C.; MELERO, I.; MILLÁN, A. M.; OLAZ, A.; ORTIZ, P.; ROJO, J. M.; SÁNCHEZ-MORA, M. I.; BAKDID, K.; LÓPEZ-PALAZÓN, M. I.; SOLER, A. y VILLAPLANA, F. R. (2024). Informe encuesta: Ruptura de la coalición del Gobierno Regional. Murcia: Barómetros de la Región de Murcia.
DIEZ-GRACIA, A., SÁNCHEZ-GARCÍA, P. y MARTÍN-ROMÁN, J. (2023). «Polarización y discurso emocional de la agenda política en Twitter: desintermediación y engagement en campaña electoral». Icono14, 21(1), 8-28. https://doi.org/10.7195/ri14.v21i1.1922
DOLAN, R.; CONDUIT, J.; FRETHEY-BENTHAM, C.; FAHY, J. y GOODMAN, S. (2019). «Social media engagement behavior: A framework for engaging customers through social media content». European Journal of Marketing, 53(10), 2213-2243. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-03-2017-0182
GERBAUDO, P.; MAROGNA, F. y ALZETTA, C. (2019). «When “positive posting” attracts voters: User engagement and emotions in the 2017 UK election campaign on Facebook». Social Media + Society, 5(4), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119881695
GUESS, A. M.; MALHOTRA, N.; PAN, J.; BARBERÁ, P.; ALLCOTT, H.; BROWN, T. y TUCKER, J. A. (2023). «How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?». Science, 381(6656), 398-404. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp9364
HOGGETT, P. y THOMPSON, S. (2012). Politics and the emotions: The affective turn in contemporary political studies. Nueva York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
JARÁIZ, E.; GARCÍA-OROSA, B. y CRUZ, J. A. (2022). «Emociones, engagement y participación política en las redes sociales». En: Emociones, política y comunicación en Ecuador. Quito: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador, 363-399.
JARÁIZ, E.; LAGARES, N. y PEREIRA, M. (2020). «Emociones y decisión de voto: Los componentes de voto en las elecciones generales de 2016 en España». Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 170, 115-136. https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.170.115
KRAMER, A. D. I.; GUILLORY, J. E. y HANCOCK, J. T. (2014). «Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks». Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(24), 8788-8790. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111
KUMAR, P. y VARDHAN, M. (2022). «PWEBSA: Twitter sentiment analysis by combining Plutchik wheel of emotion and word embedding». International Journal of Information Technology, 14(1), 69-77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41870-021-00767-y
LAGARES, N.; JARÁIZ, E. y SIBAJA, G. (2021). «Emotions, engagement and social media». En: GARCÍA-OROSA, B. (ed.). Digital Political Communication Strategies: Multidisciplinary Reflections. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 137-154. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81568-4_9
LAGARES DÍEZ, N.; LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ, P. C.; OÑATE, P. y BLASCO-BLASCO, O. (2023). «Emociones y polarización de las comunidades digitales en América Latina: Elecciones presidenciales 2018-2019». Análisis Político, 36(106), 182-210. https://doi.org/10.15446/anpol.v36n106.111074
LIU, D. y LEI, L. (2018). «The appeal to political sentiment: An analysis of Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s speech themes and discourse strategies in the 2016 US presidential election». Discourse, Context & Media, 25, 143-152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.05.001
LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ, P. C.; OÑATE, P. y ROCHA, Á. (2020). «Social media mining, debate and feelings: Digital public opinion’s reaction in five presidential elections in Latin America». Cluster Computing, 23(3), 1875-1886. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-020-03072-8
MARCUS, G. E.; NEUMAN, W. R. y MACKUEN, M. (2000). Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MOHAMMAD, S. y TURNEY, P. (2010). «Emotions evoked by common words and phrases: Using mechanical turk to create an emotion lexicon». En: Proceedings of the NAACL HLT 2010 workshop on computational approaches to analysis and generation of emotion in text. Los Ángeles, CA: Association for Computational Linguistics, 26-34.
MOHAMMAD, S. y TURNEY, P. (2013). «Crowdsourcing a word–emotion association lexicon». Computational intelligence, 29(3), 436-465. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8640.2012.00460.x
MORENO, A. E. y CASTILLERO, E. (2023). «Comunicación política y redes sociales: Análisis de la comunicación en Instagram de la campaña electoral del 13F». Vivat Academia, 156, 199-222. https://doi.org/10.15178/va.2023.156.e1461
MORENO-CABANILLAS, A.; CASTILLERO-OSTIO, E. y SERNA-ORTEGA, Á. (2024). «El impacto de las redes sociales en la campaña política: Elecciones generales de 2023 en España». REDMARKA: Revista de Marketing Aplicado, 28(1), 56-76. https://doi.org/10.17979/redma.2024.28.1.10114
NABI, R. (2003). «Exploring the framing effects of emotion: Do discrete emotions differentially influence information accessibility, information seeking, and policy preference». Communication Research, 30(1), 224-247. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650202250881
PAPACHARISSI, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199999736.001.0001
PLUTCHIK, R. (1980). Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. Nueva York: Harper & Row.
RANDO, D.; HERAS-PEDROSA, C. de las y PANIAGUA-ROJANO, F. J. (2024). «Análisis sobre desinformación política en los discursos de líderes del Gobierno español vía X». Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 83, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.4185/rlcs-2025-2308
RIDAO, J. (2020). «Las pautas de funcionamiento del gobierno de coalición PSOE-Unidas Podemos». La Revista de ACOP, 47, 11-15. https://hdl.handle.net/2445/164157
RIMÉ, B. (2009). «Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review». Emotion Review, 1(1), 60-85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073908097189
RIVERA, J. M.; LAGARES, N.; JARÁIZ, E. y LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ, P. C. (2021). «Emociones y engagement en los mensajes digitales de los candidatos a las elecciones generales de 2019». Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación, 26, 229-245. https://doi.org/10.6035/clr.5844
RIVERA, J. M.; LAGARES, N.; PEREIRA, M. y JARÁIZ, E. (2021). «Relación entre diversos usos de las redes sociales, emociones y voto en España». Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 79, 28. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2021-1518
RODRÍGUEZ BLANCO, V. (2024). Elecciones 2023: Un análisis multidimensional de las elecciones generales, autonómicas y municipales del año 2023. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch.
SÁNCHEZ-MARAÑÓN, I. y RODRÍGUEZ-VIRGILI, J. (2024). «Las emociones como herramienta política: Los spots en las elecciones generales de 2023 en España». Revista Panamericana de Comunicación, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.21555/rpc.v6i2.3200
VACCARI, C. y VALERIANI, A. (2021). Outside the bubble: Social media and political participation in western democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190858476.001.0001
WAHL-JORGENSEN, K. (2019). Emotions, media and politics. Nueva Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
WIDMANN, T. (2021). «How emotional are populists really?: Factors explaining emotional appeals in the communication of political parties». Political Psychology, 42(1), 163-181. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12693
Published
How to Cite
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2026 Paulo Carlos López-López, Gemma Vicente Iglesias, María García-Maseda
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
