Category Archives: Political Leaders

Results referred to Heads of State and Govenment

Elections in Greece June 2012. International media perception and coverage of consequences for Europe, Euro, the markets

Posted on by • Posted in Country - Greece, Elections, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Media Bias, Rep Issue - News Content Analysis, Rep Issue -Media Impact Analysis • Tagged • 1 Comment

Greeks are called to vote again this 17 June 2012 in legislative elections, just two months after previous general elections.

The results of the voting are crucial for the political and economic future of Greece, and its position in Europe and about the future of euro currency in this country.

As some other countries in Europe struggle with severe economic and financial conditions linked basically to a level of public debt and deficits judged unsustainable, there are growing fears that institutional and economic problems faced by Greece are not just a local matter. Greek elections are viewed by many as a milestone of extraordinary importance for the future of the euro currency and the evolution of the European Union.

Even if Greece is a rather small country in Europe in terms of population and of size of the economy, the outcome of the elections will have probably systemic consequences in Europe. All eyes in Europe are turned now to Greece.

We want precisely in this post to show what media outside Greece is watching and showing to their readers about Greek elections and its implication for Europe.

We have used in many post of this blog, text content analysis of news as way to identify the storyline chosen by the media, or the existence of media bias.

Now we will choose an indirect content analysis strategy, that we are in fact applying to explain what is going on in a major football competition in Europe, the Euro 2012: image content analysis.

So, we will apply the same technique here, consisting in monitoring all news about elections in Greece. Then, instead of proceeding to a text content analysis, we capture the photo chosen by the journalist to provide an image intended to capture the essence of the story told in the news. Then we proceed to an image content analysis to produce quantitative results, that allow us for an analysis and interpretation of the results.

We start the presentation of the results by showing media coverage of the elections in newspapers in Germany.

First figure refers to media coverage during the last four days before the election day. We have separated news from the last day, Saturday 16 June, and the three previous days (13 to 15 June).

We have selected three big issues: the connections of the elections in Greece with the future of Europe, the euro and the effects on financial markets.

We observe a lot of volatility concerning the structure of the news published in Germany these four days.

News related with the financial problems completely dominated the news in terms of photos used during the first three days. They represented 24% of all images in news about Greek elections. This kind of news practically disappears in news in the eve of the elections.

As for the presence of images about the euro and Greece, they keep stable above 11% of all images.

We also find a sudden increase of images referring to Europe in the last day before the elections, moving from 3% to 6.7%. There are growing concerns about the impact of the elections on the future of Greece in Europe and its impact on the future of the European Union.

You can find below examples of the photos used by newspapers in Germany in news about the elections in Greece concerning these first three categories:

1. Europe.

Source: Handelsblatt 15, June 2012. See the article: Weidmann und Brüderle warnen Griechenland

2. Euro

Source: Hannover Zeitung, See the article: Wahlen in Griechenland: Deutsche befürchten Verschlimmerung der Euro-Krise.

3. Financial Markets

Source: Focus

(additional new content coming)

Crisis Management During Hard Times: Lessons from the King and the Elephants

Posted on by • Posted in Country - Spain, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Communication Crisis • Tagged , , , , , , , • 1 Comment

A post by an invited expert.

Once upon a time there was a very happy Kingdom with a much beloved king. Everything was fine, people had money, dreams and their king was bold and young and fair. But time went by, and things changed: peopled ceased to have money, jobs grew scarce, people started to worry about their dreams and were not happy anymore. Meanwhile, the king grew old, but kept doing the type of things that Kings usually like to do, such as hunting and hanging out in the company of wealthy, beautiful people.

Unfortunately, while hunting elephants in Africa (exotic land of Simba, The King Lion) something unexpected happened: he missed his shot, and had an accident. He broke his hips, people’s dreams – and his image of bold, young and fair.

While all this seems to be a sad ending for an unusual fairy tale, it is, in fact, true. King Juan Carlos I from Spain suffered an accident while hunting elephants in Botswana that received huge international press coverage recently and left us some lessons about crisis management during the hard times we are living.

The main one, I guess, it is something that I heard for the first time from Richard Edelman called “the dialectic between control and credibility.” Institutions are having a hard time managing this dialectic. How do they keep secrets under wraps, while managing public image in a coherent way, aligning image to stakeholders´ expectations? The crisis era we live in demands more sensibility from companies in order to keep things smooth in the public arena, something that, apparently, was missed in this example.

We can learn from the royal case some interesting lessons that explain the forces behind this dialectic struggle between message control and credibility building:

  1. Secrecy doesn’t exist anymore.
    One of the most shocking aspects about this crisis (personal and institutional for Spain and Spain´s royalty) was that, apparently, the king´s trip was not communicated (as law requires) to Spain´s head of Government (Spain is a parliamentary monarchy).  However, once the accident happened, the trip got immediate attention in a world avid for news like this. Bad risk management. 
  1. Empathy should be real, otherwise it is just royal propaganda
    Spain has Europe´s highest unemployment rate, one in four Spaniards doesn´t have a job. The government is working on a radical turnaround plan that includes very unpopular measures such as tax increases and cuttings in health and education, among other public expenditures. As we know, in modern democracies, monarchy is seen as an OK thing that unifies a country on its cultural roots and common past, like in Britain. And, actually, to be fair, King Juan Carlos I has been seen as more than just a symbol, he has an impeccable track record in crucial moments of Spain´s recent history (like when he stood for democracy during a military coup d´etat). However, while nobody expects the royal family to fly economy class, taking a leisurely trip to hunt elephants is not exactly a good message to give in times like these. Bad reputation management.
  1. Everything is connected
    Much like the British royal family 15 years ago, Spain´s first family has been suffering its astral hell in the last months. The king´s son-in-law is being investigated for fraud and other charges in a high-profile case, and, a couple of weeks ago, the king´s grandson shot himself in the foot (the kid´s just 13, and at that age he legally cannot carry a gun). I can only remember in the recent years BP´s CEO Tony Hayward having such a talent to do the wrong things at the right time (my post on this here). Couldn´t the king postpone the trip? Bad, bad, timing.
  1. Other aspects: To make things worse, this imbroglio brought to light three additional aspects that turned into a scandal:
  • Juan Carlos I by the time of this incident was honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund, and this didn´t help to improve things either, on the contrary. Through an activism online site called Actuable (Change.org Spanish clone) more than 80,000 people required WWF to end the King´s job as the institution´s honorary president. In a quick response to the crisis, WWF’s board in Spain voted unanimously to cease his honorary title.
  • Guess who had been invited to the hunting? The organizer of the safari was a beautiful German princess and the gossip around this suggests a possible closer than expected relationship between her and the king, spicing things a little bit more. The German newspaper Bild displayed a photo of the two on an official trip.
  • Finally, the accident was news on the night of April, 13th, and coincidently, April, 14th is II Republic celebration day, the very same day in 1931 when the king´s antecessor resigned to theSpaincrown. The republic movement took advantage of the accident-incident as a powerful reason to open a debate on an issue considered taboo by the Spanish society, the end of monarchy or, at least, Juan Carlos I abdication. This debate was held on the social networks, in the traditional press, sometimes in a very aggressive way, sometimes in a humorous , mockery tone.

How did all this end up?

In an unprecedented gesture, Juan Carlos I left the hospital and, with a quick statement, apologized to the people in a typical statement “Dropped the ball, I am sorry, will never happen again”, eleven words – in Spanish – that made history as an acceptancy of guilty. As local press put it, Spaniards aren´t accustomed to accepting guilt easily, and such attitude might open an incredible precedent, leading people to see themselves from a different perspective; if even a king can make mistakes, ordinary people can, too, and to accept mistakes is the first step to change things for the better. That would be nice if it really happened, and it would be the good part of the lesson learned by the country from this sad fairy tale.

Or not?

Some analysts like the respected academic Manual Castells produced a fierce article asking the king to resign and others (like me) say that “sorry” has become a devaluated currency: everybody says sorry. Politicians (likeClinton) say sorry, CEOs (like BP´s) say sorry, high profile athletes (like Tiger Woods) say sorry. Is that genuine or just an easy way out taught by spin doctors? Can credibility be regained just by saying “I´m sorry”?

In general, I believe people welcome an apology as a first step, but things really have to change in order to regain trust, otherwise the reputation will be tarnished. However, their positive inner feelings regarding the person can play an important part on the outcome, and if nothing bad happens again, everything returns to normal, and the issue will be regarded as the bad story that everybody prefers not to talk about at family dinner.

Other people will simply just forget all the fuss, and see the story as another curiosity from rich public people and their extravagant life style. Let´s move on to the next scandal.

The elephants, on the other hand, they don´t forget.

The author

Carlos Victor Costa is a Brazilian/Portuguese professor and consultant living in Madrid. He writes a blog an online crisis management.

_______________________

These couple of photos with King Juan Carlos I of Spain with safari hunting trophies correspond in fact to year 2006. They were ‘discovered’ in the midst of the controversy and distributed first in the social media. These photos, and more specifically the one showing a killed elephant, propelled angry reaction among many social media users.

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia married May 14, 1962, 50 years ago. This so special date of the Golden anniversary wedding will not be celebrated in Spain with public events, and apparently not even in private, as part of the ‘annus horribilis’ consequences for royal family in Spain. We present a couple of captions of the royal couple in their happy times.



What Coentrao at Bayern Munich Vs Real Madrid Football Champions League Is Telling About Social Media Reputation

Posted on by • Posted in Country - Germany, Country - Spain, Football, Football - Bayern Munich, Football - Coentrao, Fabio, Football - Real Madrid, Pers - Bin Laden, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Communication Crisis, Rep Issue - News Content Analysis, Rep Issue - Social Media, Rep Issue - Twitter Analysis • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 3 Comments

Bayern Munich (Germany) played against Real Madrid (Spain) the first leg of the two games semifinals of the 2012 UEFA Champions League in the Allianz Arena, Munich, the 17 April 2012.

Bayern Munich won the match 2-1 scoring the winning goal in the last minute. The goal was scored by Mario Gomez, receiving a ball centered by teammate Lahm. This advance may be decissive for classifying for the grand final or at least offers more chances to Bayern Munich. Lahm succeeded in doing this pass after overcoming the Real Madrid defender Fabio Coentrao. Many people considered this move as a big defensive mistake by Postuguese Coentrao. His game performance was considered very poor as he commited other mistakes.

For readers not familiar with European football, you have a couple of pictures from the game. In the first photo, Fabio Coentrao (right) defending a ball against Ribery (left)

Journalists identified Coentrao as main responsible for Real Madrid losing the game. Real Madrid coach José Mourinho made a strong defense of Coentrao’s commitment and performance in the match, in the press conference after the match.

Answering to a journalist about Coentrao’s mistake in the crucial last action, Mourinho responds:

‘Estoy lejos, pero no me gusta la pregunta porque hay mucha gente que ha cometido errores durante el partido. Coentrao ha hecho un buen partido, ha tenido una tarea difícil y ha cumplido’

(I don’t like this question, because there are many other players that made mistakes during the game. Coentrao had a good performance in the pitch; he had ahard task and he did it).

‘No merecimos perder’, El Mundo, 17 April 2012

Journalists and aficionados did not share the positive analysis by José Mourinho and evaluated Fabio Coentrao performance in a very negative way. We have for instance the rating provided by both journalists and readers from leading sport daily in Spain, Marca. This is a newspaper published in Madrid. It has a national reach, but it uses to be the preferred newspaper by Real Madrid followers, altogether with AS, as it provides an extensive and supportive coverage to Real Madrid. In a scale 1 to 10, journalists give 1 point to Coentrao (the following player in low rating is Marcelo, with 4 points). These extremely negative views are shared by readers. They rate Coentrao performance with 2.2 points. The results correspond to 25,000 votes. (Encuestra Bayern Munich – Real Madrid, Marca)

We show the results from a second source. They come from newspaper El Mundo, one of the leading newspapers in Spain. This is again the ratings given by the readers in on-line edition. This is a scale 0 to 10. We find that the main score given is 0 points, in one third of some 2,900 votes. Average rating of all votes is again 2.2 points. Rating given by journalists at El Mundo was this time 4 points. (Encuesta Valoración Real Madrid, El Mundo)

Almost all people agree that Fabio Coentrao offered a poor performance in a crucial game. Critics are amplified because the global performance of this player for all season was under discussion and scrutiny already before the game. Coentrao suffers from the fact that he was hired at the beginning of this season after Real Madrid paid an stounding sum as transfer fee for a defender: 30 million euros (some 38 million US$).

We will not discuss in this post about football or about reputation and media crisis linked to football players. We wanted to show another example of the knowledge that it can be gathered from capturing sentiments in the social media, using adequate framework of analysis.

We do not pretend -at all- to present these results as a kind of scientific survey about opinions and sentiments. The results we provide in this post are not representative. They are not representative as Twitter community is not a fully representative sample of global Spanish society and opinion in Spain. Twitter community is biased as it corresponds to not representative sample of age, education and maybe ideology. Results are not representative because active Twitter users share specific characteristics. Results are not representative as Twitter users participating actively in Trending Topic issues present different characteristics and interests than average Twitter community. For instance, I am an active twitter user for professionaly oriented topics, and I normally do not contribute in TT issues. Results are not representative because the dynamics of Trendic Topics may affect strongly the ‘bad examples’ chosen as references: leading tweets specially funny that receive a substantial amount of RT tend to appear in main Twitter page. Like this, they exert an influence on other people willing to writte new tweets, and are often reused with the introduction of some variations, or simply by copying them. Results are not representative because they rely in a rather limited number of tweets.

We are quite aware that our results are not representative. But we also consider that our results are illustrative, and that they provide relevant insights revealing positive or negative reputation and image of personalities and institutions. Results also show light about the problems currently indentified as such, identify hot topics in the social media and provide an indirect measure of relevance of brands.

A Twitter Trending Topic as means to reveal brands with negative reputation

The interesting point is that, as in many other cases, a lot of issues related with the Bayern Munich – Real Madrid Game became trending topics (TT) in Twitter in Spain (and probably elsewere). Coentrao emerged as one of the recurrent issues in the Twitter after game. Late in the night someone created a specific hashtag (HT), #SiLoComparasConCoentrao; ‘si lo comparas con Coentrao’ (If you compare it/her/him with Coentrao…). So, the poor sport performance as perceived by many people in Twitter (and of course, by rivals of Real madrid) was translated into one of the typical satiric and spoof oriented HT, using Coentrao as essence of something really bad. The terms of comparison were other bad things, situations or persons, that in the tweets became almost good in comparison to Fabio Coentrao.

Our strategy consisted in identifying which where the ‘bad, but no as bad as Coentrao’ people, institutions or situations that Twitter users picked as epytome of bad, ugly, or poorly performing. Publishing tweets in TT dynamic spoof HT has its own rules, as people want to share funny short text with other people in order to contribute in creating momentum in the TT debate, one of the essences of microblogging. Some people are looking for others’ reward in terms of winning retweets (RT). Some other take advantadge of TT debate for sending their own political/social views, acting as social media influencers.

The selection of the specific figure opposed to Coentrao is a way to reveal us some information about the social media reputation of politicians, celebrities, corporations and brands, or institutions. We present in this post some of the results that we have reached monitoring #SiLoComparasConCoentrao.

Dictators

We open our analysis by checking which are the references identified as real evil, by the citation to dictators. Our results in the figure show that the epytome of evil is Hitler, as he concentrates some 80% of all mentions to dictators, with 219 tweets. This also means that Twitter community in Spain considers that this dictator can be used for jokes in some contexts. Second in the list is Spanish Francisco Franco, with 33 mentions. Third is Bin Laden, with 26. Other dictators monitored receive limited social media attention. Running a soft socio-political analysis, we find that the local dictator Francisco Franco, who was the Head of State between 1939-1975 is considered by many as the best representation of evil in politics, but right now, 37 years after his death, he is not the top-of-mind brand for the majority of people, as this infamous ‘honor’ goes to Adolf Hitler.

Politics and Economic Problems in Spain

The second set of cases we analyse using Coentrao’s mocking hashtag is linked to politics and references to economic problems in Spain.

We show first results concerning politicians and political parties in Spain.

We find that current Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, is the leading reference in this section, with 161 tweets. Second in importance is his predecessor, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, with 99 appearances. In both cases, they appear as example in Coentrao HT of bad Government. When explaining why, tweets about Rajoy refer mainly to the severity of budget cuts, while tweets about Zapatero accuse him of lack of leadership and responsibilty for not addressing the present economic problems that Spain is suffering.

Former Prime Ministers play a minor role. José María Aznar, who is normally attacked by leftist oriented people due to his conservative government and to his support to George Bush in Iraq war, receives just 6 mentions. Socialist long standing Prime Minister Felipe González appears just once. Twitter joke tweets are strongly stick to ongoing events, and concentrate ‘attacks’ to politicians with ongoing public responsibilities. We find also that Rajoy, more than his Government attract users’ reaction, as direct mentions to ‘Government’ are just 63. We have also checked the presence of tweets about individual Ministers of Mariano Rajoy government. All of them generate just 20 tweets, and ‘accused’ ministers are Ana Mato (Health) and José Ignacio Wert (Education and Culture).

Mentions to individual political parties are limited in comparison to references to present and prior Prime Ministers. References to governing conservative party PP are 41, or four times less than references to Rajoy. References to socialist party PSOE, the leading party in the parliamentary oppostion are 8. There are almost no references to other parties (one reference to IU, a confederatio of leftists parties including communist party PCE.

We move now to the analysis of problems directly related to Spain that are chosen by TT microbloggers as bad events deserving to be compared to Coentrao performance.

Direct references to Spain as suffering problems count 348 tweets. They include a wide array of problems. Comparing to previous figures, explicit references to problems Spain are higher than any other issue. We have monitores the presence of specific problems. Main individual reference is to ‘crisis0, with 194 mentions. If we look into specifi problems, we find that people identify unemployment as  main evil, with 114 mentions. Remember that spain is facing right now an unemployment rate of 23% active labor force, the highest in Europe, above rescued countries like Greece and Portugal. As a way to evaluate the extent of the ongoing crisis, consider that unemployment rate bottomed to 8.1% in year 2006 (source: Indexmundi). Second individual problem most widely mentioned are the cuts in public expenditures approved by the current Government in order to reduce drastically the current deficits and meet international commitments. By comparison, direct mentions to harf due to increased taxes appear in mere four tweets. As for public policies, we find that health and education problems due to recently announced new cuts appear 50 times, half the size of mentions to cuts and to unemployment.

Politics and politicians as main evil in Spain appear in a non negligeable way, with 40 mentions. By contrats, there is a relative low presence of mentions to corruption (11 tweets).

Problems linked to deficit financing and risks of mention play a marginal role in spoofs using Coentrao HT.

Finally, we observe a strong presence of a very recent problem created for the Spanish economy: the expropriation of YPF from Spanish oil company Repsol, by the Government of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. It receives 153 mentions as epitome of a bad thing for Spain. This is more social media attention than references to unemployment. Of course, this result is affected by the effect of the recent annoucement, as social media debates are very sensitive in the short term.

Spanish Royal Family

The Royal Family in Spain is being battered since 2011 by an incredible amount of problems highly sensitive to public opinion. They are dramatically influencing the state of public opinion about the role of King Juan Carlos, the  Royal family and eventually the role of monarchy in Spain.

Very recent events have created strong negative reaction and has fuelled social media debate, discussion, attacks and mockery. Iñaki Urdangarín, married with Infanta Cristina, a daughter of King Juan Carlos is under current investigation fro allegation of corruption in business affairs. Just a week ago Felipe Juan Froilán, the son of Infanta Elena, was injured by a bullet in his feet while manipulating a shotgun. The problem in term of reputation was that he is 13 years old and such hunting arms are prohibited to younger than 14 years old. Finally, last 14 April 2012, news announced that King Juan Carlos broke his hip, during a private trip in Botswana. Son later people learnt that the King was participating in a safari hunt chassing elephants. Nor the trip neither the goal of the trip was publicly announced before the incident happened. This fact provoked an extraordinary reaction in social media channels, as many people considered outrageous such a luxurious occupation while the spanish economy is shrinking, unemployment rate are at all time highs and ordinary people is affected by aggressive cuts in public expenditures. Other consider intolerable the killing of elephants.

So, the monarchy is experiencing right now probably the most critical situation never experienced in Spain in terms of reputation, prestige and social acceptance. We show now how this context has been translated into the debate and spoofs around the hasgtag #SiLoComparasConCoentrao.

Our results suggest that debate and anger about ongoing issues in relation with the Spanish Royal family are serious. We find some 640 mentions to King Juan Carlos as someone as bad or worse than Coentrao football perfomance. Comparing this value with all previously shown shows that the current crisis of the monarchy is strongly felt by the social media community.

Some tweets about the King show anger, but many other are just jokes and mockery. In any case, it is clear that it is not good for the health and reputation of the monarchy as institution to become the preferred source of mockery and spoof.

Second member of the royal family most mentionned is Froilán, with 381 tweets. Of course the profile of tweets about Froilán are mainly oriented to jokes about the accident, and not negative tweets considering the kid as an evil example.

Iñaki Urdangarín comes just fourth, with 35 tweets. The fact that Urdangarín case was during the previous months the reputation nightmare for the Spanish royal family and despite that it receives some 20 times less social media attention than King Juan Carlos. This is a measure of how sensitive is the elephant hunting case in the social media arena, and how relevant it is for monarchy reputation in Spain.

 

Media Influence. A Twitter Based Measure. Case Urdangarin. Allegations of Corruption Against Son-in-Law of King Juan Carlos of Spain

Posted on by • Posted in Corruption, Country - Spain, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Communication Crisis, Rep Issue - Social Media, Rep Issue - Twitter Analysis, Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

In this post we propose an indirect way to measure influence of news providers. We use Twitter as filtering criteria.

There are plenty of mechanisms, approaches and rankings concerning the most influential newspapers or news providers. Online difussion and social media proliferation is probably making these kind of analysis more difficult to achieve and less reliable. It is difficult to establish the weight and influence of online and offline editions of news providers like newspapers, radio stations, TV broadcasters and pure digital medial like blogs or pure online newspapers.

We propose here an indirect measure of influence of news providers from any source. The idea is to check which are the news providers used by Twitter users to refer to external sources for explaining or interpreting an event. Of course, this means that this restrict the analysis to only online editions of news providers, and not the original offline content, if existing. This means that the measure that we are proposing contain a number of caveats and limitations. But we consider that they do not undermine nevertheless the validity of the underlying intution: in a tweet, an user is constricted to choose a single external source, if any. Referring to an analysis or news offered by a news provider is a way taken by the Twitter user to show her position in the issue, and to share it with her followers and Twitter community. By picking this news provider, the Twitter user is showing trust and credibility to this chosen source. She is also expanding the area of influence of this news provider, as she is making it accessible to other Twitter users.

Thus, a way to measure which are the external references preferred by active social media users is to monitor news providers that have been used by Twitter users as external references during the period of time that an event or issue was active in social media arena, i.e., the event received a sustained amount of tweets inside this period of time.

Applied Case: Iñaki Urdangarín Hearings for Allegations of Fraud

Iñaki Urdangarín is married with Princess Cristina, duaghter of King of Spain Juan Carlos. He has been asked to testify by 25 February 2012, in the framework of an ongoing judicial case of corruption and fraud of public funds by some Government representatives in Balearic Islands region in Spain. Instituto Noos, ruled by Iñaki Urdangarín and others benefited from public contracts suspected to be fraudulent.

This is an extremeny harmful case as reputation crisis for Iñaki Urdangarín and his wife, but also to all Royal Family, and eventually to the monarchy as ruling institution. It is a highly sensitive issue, that has received a notorious media coverage in Spain, even before that any formal accusation had been made against Mr. Urdangarín, Duke of Palma.

Questioning by the judge was openned by 9am local time, and was stopped by 9pm. It will be continued by Sunday 26 February 2012.

We show below the figure concerning the media from any kind that had been cited as reference and link to Twitter messages from 7am to 12pm, 25 February 2012.

Our results show that the leading reference for the coverage of Iñaki Urdangarín hearings was elpais.com, linked to one of main newspapers in Spain, El Pais. Their news appeared as link in 598 different tweets.

Second news provider was publico.es. The offline reference is left oriented newspaper Público. This newspapers was closed just one day ago due to the economic crisis. The online version of it will persist.

Third media reference is elmundo.es, from the newspaper El Mundo, another leading newspaper in Spain.

We find that forth position th online edition of a radio station, cadenaser.com, for Cadena SER. This radio station pertains to the same group than El País, the Grupo PRISA.

Twitter Elections Barometer: Spanish Socialist Party Primary Elections: Carme Chacon Vs Alfredo Rubalcaba

Posted on by • Posted in Country - Spain, Elections, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Communication Crisis, Rep Issue - Twitter Analysis • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Twitter as tool for political analysis

Twitter analysis is becoming a source of knowledge in many areas. Right now many scientists and professionals are using it for better understanding and measuring corporate and institutional reputation. There are also attempts to monitor election processes through Twitter analysis.

This kind of studies are perfectly in line with all our empirical studies based in news measurement and content analysis, applied to the field of sport brands (Economics, Sport and Intangibles research group, ESI), and more widely, to companies and politics (Media, Reputation and Intangibles center, MRI).

A tweet, and tweet content analysis has its own rules and social community rules, but it share some points in common with news and news content analysis. Both news and tweets are a defined and closed unit of information. Both come from free and open sources and (normally) can be reached by all (specially if we refer to the online version of newspapers news).  A tweet has its own specificities, mainly derived from the restriction to a message of 140 characters max.

We like Twitter as source of reputation analysis. We like it a lot. We consider it a relevant tool.

As for political analysis, the utility of Twitter has to be demonstrated. In previous analysis run by our MRI center, we find that news were a good predictor of elections outcome in Spanish General Elections, 2008. It was also a correct tool to predict voting preferences in United States 2008 Presidential Elections.

As mentioned, Twitter is being used by scientists and practitioners in political analysis. For instance, Spanish newspaper Publico showed the live evolution of presence in Twitter of all candidates.

Twitter and PSOE Primary Elections

We present in this post our results concerning Twitter analysis of an ongoing electoral process. It refers to the election in Spain of the new leader of the main party in the opposition, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE). There are right now two official pre-candidates counting with a sufficient number of party elector endorsement. This is Alfredo P. Rubalcaba (61 years old) and Ms Carme Chacón (41 years old).

We feel that Twitter is well adapted to provide relevant information in a primary election context, as the problem of ideological bias inside the Twitter community tend to vanish, as both candidates come from the same party and share basically similar political principles. People in Twitter interested in PSOE electoral process (PSOE voters or supporters as well as people disliking PSOE) show their preferences by referring to the candidates. The same can be said about the current US republican primary elections.

Of course, number of tweets where a politician is mentioned is not a direct measure of political power and voting intention. Many people, specially inside the Twitter community, post messages for attacking or mocking a political rival rather than for supporting it. But, whatever the content of a tweet is positive or negative, a tweet becomes a measure of political influence. If you are not politically relevant, you will no receive attention from Twitter users, outside the set of your direct followers. Quantity of tweets shows influence, quality of tweets shows reputation. This is why number of tweets can provide information about political power and eventually about voting expectations.

It is true that Twitter political barometer cannot be translated into election winning odds, at least in the PSOE primaries, as voting is not made available to all Socialist Party voters, but only to a small number of electors, who can choose the candidate freely and not based in public opinion preferences.

Twitter Political Barometer: Daily Political Trend

In any case, we show in this post the evolution of the presence of both Socialist candidates since the end of December 2011, when the electoral process started.

The figures that we provide contain a basic but crucial correction of data that it is not usually performed by other analysts (like the measure provided by newspaper Publico). We exclude from our analysis all tweets mentioning both candidates, and we retain only those talking exclusively about Rubalcaba or Chacón alone.

We provided a first measurement two weeks ago, published in MRI Universidad de Navarra site. There we commented the results for a Spanish audience. As we present here the results to international readers (only 5% of this blog readers come from Spain), we do not comment the political reasons of the ups and downs of each candidates. We simply point out here that the Twitter momentum of each candidate can be explained by specific events.

The way we present the results are as follow: a value 50 means that each candidate is receiving during the last 24 hours the same amount of tweets. Values above 50 means that Rubalcaba is more present than Chacón in Twitter. Reaching a value of 100 means that all tweets referred to Rubalcaba in the previous 24 hours, while a value 0 means that all messages went to Chacón.

Our analysis shows that Carme Chacon is leading the race since mid January. The only exception is last week-end tweeting coverage to the formal support given by former Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez to Alfredo Rubalcaba. This prevalence faded away quickly, and right now Chacon is again the main reference in Twitter.

As many Twitter analysis say, tweets are nourished mainly by information created by traditional news provider, and not by content genuinely emerging from Twitter community. One singular exception are trending topics (TT) not related with news. In this sense, even the Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, stated recently that Twitter is not a media company:

‘We don’t create our own content; we’re a distributor of content and traffic. We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to other media properties, [namely] to other online web properties, even to films’

Mashable Social Media, 31 January 2012

But the evolution of this time series provides also information produced by Twitter. It shows how Twitter community reacts to different news and events related with the candidates and the primary campaign. Peaks, their value and comparison with other peaks is telling us how relevant the Twitter community considers that any single event is, and how it influences the election race.

As the present case refers to a local political event we do not explain each single event behind the news and thereafter its impact on tweets for each candidate. But readers familiar with the PSOE electoral campaign can appreciate and evaluate the impact of the different political movements made by each camp, Rubalcaba and Chacón.

Twitter Political Barometer: Political Intensity Index

We provide a second measure. This new one refers to the degree of interest that Twitter community shows concerning the PSOE electoral process.

The second figure shows a composite measure of the number of tweets about Alfredo Rubalcaba or Carme Chacón, in a 24h basis.

This is of course a relevant complementary measure to the first one that presented the political candidate leading the race in terms of share of news by day. It is important to know the intensity of the debate and its evolution in time for assessing the impact of the campaign for the political interests of each candidate.

A value 1.0 corresponds to the average degree of tweets per day published during the time period. values bigger than 1 mean that in that moment Twitter users are talking more about one or both candidates than in the average trend during the campaign.

According to our results, top Twitter momentum of the political campaign up to now was reached by 8 January 2012, when one of the contenders, Carme Chacón, officially launched her bid as candidate for leading the Spanish Socialist party. Twitter messaging was at that moment four times higher than average. When Alfredo P. Rubalcaba presented his candidacy, Twitter Political Intensity Index reached a value of 1.2, ten days before his rival.

We are observing an increase of interest during this last week. By the end of January the Index took value 1.7. Nevertheless, we are not observing yet an explosion of interest inside Twitter community, not that the campaign is reaching its final stages before voting takes place.

Twitter Political Barometer: Overall Impact Index

The last measure we want to present in this post is somehow a combination of two previous measures.

We present an Overall Impact Index of each candidate in Twitter. The basis of this measure is the sum of all tweets received by each candidate since the start of the political fight, day by day. This time, we exclude again the tweets where both candidates were mentioned. We calculate the percentage of all tweets going to Rubalcaba and Chacon. Of course, sum of both gives value 1. Also, as we follow just two candidates, we have a symmetric evolution.

We have introduced a correction in the data, giving a smaller weight to older tweets. Our aim is to show the present perception of who is commanding now the race inside the Twitter community. Recent tweets have now a bigger impact that tweets published one week or one month ago.

We find that right now Chacon is leading the race, with 55% of all tweets since the start of the campaign. She became the main reference in Twitter since she announced officially her program to become the new leader of the Socialist Party, by 8 January 2012.

Alfredo P. Rubalcaba was the leading reference in Twitter between December 29 2011 and January 7 2012. This corresponds to the interval where he announced officially his candidacy, and when he questioned the adjustment program proposed by Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government.

During the last week covered in this graph, Carme Chacón maintains her advance in a rather steady path. There was an upward trend favorable to Alfredo Rubalcaba around January 25, but this trend has reversed again in favor of Chacón.

Twitter Political Barometer: How Powerful Is PSOE Third Way?

Like in other primary voting process, there are at this PSOE primaries some party members who present their candidacy to become the party leader, ahead from mainstream candidates.

Mainstream candidates are Alfredo P. Rubalcaba and Carme Chacón. Alfredo P. Rubalcaba was Vice-president in the previous socialist government with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He fighted against Mariano Rajoy as Prime Minister candidates in the 20 November 2011 elections that his party finally lost. Carme Chacón was Defense Minister in Zapatero’s government. She renounced to assume the leadership in past elections. Both are the current reference in the Socialist party.

Besides these two natural leaders, the outliers that emerged and announced their intention to become a candidate were, among others, Emiliano García-Page and Antonio Quero.

Emiliano García-Page is the major of Toledo, young and promising politician. After launching several proposals and contacts, he recently renounce to present as candidate and endorsed Afredo P. Rubalcaba project a couple of days ago.

Antonio Quero is a civil servant in Brussels European institutions. He presents himself as a third way, rooted in a more participative basis. He has received support from movement ‘Bases en Red’. He affirms that he counts with some 10% of electors endorsements. The minimum required to formally become a candidate is 20%.

As we argued above that presence in Twitter can be seen as a measure of political influence, we propose to use this tool in order to show how relevant are García-Page and Antonio Quero among Twitter users.

We have been monitoring their presence in Twitter altogether with main candidates Rubalcaba and Chacón.

We present below our results.

We compare the presence of ‘third way’ candidates to the sum of tweet for mainstream Rubalcaba and Chacón. Our results are undisputable: both Quero and García-Page have played a marginal role in the primaries process inside Twitter community. Antonio Quero captured 1.4% tweets about the primaries, Emiliano García-Page another 1.0%. The overwhelming remaining 97.6% went to both Rubalcaba and Chacón.

If these results mean something, we expect that Quero will obtain far less than the 10% of total endorsements that he is claiming to have.

We close the analysis of this issue by focusing the results in the last and decisive week. Social media impact and visibility during the week preceding the nomination congress provides information about the trend and political chances of an emerging unexpected surprise.

Again our data shows that Antonio Quero is not perceived inside Twitter community as a relevant alternative, as his weights decreases to a mere 1.0% of total weekly tweets, even lower than the attention gathered during the whole electoral period.

It is true that, as political precedent, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero became the PSOE leader as a surprise, as he was not mainstream and popular candidate before the congress. But we feel that this time Twitter says us that such an unexpected last minute reversion of favoritism is not plausible.

PS: Antonio Quero announced in the first day of nomination Congress, by Friday night, his decision to abandon the race as candidate, before the deadline for presenting the required endorsements was closed.

Addendum 1: The impact of ‘Chacón es Zapatero con faldas’

Today, Friday 3 February the PSOE Congress opens. During this week-end the electors will choose their new leader.

Yesterday, one of the Socialist Party barons, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, former President of the Extremadura region pointed out in an radio interview at RNE that contender Carme Chacón was someone like Zapatero, but with a skirt. (‘Carme Chacón es como Zapatero pero con faldas’). This was probably meant to show that Chacón will follow the same social and economic model that the one proposed by former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Elements of this model is currently highly criticised by many, even inside the Socialist Party, and is considered the source of the unprecedented electoral failure suffered by PSOE in 20 November 2011 general elections.

Whatever the intentions pursued by R. Ibarra, many people have considered this statement as unlucky, deplorable (Marcelino Iglesias) or even outrageous because its sexist profile. General perception by Twitter is also negative.

We propose a measurement of the impact of this statement in Twitter. This event can be considered as a political communication mistake, as the ‘attack’ to Chacón was launched by a supporter of Alfredo P. Rubalcaba (male), but its general negative reaction provides new support to Carme Chacón as women leader.

We want to assess the impact of Ibarra remarks in Carme Chacón visibility in Twitter in these crucial hours just before the final voting, which is announced to be very tight.

The figure shows the share of all tweets about Rubalcaba or Chacón going to Carme Chacón. This is an 8 hours average value. A value above 50% shows that Chacón is winning in number of tweets.

Ibarra remark came by 2 February in the afternoon.

Our results show that just before that moment, Rubalcaba was gaining momentum, and Chacón counted with 60% of all tweets. Since the remarks spread in Twitter, Chacón increased her presence up to almost 80-20 share. This morning, its presence moves between 60 and 75% of tweets.

If we exclude references to Ibarra and the skirts, Rubalcaba was managing to become the reference  as Chacón values decreased even to 45%.

Addendum 2: Rubalcaba and Chacón in the Twitter just before nomination

I am publishing this new section by Saturday 4 February 2012, 11h30 am (CET), just a couple of hours before voting and the nomination of the new leader (Secretario General) of PSOE takes place. Apparently, nobody can right now predict who will win, as number of endorsements are similar. Both camps claim right now that they count with the majority of votes.

We present here the track of the presence of both candidates in Twitter in the crucial stage of the nomination process. The PSOE Congress started yesterday, Friday 3 February. In the following figure we present the share of tweets reached by each candidate, day by day since 1 February, up to today 4 February, at 10 am.

Our results show that Carme Chacón has increased substantially her advance in the crucial last days of the electoral process. Remember that the distribution during the whole electoral process was Chacón 55% and Rubalcaba 45%. In the final four days the ratio in Twitter turns practically to a 4:1 for Chacón against Rubalcaba. 75.1% of all tweets refer to Carme Chacón, while 24.9% talk about Alfredo P. Rubalcaba.

In next figure we present the share of tweets for each candidate, day by day since February 1st. We show also the evolution of the intensity of the debate (by the size of the bars, as value 100 means the average number of daily Tweets during these last four days). In all cases, Carme Chacón completely dominates the Twitter debate, as she moves between 73% and 79% of all daily tweets.

Addedum 3: Epilogue (up to now)

PSOE delegates elected new party leader (Secretario General) last Saturday February 4. Voting took place by 2pm, after both Carme Chacón and Alfredo P. Rubalcaba delivered their programmatic speeches. Result was expected to be announced by 4ph, but it was delayed for 90 minutes. Apparently, the result was so tight, that al least one recount of votes was needed.

Alfredo P. Rubalcaba was elected with 487 votes. His rival, Carme Chacón, received 465 votes. There were other 3 votes. This means that Rubalcaba got 51% of support. Even if this is a joke (but a true no fake photo), the following photo is an explanation by Rubalcaba to parliamentary Rosa Díez (Feb 6) about how he did to win the elections. It reflects how dramatic was the election process and the importance of last minute negotiations to capture those decisive 11 votes.

We close our analysis of this post by presenting the evolution of Twitter presence of both candidates during the 38 PSOE Congress.

First figure refers to daily timeline during the week of the Congress. We take value 1 for the average daily presence of both candidates during the five days previous to the Congress. It started by Friday 3 February.

As already identified in previous figures in this post, Carme Chacón become the reference in Twitter and had a comfortable advance as the Congress commenced. As expected, social media attention exploded in the elction day (Saturday 4 February), as the index took value 11. Both candidates are followed with the same intensity.

Once Rubalcaba becomes the new leader, Twitter attention turns as expected to Rubalcaba. Sunday 5 February was the Twitter aftermath of the election, and was also the day that the Congress devoted to define the new political guidelines. Twitter media attention decreased to 3.4 points for Rubacaba and 1.5 points for Chacón.

We observe that Twitter relevance of Carme Chacón is vanishing rapidly since her defeat.

Election day was the crucial day and the one that captured by far the most social media attention. We present in the following figure a focus of Twitter activity during Saturday 4 February 2012.

We present hourly based measures. Now, value 1 is the average number of news received by both candidates in average during the five days before the elective Congress. They refer to tweets about one of the candidates not mentioning the other one.

Rubalcaba delivered first his programmatic speech. Of course, during his speech (by 12h) he became the reference in Twitter above Chacón. Then came Carme Chacón speech. It created almost three times more tweets than during his rival speech, reaching an index value of 1200 points. In terms of social media impact, Carme Chacón benefited from presenting in second place. Our results show that the presenting order is a very relevant issue for social media impact. Nevertheless, in this case this impact was not determinant, was voting was closed to party electors.

Communication of the winner of the election came by 17h25. Of course, this was translated into an explosion of tweets, that propelled Rubalcaba presence in Twitter to a daily maximum of 1470 points. Beaten rival received 470 points of attention in Twitter. Twitter messaging dropped quickly, in a matter of less than 2 hours.

Debt and Deficits in US State of The Union Address. Measuring Presidential Position on Fiscal Discipline (1920-2008)

Posted on by • Posted in Countries, Elections, Event - US Presidential Elections 2012, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Communication Crisis • Tagged , , , , , , , • 1 Comment

United States President Barack Obama is about to deliver his last State of The Union Address before elections. The message is crucial for his reelection aspirations, and will be scrutinized by all. Republican rivals will try to use Obama’s statements as political ammunition against him.

In the midst of a severe and unsolved economic crisis, Federal Budget is facing also an unprecedented fiscal deficit, which is not sustainable in the long term. Fiscal discipline is in this current political and economic situation a highly divisive issue. Dealing with deficits in the United States is a clear political dilemma, specially in an electoral year. For the first time in modern history, the United States lost the triple-A rating status from rating agency Standard & Poor’s. This decrease in US debt trust pushes for a decided deficit reduction plan. But cuting federal expenditures or increasing new taxes in present economic context will raise public opinion opposition.

Political position concerning fiscal discipline will become a key component of the speech, as in old days. Chosing the right wording and the persuasive arguments to protect the decision taken will be a matter of master political communication crisis.

So, as many non US citizens, we look forward the content and the discourse strategy chosen by President Barack Obama on debt, deficits and fiscal discipline.

In the meanwhile, we present in this post a research about the content analysis of the US Presidential speeches in the modern fiscal history, concerning US President degree of political commitment towards fiscal discipline.

This analysis corresponds to a research carried out in year 2009. The results of this project were published as a chapter of book in Imbeau, Louis (ed), Do They Walk Like They Talk? Speech and Action in Policy Processes, Studies in Public Choice, Springer. You can also check a preliminary version as working paper.

The time period covered in the figures presented in this post is from 1920 (Harding Presidency) to 2008, the last year of George W. Bush second term presidency.

The nature of the blog does not allow us to explain the methodology followed to gather our results. We can just mention that the main structure of the design is to proceed to a hand made lecture and analysis of all Presidential speeches (State of The Union Address, Presidential Inaugural Address, and the Budget Message of the President). When the President  mades a reference to debt, deficits or fiscal discipline, the statement is analyzed and classified as favorable or opposed to fiscal discipline principles. This classification is made by confronting the argument presented by the President against the collection of arguments for and against fiscal discipline developped by economists and public choice scientist.

In the following figures we present the core results of the content analysis concerning US Presidents political position towards fiscal discipline.

We present in the linked paper all the theoretial arguments for and against fiscal discipline, and explain how we use them fro classifying each single presidential statement. Some authors may consider that we do not capture all the arguments or they identify other source of doubts and concerns about our approach chosen. Whatever the actual limitations and caveats of our methodology, we apply our criteria consistently througout all the time considered under analysis. This means that at least comaprative analysis concerning different US Presidents may still hold and provide useful information and knowledge for contemporary economic and political history.

First figure present the intensity of the use of statements about debt and deficits by terms. This first result refers to quantity, and not about the profile of the statements for or against fiscal discipline.

We count with pre Great Depression data. Number of statements on deficits increase with Hoover term, they surprisingly decrease during first term by F. D. Roosevelt. They increase substantially when he proposes the New Deal. Place given to debt and deficits decrease durng II World War, even if deficits explode (Roosevelt III and IV).

The role of fiscal discipline and deficits was moderate during the 50s, 60s and 70s. It was a relevant pilitical topic mainly during Eisenhower presidency. We observe a sharp increase of interest about the role of deficits and fiscal deficits with the arrival of Ronald Reagan, who broke records in terms of mentions to this issue in top presidential speeches. High relevance was given to fiscal discipline debate also during Bill Clinton’s presidency. This trend was abrupty reversed under George W. Bush presidency.

First analysis concerned the presence of the political debate about deficits and fiscal discipline in US Presidential top speeches. In the next figure we provide our results about the position taken by each President concerning fiscal discipline. A statement defending the virtues of fiscal discipline and deficit elimination gives a positive point. In the opposite case, when a President justifies or prone the acceptance of deficits, we give a negative point to this statement. total sum provide the commitment of each President towards fiscal discipline.

In the first figure we present total value of the Index of Fiscal Discipline by terms. It is the result of the difference between positive and negative points. In the last figure we show a bounded index, ranging from -10 (all Presidential statements advocate for accepting deficits) to +10 (all statements prone fiscal discipline measures). A value 0 means a 50/50 weight of statements for and against fiscal discipline.

We comment the results that we obtain referring to the last figure, with the bounded index, that presents more clearly the political will of each President concerning deficits.

In line with what we expected from economic theory history, we find a strong attachment to fiscal discipline principles in US Presidents before the Great Depression (Harding and Coolidge). We can also confirm that fiscal policy measures proposed by Hoover during the first stage of the Great Depression were still grounded on fiscal discipline principles. The approach changed dramatically under F. D. presidency, as it entered clearly in political views opposed to fiscal discipline, as means to fight against economic crisis.

Once the economy recovered, and within the framework of War effort, presidents came back to fiscal discipline proposals. Kennedy was the first president to adopt Keynesian principles as tool to boost the economy, as our negative value of the index shows. The 1973 oil crisis and its aftermath of stagflation during the 70s was a period fro a renewal of political positions opposed to fiscal discipline.

Ronald Reagan presidency turned back to pro fiscal discipline positions. The index did not take maximum levels, because ‘Reaganomics’ proposals where not always in line with a clear opposition to deficits.

Bill Clinton, even if from the Democrat party, presented a decided and sustained political policy attached to fiscal discipline principles in all major speeches during his two terms of presidency. His discourse was in line with the sustained reduction of federal deficits.

Finally, George W. Bush presidency has been charaterised by a nonchalance concerning deficits. He accepted deficits as a way to overcome the economic shock provoked by September 11 2001 attack, and by the burst of internet bubble.

Our aim is to present as soon as possible our analysis of the position taken by Barack Obama in his January 24 2012 State of The Union Address concerning deficits and fiscal discipline.

Rubalcaba, Rajoy. Spanish Elections in Youtube: users prefer parodies rather than political meetings

Posted on by • Posted in Country - Spain, Elections, Political Leaders, Rep Issue - Social Media, Rep Issue - YouTube Analysis • Tagged , , , , , • 4 Comments

(Puede consultar el texto en español sobre este estudio en MRI Universidad de Navarra)

Spain is voting tomorrow 20 November to elect the new parliament and the new Spanish Prime Minister. With an unemployment rate above 20% and increasing risks of public debt insolvency, the crisis, its consequences and the measures to recover have become almost the only issue during this campaign.

We have designed at Media, Reputation and Intangibles an analysis to check how this campaign has been designed by the main political parties in Youtube, and how the users have actually behave.

We show now some results that are included in the report, what will be published in Spanish in MRI Universidad de Navarra site.

We have monitored all videos launched by two main parties, PSOE (socialist party) and PP (popular party, cernter-right). These two parties control almost 90% of all parliamentary seats. We have also followed all videos provided by any other source reaching at least 500 views.

We have identified some 330 different videos fulfilling our conditions, present in Youtube during the campaign (between 3 Nov and 19 Nov 2011).

Total amount of views is 1.6 millions.

Our analysis show that the main type of videos viewed during the campaign are political spoofs and parodies, as they represent some 42.5% of all views.

Surprisingly enough, videos about political meetings only represent 4.4% of all videos viewed. Content provided by the Youtube channels of official parties are basically about meetings. They have no attracted the interest of Youtube users. Our results clearly show that communication agencies in charge of the official Youtube channel of the political parties have not been able to adapt the communication strategy and content to social media rules.

Concerning the videos with political spoofs, many of them are manipulations intended to create amusing videos, but they do not send any specific political message.

There are nevertheless some of them that have a clear political content. We present the analysis of top 3 by influence in terms of viewers during the campaign.

Most viewed video is ‘Alfredo no te creo’ (Alfredo I do not trust you). It attacks the candidate from socialist party PSOE, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. The musical video adapts a song and lyrics accusing Mr Rubalcaba for being responsible for the economic crisis and not respecting past commitments.

There are two videos attacking Partido Popular (PP), the conservative party that all polls announce as the winner, probably with an absolute majority of seats. ‘La niña de Rajoy’ is a parody of an image used years ago by PP candidate, Mariano Rajoy. A girl explains the secret plans of PP to cut expenses on social policies. Finally, ‘El hundimiento de Mariano Rajoy’ is a manipulation of the final scene of movie Der Untergang (Downfall). The parody shows Rajoy as personification of Hitler learning that his party has not reached the absolute majority thanks to the emergence of the third party, Izquierda Unida (former communist party). This last video is a call to end with bipartisanship in Spain.

We show their time evolution and the degree of acceptance by viewers.

You can check here the content of the three videos analyzed.

1. Alfredo no te creo (against PSOE)

2. La niña de Mariano Rajoy (against PP)

3. El hundimiento de Mariano Rajoy (against PP)