De “love” a “sad”: sintonía afectiva en el debate digital de las elecciones generales españolas 2023

Belén Casas-Mas; Juan Antonio Guevara Gil; Pamela Fabiola Menéndez Cóndor; José Manuel Robles Morales

doi:10.5294/pacla.2025.28.1.2

Authors

Belén Casas-Mas Author Complutense University of Madrid https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8329-0856
Juan Antonio Guevara Gil Author Complutense University of Madrid https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-3910
Pamela Fabiola Menéndez Cóndor Author Complutense University of Madrid https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1306-4380
José Manuel Robles Morales Author Complutense University of Madrid https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1092-3864

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2025.28.1.2

Keywords:

Affective attunement, digital public debate, social network analysis, general elections

Abstract

This article analyzes the level of emotivism in the digital political debate on Facebook during the 2023 General Elections based on official and verified accounts of parties, political leaders, media, and users. For this, 34,968 Facebook messages were downloaded during the official electoral campaign period and classified into three groups of agents: connective parties, media, and other connective action actors. Big data techniques were used to analyze the messages, and the NRC Emotion Lexicon was applied to measure the emotions present. The findings show high affective congruence because the messages have low emotional content. The presence of the emotion “love” in the reactions amounts to almost half. This may indicate irony and user discontent toward the messages posted during the electoral process. In cases of low affective attunement, the over-dimensionality of “love” stands out. These results are relevant from the emotivist perspective because they shed light on emotions in this type of debate that mobilizes public opinion and, at times, other negative dynamics that move away from the democratic ideal.

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