The Ideological Orientation of Messages Posted on Twitter during the 24M in Spain

Abstract

Current digital social scenarios are being increasingly used as platforms for discussing and sharing one’s views. In this vein, this paper aims to identify some of the general features of citizen participation on Twitter during the Spanish elections held on 24 May 2015, as well as to estimate the weight or importance of ideologically charged messages and the variables associated with the publication of this kind of messages. This is based on the social media mining of 24900 tweets gathered from the #24M and #Elecciones2015 hashtags. The study allows us to observe, among other things, the role taken on by the citizens, whose participation in this election focused

on disclosing the events of this day, rather than on establishing the different ideological positions that indicated their partisan preferences. In spite of this, we were able to see how messages with a clearly defined ideological charge were particularly encouraged by users with a progressive ideological orientation or leftist tendencies, as well as the existing relationship between the publication of these messages and the party orientation of those who disclosed this type of messages.