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Nuevos espacios, viejas agendas: la construcción temática de los procesos electorales de Portugal y Brasil en Twitter

Abstract:

The opening of new communication spaces—in the form of social media—derivada from the irruption of applied technologies, allows political parties and candidates to establish their own dynamics for the construction of the agenda. The present work, with an Iberoamerican dimension, analyzes eight Twitter accounts of the main candidates in Brazil and Portugal (Jair Bolsonaro, Fernando Haddad, Ciro Gomes, Geraldo Alckmin, Antonio Costa, Rui Rio, Catarina Martins and Assunção Cristas) during the two months prior to the 2018 and 2019 elections. The main objective is to determine the degree of relationship between the digital agendas of the candidates of both States; the second objective is to compare the online and offline agendas of the Latin American nation. Methodologically, a data extraction process has been carried out, assisted by the Python Twint library, a manual content analysis of the tweets through a prior categorization by the Nvivo software application, and a bivariate correlation in SPSS. In the results obtained, the old agenda issues (both chronic and intermittent) continue to occupy a preeminent place also on Twitter, with an indicative differentiation of the off-line and on-line scope, but which is not enough to incorporate new post-material character issues. No great correlations are found between the candidates, considering that the ideology in the interstate field determines the highest levels of coincidence. Likewise, the coalition of agendas model evidenced in previous investigations is discussed.