Twitter, partisan use and institutional use: Comparative analysis between the profiles of Moncloa, Madrid City Council and their ruling parties

Abstract

This paper seeks to compare and analyse the differences in the use of Twitter that, Partido Popular, as a traditional political party, and Ahora Madrid, as a new political party, make of the institutional channels for the public institutions that they administer. In addition, the present study analyses three different periods in the electoral process: the pre-campaign, campaign and post-campaign during the Spanish general elections of December 20th, 2015 in order to see if the election periods caused changes in their communications on Twitter. The sample consists of four cases divided into two groups for content analysis. On one hand, the Government’s Twitter profile (@desdelamoncloa) and of its ruling party, Partido Popular (@ppopular), comprise the old political group, while the Madrid City Council (@Madrid) and its ruling party, Ahora Madrid (@AhoraMadrid), are integrated into the new political group. Additionally, word clouds provide a visual representation of the main terms used by each group. The study results show which group uses and better leverages Twitter’s potential, in that Partido Popular and Moncloa have clearer differences between party and institutional channels, while Ahora Madrid and the Madrid City Council do not seem to be as clear about the difference between the two concepts and use the party channel as the city council channel. However, the results demonstrate that the new political profile leverages Twitter’s potential more.