TikTok, already widely used before the pandemic, boomed during the quarantine that locked down large parts of the world, reaching 2 billion downloads and 800 million monthly active users worldwide by the end of 2020. Of these 800 million users, 41% are aged between 16 and 24 years. This social network, widely known for its entertainment videos, is increasingly becoming a place for political discussion and therefore a unique opportunity for political actors to (re)connect with young people. Acknowledging that the political uses of TikTok are still understudied, this paper aims to explore whether and how Spanish political parties are including TikTok as part of their communication strategy. Through an affordance-centered content analysis of all the posts published by the five most important Spanish political parties (PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos, Podemos, and Vox), the current results show that, although all Spanish political parties have adopted this platform, their usage is unequal. From a quantitative perspective, PP was the first party to open a TikTok account, but its usage has been discontinuous; Podemos and Ciudadanos are the parties that publish the most and most constantly, while Vox has only published nine posts and the PSOE one. Nonetheless, from a qualitative perspective, Podemos and Vox generate more engagement and seem to understand and exploit TikTok’s specific affordances better. The findings allow it to be concluded that, although globally Spanish political parties do not fully exploit the platform’s affordances and tend to use it as a unilateral tool for promotion, the most engaging posts are those favoring interaction and geared toward politainment.

Introduction: Political parties struggle to reconnect to Young people by using social networks. Acknowledging that 2020 has been the year of TikTok, most Spanish political parties have joined this social network: Podemos, with 191.400 followers and 3.1 million likes, is the most followed political party on this platform. Method: Using multimodal content analysis, this paper aims at analyzing how the party is using this social network, and for which purposes, placing the attention on how Podemos has adapted to TikTok specificities in terms of both language and technical affordances. Results: Results show that while the party perfectly adapts to TikTok’s specific language and technical affordances (special effects, etc.), instead of focusing on entertainment, the platform’s main genre, it uses TikTok as a showcase for political activities, failing in favoring a renovating relationship with users. However, politics is represented through the “game frame”, that is to say, dramatized as a battlefield between Good and Evil, which strengthens the populist dichotomous vision of the world, endorsing emotional response. Conclusion: In this sense, it is possible to conclude that, although Podemos mainly displays political content, this content falls into the category of politainment. Considering that present trends in usage rates suggest that the short-video format is the future of social media, we might expect an increase in politainmement content.

Palestinians, like many other diasporic communities, have, on the one hand, articulated their personal experiences and their subjectivities through digitalized channels. On the other, they have used social networks as tools for resistance, to make their voices heard by global public opinion. Acknowledging that each social medium is a unique socio-technological environment, displaying particular affordances that shape its dynamics of communicative practices and social interactions, this paper focuses on TikTok, the most popular social network among Gen Zers, disclosing how the affordances of this platform shape and engender a new form of activism, that we will define “playful activism”. The study presents an inductive, multimodal discourse analysis of a sample of widely viewed and shared #freepalestine TikToks unveiling how young Palestinians use this network to construct their narratives through playful performances, which show a deep knowledge of the app’s affordances and a great capacity to adapt to TikTok`s cultural and discursive environment. However, most importantly, these playful performances allow them to spread their political messages among a youth audience that potentially had no previous interest (and probably not even knowledge) about Palestine, fostering both the humanization of Palestinians and building a new solidarity network.

During a global pandemic, the great impact of populist discourse on the construction of social reality is undeniable. This study analyzes the fantasmatic dimension of political discourse from Donald Trump’s and Jair Bolsonaro’s Twitter accounts between 1 March and 31 May. To do so, it applies a Clause-Based Semantic Text Analysis (CBSTA) methodology that categorizes speech in Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) triplets. The study findings show that in spite of the Coronavirus pandemic, the main beatific and horrific subjects remain the core populist signifiers: the people and the elite. While Bolsonaro’s narrative was predominantly beatific, centered on the government, Trump’s was mostly horrific, centered on the elite. Trump signified the pandemic as a subject and an enemy to be defeated, whereas Bolsonaro portrayed it as a circumstance. Finally, both leaders defined the people as working people, therefore their concerns about the pandemic were focused on the people’s ability to work.

Introducción. Las crisis provocadas por acontecimientos imprevistos como el COVID-19 ponen a prueba las capacidades de comunicación y liderazgo de los actores políticos. Como respuesta, estos políticos establecen estrategias comunicativas que buscan redefinir y reforzar su liderazgo (y su imagen) ante la opinión pública. Metodología. Este texto analiza el desarrollo de algunas de las estrategias llevadas a cabo por los líderes políticos de los tres países europeos más afectados en la primera ola de la pandemia del COVID-19: Emmanuel Macron (Francia), Giuseppe Conte (Italia) y Pedro Sánchez (España). El análisis se basa en la semiótica generativa y se centra en el estudio de las dimensiones semionarrativa, semántica y discursiva. Resultados. En el caso concreto de la pandemia del coronavirus, tales narrativas introducen cuestiones relacionadas con la guerra y el combate. De este modo, facilitan la aparición de subencuadres como la heroicidad y el patriotismo. Discusión. Existe una gran similitud entre todos los discursos analizados a la hora de valerse de la secuencia narrativa propia de la realización del héroe. Pero ni la diferencia de contexto político, ni la diversa evolución de la pandemia en cada uno de los países analizados, así como tampoco el diferente estatuto político de los líderes, conlleva una diferenciación en sus bases narrativas y en sus encuadres bélicos. Conclusiones. Se confirma que las nuevas narrativas se originan en los órdenes discursivos tradicionales como el bélico y el épico-heroico y se destaca una novedad: el papel que juega la ciencia en el acompañamiento de este discurso.

Introducción: Los debates electorales de televisión estaban concebidos para proporcionar a los espectadores información contrastada sobre programas políticos y candidatos, pero en los últimos tiempos el escenario político y el de los medios de comunicación han cambiado tanto que estos programas han pasado a convertirse en puros acontecimientos mediáticos. En este artículo se analiza cómo el discurso y la posición actancial de los candidatos de los debates electorales presidenciales de televisión se acomodan en función del show mediático para consagrarlos como ganadores y, en el mejor de los casos, como héroes televisivos; o también todo lo contrario. Metodología: Nuestro principal objetivo no es de carácter empírico sino teórico y metodológico. No queremos describir el funcionamiento de los debates electorales en España. Tratamos de poner en pie y de probar un modelo de análisis aplicable a diversos contextos y, de esta manera, contribuir a fijar una serie de conceptos operativos en un nuevo marco conceptual. Resultados: La aplicación del modelo propuesto permite, entre otras cosas, identificar tanto los efectos de la mediatización política como la marcada tendencia a crear Gestalt ceremoniales ante acontecimientos mediáticos planificados. Asimismo, en el marco de esa Gestalt, permite reconocer el valor de la gradación de la agresividad y la conflictividad por parte de los diferentes candidatos presidenciales en el debate televisado. Conclusiones: En función del punto de vista utilizado, observamos una clara correlación entre la citada gradación de la agresividad y el índice de polarización que se ha experimentado en la opinión pública en las últimas décadas, así como en la tendencia a la espectacularización conflictiva que se ha vivido en los géneros televisivos a partir de nueva forma de hacer política y periodismo.