What lies behind the images and videos shared by political leaders on Twitter?

Abstract

The social network Twitter has become a major tool for political communication. Both parties and leaders turn to Twitter to approach citizens. This paper studies the audiovisual discourse used by political leaders on Twitter and analyzes how they favor the interaction of users. This is a field research that analyzes the characteristics of the tweets published by the candidates that incorporate images and videos, as well as the reactions which they arouse among their followers. To do this, this research makes a content analysis of a sample formed by the tweets issued by the profiles of the main political candidates during the campaign running up to the general elections of 2015 in Spain.

KEYWORDS: political communication, image, interaction, audiovisual language, leader, Twitter.