Emotive and Positive Political Communication on Facebook: The Case of Argentinean Leaders

Abstract

The communication that political leaders have performed on social media in recent years demands constant and novel approaches for understanding how politicians interact with their supporters in the digital space. In this sense, the aim of this research is to examine the communication that Argentine political leaders display on Facebook, the most popular social media amongst Argentineans, during a highly polarized and politicized period in the country, taking special attention to the role that emotions play in this digital scenario. Using content analysis of the texts included in the posts, the results of this empirical work demonstrate that, on Facebook, political leaders prefer to communicate emotive messages rather than non-emotive contents and positive emotions rather than negative ones. Besides, hope is not only the most expressed one but also the emotion that generated more interaction among digital political supporters.