Abstract

LAGARES DIEZ, Nieves; LOPEZ-LOPEZ, Paulo Carlos; ONATE, Pablo  and  BLASCO-BLASCO, Olga. EMOTIONS AND POLARIZATION OF DIGITAL COMMUNITIES IN LATIN AMERICA: 2018-2019 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. anal.polit. [online]. 2023, vol.36, n.106, pp.182-210.  Epub Oct 07, 2023. ISSN 0121-4705.  https://doi.org/10.15446/anpol.v36n106.111074.

This article studies the emotions and polarization of the digital communities of ten candidates in the presidential elections held in Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay in 2018 and 2019. To this effect, information was extracted from the candidates’ Twitter accounts in the last month of the campaign, obtaining 749,764 tweets and more than twelve million words. Later, a content analysis was carried out, which evidenced that the emotional content of the tweets evolved over time, showing a trend of the negative/positive difference of the tweets and an increase in the polarization of these digital communities. As additional results, there is also evidence of a negativization of the tweets, a national rationale of patterns of digital behavior, and a “natural” polarization, reinforcing thus the existence of intrinsic values in the dynamics of political discussion on social media.

Keywords : social media; digital communities; emotions; polarization; political communication; Latin America.

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