Political marketing through infotainment TV programs: content analysis and emotional response on Twitter

Abstract

This study analyses appearances by political candidates on infotainment television, as well as the emotional response elicited by these appearances among Twitter users during the pre-campaign season for Spain’s 2015 General Elections. To that end, we first perform a qualitative analysis of the register and the tone of the interviews. Then, we use the SentiStrength algorithm, optimized for the specific context of our research, to analyse the sentiment of the tweets published during the airing of the programs. This multimethod approach allows us to determine the level of interaction between two distinct but complementary communication rationales. Among other things, we conclude that the political candidates do not always benefit from appearing on entertainment programs. Nonetheless, the sentiment of tweets may still be positive, regardless of the outcome of the candidate’s appearance.