The Spanish media scenarios have been saturated by politics with two general elections in a very short period of time. As in a kaleidoscopic déjà vu, a few months away from some votes, the Political Communication has again burst into the networks and the media to take the voters back to the polls. This fact has occurred for the first time in Spanish democracy, just when they celebrated their 40th birthday.
This novel situation of repeated elections has made us decide to dedicate this issue of the Magazine again to the Political Communication. We wanted to continue deepening the new forms of this communication and also to initiate a reflection about the consequences of the use of new media and the media saturation of political messages. From the Magazine Communication and Man we have called to continue investigating on the consequences in the Political Communication of the absence of spaces for reflection, of empty fields, of silences to be able to think and even to be able to choose.
With the arrival of social media, the secret vote has been transformed into a social vote and has gone from ELECTORAL SILENCE to constant noise. Posts on Facebook, messages on Twitter, images on Instagram, videos on YouTube … have led to an increase in political content, showing that electoral silence no longer exists, even the day of reflection has been lost. This constant flow goes beyond national borders and into the international arena.
Amidst likes and retweets, globalization in Political Communication is moving from dilution to saturation. In 2016, in addition to the Spanish reruns, the Brexit British, the municipal in Italy, the presidential in Austria, Peru, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, Japan, South Africa, Zambia, USA, Croatia … 2015 had been Greece, Portugal, Bolivia, Ireland, Switzerland, Laos, Senegal, Argentina and Spain. 2017 will see legislative elections in Germany and presidential elections in France. In this race without borders, without limits, without rest, without silence, and without emptiness, the Political Communication is shared in a globalized way, it crosses the social networks of the planet and it engulfs contents and forms, aesthetics and ethics, in a neo baroque from the media, towards the horror vacui.
This constant media overexposure of political actors and fauters has also led to the loss not only of the reflective day and the electoral silence, but also to the loss itself of the capacity for reflection and the difficulty of choosing. Political Communication moves away more and more from the rhetorical discourse, from the art of persuasion analyzed by Plato and Aristotle. Politics seems like crumbs of communication, pieces of a puzzle that will never compose a complete landscape of a coherent and profound discourse, now lost.
In the previous issue “New forms of Political Communication”, rigorously directed by my predecessor Dr. Elena Pedreira, she herself reflected on the great change experienced by the spectacularization of politics. In this issue 13 “New Forms of Political Communication II” we have been able to include studies such as the professors Dra. Silvia Marcos García, Dr. Laura Alonso Muñoz and Dr. Andreu Casero Ripollés, from the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón de la Plana, Spain), dedicated to the “Citizen uses of Twitter in relevant political events”, in which it is analyzed how citizens use this social network to criticize and show their dissatisfaction with politics, focusing more on personal aspects of politicians, than on your proposals. This study would lead us to the reflection that its authors have defined as the discomfort of citizens towards politics and that is very well reflected in platforms such as Twitter: “The function that citizens give to this digital platform indicates that social networks are promoting the expression of discontent and citizen disaffection towards politics. Something that suggests that we are facing the emergence of an effect, derived from the theory of media discomfort (Robinson, 1976), malaise in social media or social media malaise, associated with citizen use of Twitter.
Another of the studies to be highlighted is that provided by Professor Dr. Luis Martín Arias of the University of Valladolid on “Knowledge, politics and language: a counter-political analysis” in which the fantasy of a civil society based on public opinion is questioned Well-trained and committed to the search for a common good. According to the author, it is important to focus attention on how we think we can acquire that true knowledge that would lead us to this “well-formed” society. Luis Martín Arias sees language as a vehicle to establish connections between the problems of political communication and debates on how to reach that true knowledge and search for the common good. This text opens a radical debate on how ideologies are the real enemy of objective knowledge and proposes the term counter-politics to designate a place opposed to ideologies, an attitude of thought in which science and humanities join in the persecution of truth and knowledge. The author shows the Sciences and Art as two functions of language that can lead to wisdom and in antipodes the ideology places: “Ideology is the function of the Language opposed to those two, since its mission is to create a false consciousness that induce us to a non-knowledge, to an ignorance of the real and to a forgetfulness of the conscience “. This article by Luis Martín Arias is a text that leads us to a profound questioning of the role of political communication.
We consider whether the proliferation of political messages in the traditional mass media or in new media and social networks is leading us to what we could somehow call “communication of ignorance”, by not knowing, named by Professor Luis Martín Arias
In this direction, the article by Professor Dr. Pedro J. Rabadán, from the Francisco de Vitoria University of Madrid, “Trends in political communication on television in the electoral campaign of 26-J in Spain” with its approach to the infotainment, and political communication focused on the personalization of the candidate and the sale of political ideas with marketing techniques in the new polis known as Mediápolis. The author in his text verifies how the television in the last Spanish elections has been more than ever the center of the strategies of the candidates: “In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that the most important moments of an electoral campaign are the apparitions of the candidates on television. “Professor Pedro J. Rabadán in the article analyzes how the implementation of Teledemocracy has turned political communication into a mediator of politics making use of spaces including infoshows and political marketing techniques. Television assumes a preponderant role in which it seems to materialize that the “medium is the message” or said in the words of Professor Pedro J. Rabadán: “Television is consolidated as a political actor. It not only informs the campaign, but also generates it. ”
The media have therefore become actors of political communication, generating content and messages as it appears in another of the articles that we include in this issue number 13 of the Journal, the Infopolitics has already been born and this is growing in the digital media.
Professor Carmen Beatriz Fernández, of the IESA of Venezuela, and the professor and Dr. Jordi Rodríguez Virgili, of the University of Navarra, in their article “Infopolitical in critical campaigns: the case of Argentina, Spain and Venezuela in 2015” analyze the evolution of the political communication during the electoral period in these three countries and its tendency, albeit with differences, towards the digital coexistence with television: “Twitter, the periodic publications on the web and television are the three main media used by the agents especially involved and interested in politics to inform themselves during the elections under study. The digital environment is the main area for politically informing the most active and interested public “.
Keeping in the political communication in the digital environment the study of the professors Neiky Machado Flores and Dra. Arantxa Capdevila of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona, in its article: “The issues of PSOE and Podemos in Twitter during the electoral campaign of May 2015 in Spain “, analyze how the issues that receive treatment on Twitter during the last Spanish electoral campaign in May 2016, assume differences in the hashtags produced by traditional parties and by new political forces. The article takes as examples of study the PSOE and Podemos. After the study it is concluded that: “It can not be said that there is a focus on the policy issues within the hashtags used. Both parties include the same social and government problems (almost never through the same hashtag) and also write tweets that document them but without outlining solutions beyond slogans. Apparently, we know exactly what to talk about, we know less how to speak and we do not express the solution (or proposals) for these problems. “This conclusion is linked to theoretical approaches presented in the other articles, providing a concrete field study. that reinforces the ideas cited above. Perhaps in this lack of solutions to slogans lies precisely the inability to seek true solutions that could only be the result of true knowledge.
In the article by Dr. Laura Cervi and Nuria Roca of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ”The modernization of the electoral campaign for the general elections of Spain in 2015. Towards Americanization?” Has been a study to verify if we are also attending in Spain to a change in the use of Internet campaigns resembling more the use made in the US, what the authors call as Americanization: “Spanish candidates use social networks to promote their public figure but not yet they concentrate on deliberating with supporters and neither do they promote participation in an effective way. ”
With the theme proposed for this issue, we also wanted to include the interesting study by Dr. Luis Zaragoza with the title “Does the underground have a future?”. In this article it is posed whether clandestine broadcasting is a live, useful and necessary radio genre and compares: “the political and technical circumstances in which it was born with the current ones and outlines possible transformations that will affect this genre in the coming years”. Dr. Luis Zaragoza brings numerous past and current examples such as that of Syria: “They are broadcasters created within Syria, to address the Syrians first, denounce the lies and abuses of the Government, help them in their practical aspects and promote the values democratic. “We believe that within political communication probably clandestine radios played and continue to play a constructive role of enormous utility in societies threatened or deprived of freedoms and rights. The work they do in most cases is a work of defense of freedom of expression, but without forgetting that, in some other cases, could be the opposite: a destructive instrument of propaganda and fight against democratic systems in the hands of radical subversive elements, terrorists.
Finally, related to the Political Communication we have included in this issue the work of Professor Dr. Leopoldo Prieto López of the Ecclesiastical University of San Dámaso and of the UFV. In his article the author raises a minute reminder of the important figure of Francisco Suárez, the metaphysical, legal and political thinker, on the fourth centenary of his death (1617). We wanted to finish this introduction to the studies included in this issue number 13 of our Magazine with this article of high diffusion because we believe that it contributes to leave open the debate on the Political Communication trying to rescue a role of greater depth also for the policy itself and the society that reflects and builds.
Dr. Leopoldo Prieto López, in his article, analyzes “some fields of Suárez’s reflection: the relationship between faith and reason in the Disputationes metaphysicae; the notion of law in the Legibus and the ideas of popular sovereignty and democracy in the Defensio fidei. ”
The author quotes Suárez and reminds us of the importance of the independence of political power and at the same time invites us to understand the importance of maintaining the independence of other things, of politics “very necessary and very necessary to understand the ends and limits of political power. ”
Looking to the past, looking for that true knowledge proposed by Professor Luis Martín Arias with counter-politics in his article that we publish in this issue, we will find a new way to move forward into the future.
Already belonging to the research in this issue of the journal we collect the work of Dr. Ana del Valle, Francisco de Vitoria University, “Proposal of a model of comprehensive film analysis and application of the model to Rear window, (The window indiscreta , 1954) by Alfred Hitchcock. “In this article, the author proposes an interesting model of film analysis, applicable to any classic film, capable of capturing the narrative and aesthetic dimensions of a film and the dialogue that is created between the director and the viewer. Dr. Ana del Valle uses a particular sequence of the film Rear window and observes especially the position of the camera and the assembly as the main technical and formal aspects of the cinematographic enunciation: “as traces of the way of understanding and intervening in the world of the director. “We consider this work as a key to open new ways of analyzing communication, new ways of observation as well as new perspectives of study.
To conclude this issue and this introduction we propose the research of the professor of the Francisco de Vitoria University, Dr. Rebeca Antolín, and of Dr. Jorge Clemente, of the Complutense University of Madrid, “YouTube as a significant tool for the communication strategy of brands: study case of engagement, insight and creativity of the five most relevant campaigns of the video platform worldwide “. This article penetrates one of the most powerful current tools of communication: YouTube and analyzes its primordial role in advertising as a container, creative engine of content relevant to brands. Through the analysis of the 5 most viewed campaigns in the last decade on YouTube, the author verifies what are the parameters that they share and how the 5 campaigns manage to be shared, commented and be viral, how they manage to achieve the much sought after engagement.
With this word, engagement, we say goodbye to this introduction to this number, we invite you to read it and we open the call to our next issue that will seek to find the keys, precisely of engagement, in our current society in communication and humanities.
