Abstract

Electoral campaigns on Twitter are characterized by self-reference. Political parties and their candidates tend to self-promotion and forget other functions. The aim of this study is to evaluate if political class, in addition to using Twitter as a speaker, take advantage of the potential of the Twitter-rhetoric to empathize with voters. To do this, the case of the 2015 election in Catalonia is studied. The analysis of more than 3.000 tweets shows that parties made an institutional use of Twitter, while some candidates practised ways of approaching to citizens, although moderately.