Deliberation and Conversation between Political Elites and Social Media Users During Guadalajara’s Election: A Political Communication Systems Approach

Abstract

Social media has been considered a set of technologies that have the potential for transforming politics. In particu­lar, these communication technologies could be a powerful civic tool to build bridges between political elites and ci­tizens in contemporary democracies. However, to date, there has been no clear evidence that the use of social me­dia has helped in creating these brid­ges. Thus, this paper concentrates on studying political communication bet­ween political elites and Internet users through Facebook and Twitter, in the context of a Mexican electoral cam­paign in Guadalajara City. This study proposes a political communication sys­tems model as a theoretical framework for studying political communication and social media. This model suggests definitions for the concepts of political communication, political deliberation, and political conversation. Throughout three months of political campaigns, online observation and textual analy­sis were employed in studying political communication between political elites and Internet users within the framework of a local midterm electoral campaign. The results show three essential ele­ments: (1) political deliberations and conversations were not general prac­tices; (2) the power to control political communication was concentrated in the candidates’ political campaigns; (3) nevertheless, there were several exam­ples of political interactions between political elites and social media users during the political campaigns.