The political image on ‘Twitter’. Uses and strategies of the Spanish political parties

In the digital context, social media have become powerful platforms for the dissemination of political photography. Specifically, they are set as strategic tools in building the image of political actors and their direct communication with citizens. The aim of this paper is to analyze the management of Twitter by the Spanish political parties during pre-election processes, key in the public positioning of their leaders. In this sense, there has been a content analysis of the profiles of the four main Spanish political parties at state level (PP, PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos) and their respective leaders, during the six months prior to the general election (June-November 2015). From an own methodological approach, the results indicate an intensive use of different types of photographs in Twitter, nearly 30 per cent of all messages, where the dissemination of the image of the leader and the use of informative posters has a central importance. Furthermore, it is possible to identify very different strategic trends by parties in the management of digital projection leadership and personal attributes of the candidates