Aims and strategies of Spanish politicians in Twitter

This paper analyses the uses of Twitter by the most important Spanish politicians outside elections political campaigns. The overall objective is to analyze how Spanish politicians use Twitter and to find out if political scandals influence those uses. A content analysis is applied to 586 messages posted by ten political leaders in two different time lapses, one of them characterized by the attention paid by media to a political scandal. Criteria regarding type of messages and discourse directionality are followed. Results indicate that most messages are basically unidirectional, with few addressing other users. Similarly most of the messages are categorized as ‘self-promotion’ or ‘information sharing’. It is concluded that their communicative practices on this platform are driven by propagandist objectives, leaving aside the search of a higher transparence or a deeper dialogue with the citizens