Alma Rosa Saldierna

Engagement of politicians and citizens in the cyber campaign on Facebook: a comparative analysis between Mexico and Spain

ABSTRACT This study explores the use of Facebook by political actors in election campaigns, establishing the extent to which candidates, parties and citizens engaged in online participation through different online tools provided by this social networking site. A comparative content analysis of the Facebook pages of the main candidacies in the election campaigns in Spain (Castilla y León) and Mexico (Nuevo León) in 2015 was carried out. The results reveal a positive relationship between types of engagement, especially in the Mexican campaign, where politicians and users score systematically higher in all variables measuring engagement. However, results also indicate that the citizen engagement was of higher quality/intensity in the Spanish campaign.

Political sophistication as a mediator in the relation between media consumption and citizen participation. Evidence from the O-S-R-O-R model

espanolEl ejercicio de una participacion activa y efectiva por parte de los ciudadanos constituye una de las principales manifestaciones de la existencia de una democracia solida y saludable. Se ha comprobado que el consumo mediatico es uno de los factores que pueden influir en la expresion de esta participacion. Desde el Modelo de Medicacion Comunicativa (O-S-R-O-R) se plantea el efecto indirecto que la exposicion a los mensajes mediaticos tiene en la participacion ciudadana, a traves del desarrollo de orientaciones posteriores al consumo y razonamiento del mensaje. Entre estas orientaciones potenciadas por los medios se encuentra la sofisticacion politica, comprendida como el nivel de conocimiento sobre el sistema politico (factual) o las propuestas de campana (electoral) alcanzado por el ciudadano ante la exposicion al medio de comunicacion. Con el objetivo de determinar su efecto mediador en el aumento de la participacion ciudadana, se realizo una encuesta analitica en el estado de Nuevo Leon, Mexico, con posterioridad a las elecciones a gobernador de 2015. Los resultados reflejan el papel mediador jugado por la sofisticacion politica factual en la explicacion de la participacion politica offline y la participacion civica de los encuestados. Sin embargo, la sofisticacion politica electoral funciono mejor para lograr un efecto indirecto sobre la participacion politica online. EnglishActive and effective citizen political participation is one of the main manifestations of the existence of a healthy and well consolidated democracy. It has been found that media consumption is a significant predictor for the development of this civic participation. The Communication Mediation Model (O-S-R-O-R) set out an indirect effect that exposure to media messages have on citizen participation, by means of the development of orientations subsequent to consumption and reasoning of the message. Political sophistication is among these orientations promoted by the media, understood as the general level of knowledge on the political system (factual) or the (electoral) campaign acquired by the citizens under media exposure. With the objective of determining its mediating effect on the increase of citizen participation, an analytical survey was conducted in the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, right after the 2015 gubernatorial elections. Findings reflect a mediating role played by factual political sophistication in explaining offline political and civic participation. However, electoral political sophistication worked better to achieve an indirect effect on online political participation.