Campaign for the mayor of Bogotá (2019): agenda, arguments and tones of the debate on Twitter

Abstract

This article characterizes top debates on Twitter Colombia about the campaign for the Mayor of Bogotá, 2019. For this, it concentrates on the analysis of the topics, the argumentative consistency and tones of the debates. The sample collected includes 51 Trending Topics (TT) and 503 tweets. The methodology used was content analysis. As a result, the high presence of Claudia López, winner of the contest, stands out. It is underlined the preponderance of the mainstream media as for positioning issues on Twitter's media agenda and its link with opinion leaders. The protagonism of citizens, who are at the center of the most critical debates, is highlighted. The discussions were marked by the transportation issue, a fact that suggests a conjunctural agenda. The persistence of fallacious enunciations in campaign discussions and that of the informative tone as one of the ways to construct messages in the tweets is verified, with some disqualifying, insulting and humorous variations, which suggest a negative debate on Twitter.

Twitter; agenda setting; elections; political communication