2.1. Outstanding functions

In these periods, where parties and politicians fight to obtain a preferential place in political and media debate, social media have positioned themselves as an essential channel for self-promotion (^{Marcos-García, Viounnikoff-Benet & Casero-Ripollés, 2020}; ^{López-Meri, Marcos-García & Casero-Ripollés, 2017}). In this sense, political actors use social media as a channel to share the proposals that comprise their electoral program and content related to their actions or strategic campaign aspects (^{Alonso-Muñoz, Miquel-Segarra & Viounnikoff-Benet, 2021}; ^{Stier, et al. 2018}; ^{Zugasti Azagra & Pérez González, 2016}; ^{Lilleker & Jackson, 2013}). Likewise, they take advantage of social media as a loudspeaker to promote and viralize their interventions in conventional media thus improving and maximizing their participation and the reach of their messages (^{Marcos-García, Alonso-Muñoz & López-Meri, 2021}; ^{Casero-Ripollés, Feenstra & Tormey, 2016}).

Parallel to this self-promotion, in its relationship with users, numerous investigations indicate that social networks such as Twitter or Facebook can be a space through which political actors can directly approach voters, mainly through mobilization and communication explicitly requesting their vote (^{Stier, et al., 2018}; ^{Nielsen & Vaccari, 2013}). Several authors point out how the appeal to emotions or the exposure of a close image of the leader are common formulas in these platforms to involve users and appear closer to the electorate (^{Casero-Ripollés, Feenstra & Tormey, 2016}). However, the main potential offered by social media is to boost direct contact with citizens (^{Bustos Díaz & Ruiz del Olmo, 2016}). Their open nature has made them preferred spaces where users can hold conversations about politics with great intensity and depth, thus promoting political and democratic debate (^{Gutiérrez-Rubí, 2015}). Political actors not only can address users directly but also obtain valuable information about the followers’ type of profile while learning about the climate of opinion generated on the network around the issues that mark the news of the moment (^{Orihuela, 2011}; ^{Tumasjan et al., 2010}). Despite these potentialities, there is much research that shows how political actors still favour a unidirectional strategy, which does not take advantage of social media as a means of dialogue and direct conversation with their electorate (^{Renobell, 2021}; ^{Alonso-Muñoz, Marcos-García & Casero-Ripollés, 2017}; ^{Stromer-Galley, 2014}). On the contrary, they concentrate efforts on appealing directly to opponents or even to the media and journalists as a way of viralizing content related to their participation in media spaces (^{Alonso-Muñoz, 2021}).

It is important to highlight how social media have also become a space where political parties and leaders criticize and attack their opponents. In this sense, they take advantage of the disintermediation and openness offered by these platforms to express their discontent and attack the proposals, actions, errors and contradictions of their political rivals (^{D’Adamo & García Beaudoux, 2016}). A dynamic that, according to ^{Marcos-García, Alonso-Muñoz and CaseroRipollés (2021}), is mainly influenced by the ideology and position of political actors in government. Thus, the right-wing parties and, at the same time, those in opposition are the ones that use social media the most to highlight the negative aspects of their rivals. Moreover, they usually compare their opponents’ mistakes to their achievements, particularly in the case of leaders.

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become a showcase through which political candidates highlight their public image and humanize themselves before other users to show a much closer, more intimate and human image in front of the electorate (^{Karlsen & Enjolras, 2016}; ^{Bentivegna, 2015}). Therefore, when attacking opponents, leaders not only focus on program or ideology but also on rivals’ particular qualities or personality traits (^{Maier & Nai, 2021}; ^{Marcos-García, Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2021}). With the introduction of mobile instant messaging services, political parties have intensified their activity on these platforms. ^{Zamora-Medina and Losada-Díaz (2021}) suggest that WhatsApp has become a common tool during campaign periods. However, research that focuses on knowing the main functions that political actors grant to other mobile messaging services is still scarce. In this regard, some recent studies have highlighted the role of Telegram as an information and electoral dissemination channel (^{Alonso-Muñoz, Tirado-García & Casero-Ripollés, 2022}; Tirado-García, 2022), as well as mobilization and rapprochement of the candidate. to the voter (^{Sierra, González-Tosat & Rodríguez Virgili, 2022}). In this way, Telegram is constituted, to date, as a tool mainly for political self-promotion.

Actually, most of the previous literature analyzes how citizens use these platforms. In particular, various studies suggest that WhatsApp and Telegram have positioned themselves as spaces to encourage participation and political activism among the most active citizens while promoting political discussion among individuals with less confidence in sharing their political opinions in the online public media (^{Gil de Zúñiga, Ardèvol-Abreu & Casero-Ripollés, 2019}; ^{Newman et al., 2018}; ^{Valeriani & Vaccari, 2018}). Thus, mobile instant messaging services have become a new channel to learn about politics and interact with political news content (^{Casero-Ripollés, 2020}; ^{Pont-Sorribes, Besalú & Codina, 2020}). According to ^{Varona-Aramburu, Sánchez-Martín and Arrocha (2017}), this dynamic has been taking place in recent years, since political content has become the most consumed by mobile users. For all these reasons, those functions granted to mobile instant messaging services play a key role in these periods.

This dynamic leads to a first research question:

PI1: What functions are attributed to Telegram by the main political parties during the November 2019 electoral campaign in Spain?

2.2. Thematic agenda and multimedia resources

The possibilities that social media offer to create and disseminate messages have led these to become preferential spaces for political actors to set their thematic agenda, thus avoiding the traditional filter of legacy media (^{Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2018}; ^{López-López & Vásquez-González, 2018}). Therefore, by spreading their themes and approaches, they manage to draw the attention of citizens and condition political debate and public opinion (^{Baviera, Calvo & Llorca-Abad, 2019}). In this regard, much of the previous literature indicates that, in general, social networks have become bulletin boards for campaign events (Zugasti & Pérez, 2016). However, some studies point out different nuances concerning the social media utilised. Thus, social media established in the communication strategies of political actors such as Twitter or Facebook appear as spaces that mainly broadcast aspects related to political strategy.

In this sense, the messages that deal with intending to form a government and the possible pacts necessary to it stand out (^{Marcos-García, Viounnikoff-Benet & Casero-Ripollés, 2020}). Likewise, they invest little content in sharing messages about science, technology, the environment or terrorism, thus prioritizing a communication strategy based on a few topics (^{Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-Ripollés, 2018}). On the other hand, Instagram operates as a channel where parties and politicians share their values and political philosophy (^{Marcos-García & Alonso-Muñoz, 2017}). Also, the different topics that political actors share on social media are influenced by factors such as the party’s ideology or historical trajectory. Thus, while the right-wing parties pay more attention to economic issues, the left-wing parties dedicate most of their agenda to talking about social policy (^{Alonso-Muñoz, Miquel-Segarra & Viounnikoff-Benet, 2021}). Regarding the party’s history, the emerging parties are the ones that most consider issues related to the development of their electoral campaign and issues involved with the need for democratic regeneration. Meanwhile, the established parties choose to expose the strengths of their electoral programs (^{López-García, 2016}).

These differences between parties are minimum in complementing the shared themes with different multimedia resources. In this sense, images, videos, or other types of audiovisual elements that complement the text are highly used elements by political actors when it comes to completing their messages, mainly due to the positive impact on the viralization of content (^{Viounnikoff-Benet, 2018}; ^{Russmann and Svensson, 2017}; ^{Fenoll and Hassler, 2019}). According to ^{Marcos-García, ViounnikoffBenet and Casero-Ripollés (2020}), the users’ favourite element in the content with political nature is photography on Instagram, whereas the resource that most attracts attention among the Facebook audience is the video.

Those studies that analyze the issues and resources that political actors share on mobile instant messaging services are still scarce. The first investigations suggest that WhatsApp is employed in campaigns to spread messages that directly appeal to the party’s slogans, focused on exalting the union while trying to convince supporters (^{Zamora-Medina & Losada-Díaz, 2021}). For their part, other studies raise electoral proposals as the preferred theme for political parties during the campaign on Telegram (^{Tirado-García, 2022}) as well as issues related to the organization and operation of the campaign (^{Alonso-Muñoz, TiradoGarcia & Casero-Ripollés, 2022}).

From this, the following research questions can be formulated:

PI2: What is the thematic agenda proposed by the main political parties in their communication strategy on Telegram during the November 2019 electoral campaign in Spain?

PI3: What multimedia resources do these actors use to complement the text in their communication strategy on Telegram during the November 2019 electoral campaign in Spain?

3.1. Method

The methodology includes quantitative content analysis. An analysis model with 15 categories has been used for the study of functions (see Table 1), 20 categories for the thematic agenda (see Table 2) and 7 categories for multimedia resources (see Table 3). In the case of functions and themes, the proposed model adapts respectively to the proposals of ^{López-Meri, Marcos-García and Casero-Ripollés (2017}) and ^{Alonso-Muñoz and Casero-Ripollés (2018}) for the study of communication strategies in social networks. Our work is an exploratory research of a descriptive type since it is the first approach to the study of a platform of incipient use in the field of digital political communication.

3.2. Materials

The sample refers to the general elections campaign held in Spain on November 10, 2019. For the first time in a Spanish electoral campaign, it has been observed that the Telegram platform acquired a significant role as an electoral campaign tool in the communicative activity of political parties.

The following items have been studied: the 15 days of the electoral campaign, the day before the election, the day of the vote and the day after. The sample includes all the messages published by the official Telegram channels of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), Partido Popular (PP), Ciudadanos (Cs), Unidas Podemos, Izquierda Unida (IU), Más País and VOX, which represent 86.7% of the resulting votes in the elections studied.

The sample has been collected by downloading one by one the messages from the Telegram application and has been coded by four members of the research group. It should be noted that messages imported entirely from other social networks have been categorized as “repost” since they do not include original content from the platform studied. The reliability of intercoders has been calculated using Scott’s Pi formula on 150 messages (17.10% of the sample), achieving a level of 0.95 for functions and 0.92 for topics. In total, 877 publications have been examined (Table 4). After its coding, the statistical treatment has been developed with the SPSS program (v.27).

4.1. What do political parties use Telegram for? Analysis of the functions in the electoral campaign of 10N

The results enable us to identify four use levels of the functions granted to Telegram by Spanish political parties during the electoral campaign of November 2019.

First, the data reveals that the parties mainly use Telegram as a repost or re-diffusion tool (19.6%) (Table 5). The messages that fulfil this function are imported directly from other social media. This reveals how this application is employed to re-diffuse content published in the parties’ accounts in other digital platforms. These messages have not been edited for broadcast on Telegram, so their visual design is that of the original network from which they come. This fact indicates low efficiency in communication terms. The parties use Telegram to extend the reach of the publications they make on social media such as Twitter or Facebook thus reaching a wider audience. The PSOE is the one that uses this function the most in its messages on Telegram (15%) (Table 5) and does so mainly through Twitter reposts to give greater diffusion to the coverage of party campaign events or leaders statements leaders in the media (Image 1).

Image 1 Example of a repost on Telegram of a message posted on Twitter 

The second most used function in Telegram is participation and mobilization (18.1%) (Table 5). This category refers to the use of this platform as a medium of direct appeal to voters. There is a high level of mobilizing capacity of the electorate in the messages spread by the Spanish political parties on their Telegram channels. These take advantage of the direct and private communication that characterizes mobile instant messaging services to explicitly demand citizens the vote. They also encourage them to participate in their events while getting involved in the development of the electoral campaign, though this second type of message is less frequent. The PSOE (5.1%) and the PP (4.9%) are the parties that most use this function claiming or requesting the vote (Table 5). The rest use it less frequently and the tone of their messages when asking for votes is less explicit.

At a third level, the data reveals that political actors use Telegram to attack their political opponents (13.9%) and, complementarily, to share their political proposals (11.6%) (Table 5). In terms of criticism, it is directed toward the Government and its president Pedro Sánchez. This resource is used by opposition parties, especially the PP (9.5%) (Table 5) (Image 2). These attacks are directed at the leaders of rival parties to weaken their candidacy and discredit their figure.

Image 2 Example of a message with the custom critical function in negative 

On the other hand, the number of messages disseminated by the Spanish political parties about their electoral program also stands out (11.6%) (Table 5, Appendix A1). They use Telegram as an informative brochure of the electoral campaign to display some promises that they will deliver in case they are elected to govern the country. As the party in government, the PSOE shares the most content with this function (5%). The party usually shares short messages along with the campaign image of Pedro Sánchez, introducing some of their electoral proposals, mainly on issues of social policy, education, health or pensions.

At a fourth level are the messages related to the party’s agenda, both in its relationship with the media (8.3%) and the organization of political events (7.3%) (Table 5). On the one hand, Telegram serves the political parties as a media loudspeaker to viralize leaders’ interventions in the legacy media. This shows that these media have a significant role in the political use of this mobile instant messaging service. Political parties execute a hybridization strategy to combine the potential of the digital environment with the logic of conventional media, broadcasting the participation of their politicians on television, radio and newspapers on Telegram. Likewise, the parties use this application as a bulletin board for the events that are going to take place during the campaign. In both cases, the PSOE makes the greatest use of these functions (2.9% and 4.2%, respectively) (Table 5).

A similar volume of publications highlights the values and ideology of the party (7.3%) and the political achievements of its management (5.7%) (Table 3). The parties consider Telegram a useful, albeit secondary, space to spread and enhance their administration, with some messages that praise their successes while others contain concepts that identify the party. This way, they appeal to the feeling aroused by identity values to generate an image of unity. This means to approach or appear close to the people who identify with them. In other words, parties seek to improve the loyalty of their electorate through a direct appeal to their ideological bases. In this sense, the PP, located in the opposition, spreads the most messages with these functions (2.6% and 2.5% respectively) (Table 5), but these are low percentages.

The rest of the analyzed functions present low values. This is the case of publications related to questions of courtesy and protocol (3.4%) (Table 5). Messages that verify or denounce hoaxes or false news (1.1%) do not have a significant presence either (Table 3). Although fact-checkers employ mobile instant messaging services with this function, political parties do not use them in their communication campaign strategies for this purpose. It is also detected that the communication strategies of the parties on Telegram avoid encouraging the personalization of politicians since messages related to personal life (0.9%), humour (0.2%) or entertainment (0.1%) (Table 5) are practically non-existent. Given the marginal levels of the use of these functions, there are no notable differences between the parties.

Lastly, the scarce presence of messages published with the function of interacting with the electorate stands out (0.4%) (Table 5). The parties refuse to ask direct questions to users or try to dialogue with them through Telegram (0.4%) (Table 5). The use of this application aims toward a type of one-way communication.

4.2. What do political parties talk about on Telegram? Analysis of the thematic agenda in the electoral campaign of 10N

The results enable us to identify the main topics broadcasted on the parties’ agenda on Telegram during the November 2019 Spanish election campaign. At the first level, those subjects imported directly from other social media predominate (20.1%) (Table 6). It is due to the large number of posts reposted by the parties, and it is particularly relevant in the strategy of the PSOE (16.3%), as it is a party that transfers a large part of the topics of its messages from Twitter to Telegram.

The second dominant topic in the Spanish parties agenda is voting and electoral results (15.1%) (Table 6, Appendix A2). These messages are about surveys, polls, and publications referring to the action of voting. The PP publishes the most messages on this topic on Telegram (4.7%) (Table 6). This aspect is correlated to the fact that this is one of the parties that most uses the function of mobilization in its communication (Table 5). The members of party try to persuade the public while presenting themselves as the best political option, referring to possible electoral results and voting-related issues (Image 3).

Image 3 Example of a message about voting and election results 

Thirdly, issues related to the campaign also have a notable presence in the parties’ agenda on Telegram (11.2%) (Table 6). These messages communicate how the campaign works and the organization of events such as rallies. The data shows that the PSOE is the party that most uses this theme in its messages (3.0%) (Table 6) to support and promote all the actions of the campaign.

In fourth place, the parties use Telegram to viralize their interventions in the legacy media (10.3%) (Table 6). Once again, the PSOE stands out from the rest of the parties as it is the one that publishes the most on this topic (4.9%) (Table 6).

In the fifth level, publications on economic issues are prominent (8.6%). These are messages on topics such as employment, unemployment, wages, crisis or taxes. The PP is the party that devotes the most attention to these issues (5.5%). Next are the messages about the intention to build a government or negotiations for possible future agreements (8%). Again, the PP is the dominant party here. Alternatively, messages on social policy are also prevalent, such as those related to pensions, health, education or welfare (7.6%). The PSOE dedicates the most attention to it (3.9%). However, concerning the state model of the country (7.2%), the PP (4.3%) mainly addresses this subject. The messages concentrate on Catalan nationalism in opposition to the independence of Catalonia.

The political speech has less presence on the political parties’ agenda on Telegram (5.7%) (Table 6) (Image 4). The PP (2.3%) is the one that most uses this type of message, very similar to slogans. From their view, democratic regeneration (2.7%), corruption (0.6%) or justice (0.5%) (Table 4) are relegated to minimal relevance. Publications on democratic dysfunctions have a greater role in emerging parties such as Ciudadanos or Más País (0.8% and 0.9%, respectively) (Table 6). Most of these are messages about changes in the electoral law and the need to end the privileges of the elites.

Image 4 Example of a message that seeks to harangue citizens 

Finally, the parties have not used several themes during the electoral campaign on Telegram. These are culture, sports, science, infrastructure, foreign affairs or personal issues of the leaders. This last case reveals the absence of political personalization in this application. On Telegram, Political parties focus their thematic speech on topics directly related to the campaign and refuse to broadcast personal or private aspects of their candidates or other party members.

4.3. The use of multimedia resources in Telegram in the electoral campaign of 10N

41.5% of the messages include some multimedia resource (Table 7). Those of a visual nature have a preferential role in the communication strategy of the parties. Specifically, video is the most used (29.0%) (Table 7). The use of this resource is twofold: first, it shows voters their interventions in the media (debates, gatherings, interviews...); second, it gives visibility to their speeches at rallies or party events. In some cases, they also broadcast their campaign spots or videos of gratitude to their voters. They are professionally edited videos and not amateurish.

The second of the resources most exploited by the parties on Telegram is the appearance (11.7%) (Table 5). Parties portray photo galleries as a compilation of their acts. These images present the leader standing behind a stand in front of the party supporters. Another way of using the appearance on Telegram is the informative poster, either to publicize the proposals of the electoral program (Image 5) or to show the attainments achieved by the formation. Regarding the formal aspects, there is a predominant use of corporate colours. Also, there is the logo and the campaign slogan in most of the images published through this platform.

Image 5 Example of the use of the image for a poster with campaign proposals 

Finally, an emerging use of innovative multimedia resources such as gifs (0.5%), surveys (0.3%) (Image 6) and audios (0.1%) (Image 7) (Table 7, Appendix A3) is detected. The gif has a visual nature and consists of the repeated movement of one or several frames for 3-5 seconds. Surveys are brief questionnaires, generally with a single question, which parties use to ask their followers about their opinion on some issue related to their activity. On the other hand, audios are voice notes able to quickly record sounds or conversations.

With the incipient use of this type of resources, political parties seek to foster closeness with citizens since gifs and audios are elements commonly shared in chats between friends or family. Thus, the parties seek to deinstitutionalize relations with their followers while considering their opinions in the party’s decision-making through their followers’ responses in the polls. Despite its limited use, this is a differentiating element of Telegram in comparison to other social media in campaigns.

Image 6 Telegram poll example 

Image 7 Audio example on Telegram