In case the message to singer Taylor Swift or the reveal that Squirtle is her favorite starter Pokemon didn’t make sense to you, we’ll tell you: President Gabriel Boric is a regular Twitter user. And he is not the only one, since in his cabinet there are several tweeters. This is reflected in their level of interaction, as indicated by a study by the Observatory of Politics and Social Networks of the Central University, which analyzed it to obtain from how their campaign, the conversation and the content of their messages are valued, such as also the way it relates to users.
According to the study, one of the most redeeming things about the president’s tweet profile is his extensive interaction, accumulating 1,523,337 followers on his profile and following 7,607 people within the network, which generates “closeness or noise within the conversation digital, with different age and social classes”. Closely linked to this, Boric’s profile stands out for his versatility, the quick way in which he reacts to different issues, whether political or not.
As for the terms that she mentions on her Twitter profile, her name appears linked to “diversity”, especially with the declaration of a feminist government and with the highest appointment of female ministers in a cabinet. She is also linked to “security”, “violence” and “territories”, due to the conflicts in La Araucanía and the north of the country.
in conversation with The counterFelipe González, director of the Observatory of Policies and Social Networks of the Central University, affirmed that Boric’s government “is indeed going to get more out of the networks than other governments, because on the one hand it is a generation that grew up politically, Like all political socialization of this generation, it was done around social networks. The same student movement from which these leaders come was coordinated mainly through Facebook groups, for example. So there is a very important component that they do not think about policies without social networks and they think politics with this tool or through this tool, in part. Therefore, I would think that they will take advantage of it. Now it is different to use social networks as a social movement that coordinates use it as a government, that what it seeks is to communicate and efficiently communicate the message that you want to convey. And the social networks here allow you to do use of a different repertoire of actions. For example, these things like being closer to citizens, what is in the background of how Gabriel uses his Twitter to do things that seem more mundane, talking to an artist, they received a Pokémon. That was from before.”
“One could also think that as long as there is a consistent, coherent discourse in the public sphere, like the speeches that Gabriel has given since he took office, for example, the comment he made about Ezzati and the cover-ups, as long as those things are present, These other jokes are going to be possible and legitimate. Also, because he is a president who, all the media have already tirelessly repeated everywhere, is the youngest in the history of our country. Therefore, I believe that there are certain cultural concessions that are given to it. It has already broken some cultural standards, for example, with the makeup of the cabinet, the presence of women. So these things do not appear as a scandal, nobody is scandalized by these things. Now, for Therefore, I would hope that they are still present to some extent, but they should decrease over time. One would think that this is the famous honeymoon with governments. There is still room to do these things. You have to see how that happens. I would expect them to be tapering off to some extent,” he added.
The Twitter Political Committee
On Twitter, President Boric follows 21 of his 24 ministers. Among the people he does not follow are the Ministers of Education, Marco Ávila; of Agriculture, Esteban Valenzuela; and Health, María Begoña Yarza.
On the other hand, the only minister who does not follow Boric is the head of the Treasury, Mario Marcel. “Why Mario Marcel, being part of Gabriel’s (Boric) political committee, does not follow the President? Being one of the ministers with the greatest age gap with his other ministerial colleagues, he expresses a digital distance, moving away from the well-known ‘Millennial Cabinet'”, question the report.
Far from this curious fact, the study focuses on analyzing the Twitter profile of his cabinet. Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson and Izkia Siches were the users most followed by Internet users on Twitter, which positions them as highly listened to actors on the network. The remarkable thing is that all three are part of the political committee.
On the other hand, analyzing in the same way the number of followers and the conversation generated on Twitter by the members of the political committee, it is possible to appreciate the great influence and reach that both Vallejo and Jackson generate, not only for exceeding one million followers, but also because of their impact on said network, since in turn they are the two that develop the greatest activation of audiences in the digital political territory. Both, along with Izkia Siches, position themselves as political actors with great importance in social networks.
If we zoom in on the situation of the ministers of the political committee, the three most popular in general are on Twitter. On the contrary, Minister Marcel, in a period of almost three months, only made three tweets from his account.
For Gonzalez, “Social networks and understanding how they work, what is the logic of communication in social networks, can be a plus of this political committee that we have not seen in other governments. We certainly have not seen it in other governments. But that The problem with social networks is that you can have an idea, or the internet in general, about how to communicate, but what happens after you send a message or your image appears, you no longer control it at all. The public defines what is important, what is relevant, if they are going to make fun of it, they are going to laugh, they are going to criticize you, they are going to praise you, they are going to share your things, they are going to be a meme. anything can happen, but it seems that this team more or less, and probably the advisers, Secom, also know handle this tool.
“The political committee is important online because they are characters who have had a significant role in the public sphere over the last ten years. And as I was saying, they are from a generation that already occupies many social networks and therefore there is a committee with a lot of weight in social networks. Now, not all this weight is equally balanced, there are characters there in that committee who still do not have a very strong presence in networks of a ministry like the one directed by Mario Marcel, it is never expected that there will be as such an important communication role, although that can be extremely wrong, because what a finance minister does is control the public’s expectations. Therefore, in communication management it is fundamental,” he concluded.
Read the full study at the following link.
