Santiago Abascal’s Twitter and Instagram strategy in the 10 November 2019 General Election Campaign: A populist approach to discourse and leadership?

Abstract

While the scholarly consensus is that VOX is a far-right political party in European terms, questions remain regarding whether or not its politics contain elements of populism. This research paper explores the Twitter and Instagram strategy deployed by Santiago Abascal, leader of VOX, during the 10 November 2019 general election campaign to assess whether his messaging includes characteristic features of populist rhetoric, to analyze the uses to which he puts social media, and to understand the features of the leadership he projects via social networks. The research methodology is content analysis applied to the 136 and 26 posts on Abascal’s Twitter and Instagram accounts, respectively, during the election campaign. The findings suggest that Abascal’s discourse is marked by a conservative and nativist form of Spanish nationalism; however, it is also shaped by an anti-establishment rhetoric and antagonistic message that pits <em>la España Viva</em> [‘Living Spain’] against <em>la dictadura progre</em> [‘the progressive dictatorship’], reflecting the inclusion of some features of populism. A further conclusion is that these social media platforms are the preferred propaganda tools used to communicate the candidate’s agenda, although each network evinces certain distinctive characteristics: Twitter channels a polarizing message via aggressive and critical rhetoric, whereas Instagram posts are designed to show the human side of the candidate’s profile. Thus, it would seem that the aim is to articulate a populist-inflected form of charismatic leadership.