Tan cerca de Twitter y tan lejos de los votantes: las estrategias de los candidatos presidenciales mexicanos durante la campaña electoral de 2012

Abstract

this paper identifies the main political communication strategies deployed by mexican presi- dential candidates on twitter during the election campaign in 2012. analyzes the followers of the presidential candidates; hashtags that became trending topics during the campaign; and the diffusion network of the candidates’s memes. the results show a high percentage of empty or half-empty accounts, the use of hashtags to slander adversaries and the presence of a traditional political campaign. in spite the fact that strategies followed by the candidates were heterogeneous, it was possible to identify that negative strategies of traditional politi- cal campaigns were recreated in the virtual space. overall, during the election campaign, candidates discarded the possibility of innovate their strategies of political communication using participatory media.