Communication Analysis Generated on Facebook by the Candidates for the Presidency of Ecuador 2021

Abstract

Abstract The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic also affected the electoral agenda of political action between 2020 and 2021. With the health emergency, the governments of Latin America faced challenges to guarantee the right to vote. Among the substantial changes, atypical campaigns were carried out through digital platforms, such as the social network Facebook. Seta investigation focuses on analyzing the communication of Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso, presidential candidates of Ecuador, through their official Facebook accounts; during the last week prior to the voting of the second round. The methodology used has a quantitative approach, under the compound week technique and with the support of a validated technical sheet for data recording. The results point to being able to exercise adequate management of online content with specific schedules and themes to be positioned during campaign times, with the aim of - among other things - achieving the objectives. Well, it was found that a higher generation of posts in a high-trend social network such as Facebook does not mean precisely reaching the proposed goals. In the same way, that a “negative” or “mixed” campaign does not always penetrate the population, it all depends on the context and the strategy.

Keywords

• political communication, facebook, electoral campaign, democracy, online communication.