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In recent years we have witnessed a resurgence of populism, which has relied on the virality of social networks to deepen its roots in society and spread its ideas. This paper analyses the populist strategies used by all parties to viralise their messages in the online environment, regardless of ideology. The present research has also examined the possible existence of complementary strategies used by the parties' organisational profiles and those of their leaders. To this end, a content analysis has been carried out regarding the publications made on Twitter during the 2019 election campaign. The posts have been delimited to those made by the parties and candidates that attained the highest percentage of representation in the Congress of Deputies, which include the PSOE, PP, Vox, and Unidas Podemos. The findings show that all the parties under study resorted to this type of strategy. The parties closest to centre of the political spectrum, both right and left, used mostly a populist strategy aimed predominantly at attacking their adversaries, while Vox and Unidas Podemos articulated their discourse beyond this argument, with Vox appealing to the emotions of the nation and Podemos positioning itself as the peoples' advocate. Furthermore, a complementary strategy used by both the parties and their leaders has been identified, which fosters the expansion of these kinds of populist ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the following text is to analyze the changes in television advertising in the banking and automobile sectors, according to the social context. The hypothesis is that communication is significantly influenced by the situational context, causing differences between the advertising of the two sectors. A multimodal discourse analysis is used, comparing twenty commercials from the banking and automobile sectors in 2019 and 2020, the period during which the lockdown due to COVID-19 took place. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis tables were developed with which to analyze general data such as the value proposition or target audience of the advert, or other special data like the text (verb tenses, rhetorical figures...), the image and the sound used. The fact that context is decisive in communication is made evident, and since this is different in every sector, the communication strategy is clearly different as well. However, the points that the two sectors have in common are remarkable: these range from talking about brands and products, to speaking for and about people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes and compares the following of Twitter users during the two electoral debates of the general elections in Spain in April and November 2019. Through the collection of the official hashtags #ElDebateDecisivo (970,706 tweets) and #DebateElectoral (821,521) respectively from 9 am on the day of the debate until 2 am the following day, we analyzed the polarity and basic emotions of the messages posted on the social network using algorithms with R software. A network theory study was also carried out to determine each account's affiliation to each group. The results show a polarization in the network, with well-defined groups with hardly any relationship with other groups of different ideologies. It is also observed that the entry of a new player, Vox, into the second debate completely alters the rest of the centerright parties, which end up seeing it from a much more negative perspective. This entry does not involve major changes among the left-wing parties, but it does mean an increase in fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of the main discourses that appear in a sample of Spanish newspapers before and after the arrival of the Aquarius at the port of Valencia in June 2018, in order to observe if there is a solidarity discourse or one that rejects the arrival of the rescued immigrants in Spain. The corpus consists of all the news published from June 10 to July 10, 2018 in the electronic version of the Spanish newspapers ABC, El Mundo, El País and La Vanguardia. The methodology is mainly qualitative-descriptive. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was chosen to observe the main linguistic characteristics of the collected news items and the topics that appear in the articles. The analysis shows that the testimonies of politicians and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) predominate, but there are few testimonies of immigrants. The solidarity and acceptance of Spain are strengthened, as well as the defense of human rights. This contrasts with the discourses that the press presents after the arrival of the ship in Valencia. A discourse related to the health of immigrants and their need for help and resources predominates, a fact that contributes to the alarm of the majority group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the final statements (“golden minutes”) of televised electoral debates in Spain between 1993 and 2019. The methodology is adjusted to the cognitive analysis of discourse, analyzing three pragmatic indicators that could reveal an evolution in three stages of Spanish politics: the bipartisan phase (1993-2011), an adjustment phase (2011-2015) and a multiparty phase (2015- 2019). The discursive spaces dependent on the predicative strategy, the predominant illocutionary force, and the use of superstructures are analyzed. It is concluded that, for the three phases, the variables referring to the use of enunciative persons (which points to the introduction of the ethos of discourse), and the recourse to speech acts of expressive illocutionality (which reinforce the introduction of the pathos) are especially relevant. These preponderances are reinforced by a high level of rhetorical elaboration and a preference for enumerative structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is based on the mediatisation of society theory, which establishes more attached importance and the presence of the mass media as mediators in various social processes, as well as on Production Studies, that analyse creative skills to draw an audience, to apply these theories to the media representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective is to analyse how the generalist media have represented male/female scientists, who have become social benchmarks during the first COVID-19 wave in Spain. Our initial hypothesis considers that the purpose of the mediatisation of scientific discourse was to contribute answers to, and to keep society calm, in an uncertainty context. By content and discourse analyses with a sample formed by 172 pieces of work published between 25 January and 5 July 2020 in four Spanish digital newspapers, we observed how these specialists not only became the usual sources of journalistic information but were also the main leading figures in them. The mass media pay attention to their statements, but also to their aesthetics and communication style, which are singular compared to conventional power to date. Science enters the national section with its own image and explanatory intentionality. Nonetheless, constant overexposure and its link with governments making controversial decisions influence the image held by the public opinion of scientists with time, which dissociates them from its knowledge and identifies them with political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific debate regarding populism has been renewed by the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Western Europe. Spain was an exception to the European situation until Vox stormed onto the scene in the Andalusian regional elections in December 2018. By taking into account the definition of populism from Jaager & Walgrave (2007), Mudde (2007), Hawkins (2010), Charaudeau's populist discourse analysis (2009), and the idea of "contamination" by Hernández Carr, 2011 and Van Spanje, 2010, this article presents the results of an analysis regarding the discourse of the tweets published by the candidates of the three right-wing national parties during the electoral campaign in Spain prior to the day of the elections on 28 April 2019. The aim of the study is to reveal whether Abascal's discourse conforms to the parameters of the populist style, and whether there was contamination by Abascal (Vox) of the issues and rhetoric of Pablo Casado (Partido Popular-PP) and Albert Rivera (Ciudadanos-Cs). Firstly, the quantitative analysis shows that Abascal's political discourse on this social network is in line with the discursive strategies of populism; Secondly, the Vox leader behaves differently from the candidates of the PP and Cs. Finally, the influence of Vox's discourse on the other two parties with which he competes on the right-wing ideological spectrum is lower than expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the information sources used in a large corpus of news items published in Spanish printed newspapers between 1618 and 1635. The initial aim is to determine how information credibility was constructed in both historical and rhetorical terms. To this end, the rhetorical construction of credibility in the news stories are analysed by focusing on the information sources that these reveal or conceal. And in order to determine whether or not these sources were deliberately concealed, the frequency with which 'on deep background' attribution appears is examined. The methodological approach on which this study is based is Historical News Discourse, which applies the conclusions and methods of critical discourse analysis to newspapers of the past, in addition to contextualising and explaining the results in terms of journalism history and communication approaches (Conboy, Brownlees and Broersma, among others). In this work, we contend that the discourse analysis of the first printed newspapers is essential for gaining further insights into how the journalistic profession consolidated its position in Spain thanks to a new form of auctoritas based on discourse competence. The gazetteer or journalist emerged as a new kind of writer, whose credibility and reputation depended on his ability to access, organise and reveal -according to rhetorical patterns recognisable to readers- the information sources available to him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the opening of the Spanish TV market in the 1990s, the development of fiction genres, formats and narratives has evolved notoriously, generating a universe of forms and narrations that has configured the history of Spanish TV. The family comedy, in this context, is postulated as one of the most relevant fiction subgenres of Spanish TV, thanks to its easy assimilation, the identification it generates with the audience, its formats and its dissemination strategy, which has contributed to the success of family comedy on television. This article combines quantitative data with documental reflection and discourse analysis to offer a taxonomy of the standards that have guided the configuration of family comedy in Spanish TV. The study is based on the analysis of 47 cases of family comedy, broadcast from 1990 to 2010 in mainstream TV channels, using three different perspectives: format, viewership and production aspects. The results offer relevant data about the family comedy genre that allow us to establish a specific approach to the configuration of a standard of form, reach and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]