LA NEGATIVIDAD DIGITAL COMO ESTRATEGIA DE CAMPAÑA EN LAS ELECCIONES DE LA COMUNIDAD DE MADRID DE 2021 EN TWITTER.

Social media currently occupy an increasingly central communicative space during electoral campaigns. Specifically, Twitter is one of the leading platforms in digital political communication, as it offers an overview of the discursive lines and strategies of parties and candidates. This becomes even more important during the COVID-19, which makes impossible to hold a traditional campaign. This is the case of the regional elections for the Community of Madrid on 4 May 2021. This research analyses the Twitter campaign of the main parties: PP, Más Madrid, PSOE, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos. Through a quantitative content analysis, 1760 tweets are examined and its thematic agenda, functions, emotions, COVID-19 and references to the candidates are studied. The results indicate the predominance of the Game Frame in the thematic agenda, combined with the criticism of the opponent as the main strategy. Negative emotions take a central place and COVID-19 is used as a political element during the campaign, with the PP candidate, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, as the protagonist of the campaign. Finally, the references to the candidates suggest a communicative strategy in a national key to attack political rivals, particularly the Spanish Prime Minister. Overall, this campaign opens a new communication strategy on Twitter that we have called digital negativity and that is based on the attack on political rivals as the main element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]