On the weekend of Halloween celebrations and visits to cemeteries to honor loved ones, comics skyrocketed in Google searches. It is not a product of big factories like Marvel or… … DC; It hasn’t even hit bookstores recently. It’s “Contrapasso,” a comic book by Teresa Valero that was published four years ago. A thriller starring journalists specializing in events during the Franco era. A book praised by critics, won over by the public and whose latest fan was an unexpected person: Pedro Sánchez.
A few weekends ago, the Prime Minister began posting videos on TikTok offering cultural recommendations. The Madrid author’s book was one of the heroes. He also mentioned that he was going to read “Let’s do things right” Rosa Ponce revealed that she included the latest album by Restinga, the stage name of Spanish-Moroccan singer and producer Herminia Loh Moreno, in her music list. Searches for his album “Free baby” also increased after Sanchez posted it on this social network, as did the novel “The Strangers” by John Bilbao or the Cala Vento collection that he recommended on Saturday.
The government focused on this video platform and created specific content to convince TikTok users of its policies. In Spain, according to the company’s own data, 23.4 million people actively use the social network; Nearly four in ten, or about 9.6 million people, are between 18 and 24 years old. This is the goal of the executive authority: the voice of the youth. The Chief Executive addresses this age group with “light topics” such as cultural recommendations or recognition of members of the Forestry Brigade or athletes such as Walker María Pérez. “(Sanchez) has He perfectly understands who he is addressing, how and where», refers to a networking expert who works with several entities and companies. “Others don’t know what this is,” point out, pointedly, the Socialist Workers’ Party. The profile of Alberto Núñez Feijóo is videos, but it is not made “professional” for this social network.
The other members of the executive try to be fun and funny to break their usual image of seriousness. This is the case of the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños. In his TikTok presentation, he invited Pilar Alegría and Oscar Puente. First, he kept the name of his colleague in the government as “Super Bolaños.” The second was named “Felix Buñuelos.” The Minister of Transport had to explain in X that he had changed the name of the video in which the Minister of Justice announced his intention to open an account. Alegría – who has a social media account, like Foreign Minister José Manuel Albarez and others – asked him if he would start dancing. Bolaños seeks advice from Puente, who “sneaks away” under the pretense of being “more of a Twitter person.” “Bolaños on TikTok? “He is older than the jungle,” says the Valladolid minister after being pinned at the head of the Ministry of Justice.
Attempts dHe approached the younger onewith more or less wealth, defend themselves from attacks by the political opposition. Bolaños clings to the benefits of his controversial law to reform the judicial profession, which was rejected by the vast majority of judges and prosecutors, and accused of “far-right hoaxes.” Puente, for his part, is also using videos to explain how his ministry was paid in cash amid the controversy over payments of this kind to his predecessor in office, José Luis Abalos and his former advisor Koldo García, by the PSOE when the former was in charge of the party’s organizing secretariat.
Deliberate strategy
It is no coincidence that members of the executive branch are focusing their outreach efforts on TikTok. Young people spend more than an hour and a half a day consuming content on this social network, and politics wants to allocate space in these 90 minutes a day, which so far only the Vox party has been able to benefit from, an advantage that other parties now want to replicate. Maria del Mar Soria, professor of political communication and marketing at La Rioja International University, tells ABC that political leaders seek to “Communicate with each of the “targets” you refer to».
To achieve success on this social network, it is necessary to know how to “communicate with a young audience by defining their own language: through memes and informal and very short videos,” although Soria warns that you have to “master” this communication to succeed. One of the keys to reaching the target audience, as explained by Javier Pérez, professor of communication and audiovisual content at the European University, is the agreement between the online persona and the real persona: «Speech and person must coincide». There are politicians who, because they are “older or more mature, have more difficulty” getting used to the TikTok format. In Sanchez’s case, Perez says the difference is “smaller.”
Not all social networks are the same. The language, content, style and message change in each. While TikTok is the queen «Informality» And short videos, in X you search for “the text in front of the image”. “Although the same concept can be used in these two social networks, it is undoubtedly necessary to change the message,” says Surya.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is also one of the new aspects of political communication. “We have not yet reached American extremism,” Peres asserts, as President Donald Trump shares videos produced by artificial intelligence in which he attacks his political opponents. The reason is clear: Europe and Spain are a “more moderate and less controversial environment” than the United States.
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