Vox and journalistic information: use and criticism of the media in the 2019 General Election campaigns

Abstract

The general elections held in 2019 gave Vox enough votes to enter the Spanish Parliament as the third most popular political party. The growing role of this radical right-wing party has revealed a complex relationship with the media. The objective of this study is to characterise the relationship between Vox and the media by analysing the party's electoral discourse using quantitative techniques – posts made on Facebook and Twitter (n = 224) – and qualitative techniques, exploring the framing used in the closing rallies of the campaign. References to the media dominated the messages Vox posted on Twitter during the November campaign, whose main purpose was to repost content previously broadcast in traditional media. However, almost one in four of the messages were also critical of at least one media outlet, which also occurred at rallies. The institutionalisation of Vox entails a growing mediatisation of its discourse.