The March legislative debates begin today. Televisions invest heavily in these programs, which generate audiences and are opportunities for channels to assert their importance in one of the key moments of democratic life: elections. These marathon events, whose narrative arc is organized around the question “who will win the debate?”, unfold in three acts. In the “pre-debate”, commentators activate expectations and anticipate the confrontation between the candidates who will enter the scene in the second act, that is, in the debate itself. Finally, in the “post-debate”, the commentators return to the plateau to take stock: they evaluate the performances of the participants and project expectations of victory and defeat (real and symbolic) in the elections.
If the candidates’ most obvious objective is to convince voters-spectators, they also intend to impress commentators and journalists, whose evaluations shape the way these actors will talk about them from now on and interpret opinion polls. However, the debates also serve a third purpose, much less obvious, but extremely important: reaching people whose information consumption is mainly done through social networks.
Currently, part of the electorate is disinterested, disconnected and suspicious of the way the media approaches politics, paying more attention to influencers, YouTube channels, memesfriends and family say online. It is in this circuit — with their own agendas and approaches — that they come into contact with debates (and other campaign events), namely through controversies generated by, or from, certain statements or behaviors. It is in the form of videos and posts, framed by comments made as such controversies circulate in the digital space, that the meanings attributed to these occurrences are being constructed in a network by those on this parallel track.
Politicians who better understand how all this happens communicate to television and networks simultaneously, therefore, they understand debates as a device that generates content to distribute online. Your teams, but also influencers and anonymous users reformat these programs, slicing the broadcasts into short videos. For this reason, politicians with algorithmic awareness act thinking about the cuts that their teams need to make, even if this means having a speech that seems disjointed on television.
Dispersed and different consumption of mainstream discourse produces different understandings of the political reality projected by the media. Therefore, ‘winning/losing’ debates is an indicator that masks contemporary communicational logic
Unlike traditional media, fragments do not need to have coherence or logic: they are flashes performatives that, above all, communicate intentionality, intensity and drama. This expedient is used online to feed narratives, mobilize support bases, reinforce the rejection of opponents and reach those who have distanced themselves from journalistic mediation and view politics through the filter of the networks.
Now, dispersed and different consumption of discourse mainstream produce different understandings of the political reality projected by media. Therefore, “winning/losing” debates is an indicator that masks contemporary communication logic. If party fragmentation, electoral volatility and immediacy driven by digital logics call into question the knowledge acquired about voting decision-making processes, the new dynamics of information consumption must also be taken into account.
In fact, part of the country’s surprise mainstream in relation to polling data and electoral results arises from the fact that we continue to use an interpretative lens that places what is happening in media at the center of political communication. What they project is important, but an algorithmic world view of politics has long rivaled (and in many cases surpassed) the media.
The author writes according to the new spelling agreement