Articulo_5-EN-The_use_of

tools enhance democracy by expanding citizen power and engagement” after a loss of democratic values has taken place, according to Persily (2017: 71).

Although the tool was created in 2006, Twitter exploded onto the scene in 2008 at the same time that Barack Obama’s rev-olutionary electoral campaign was carried out against all odds, as he did not have the support of the party establishment, and it allowed him to secure the Presidency of the United States and the White House. Since then, his electoral campaign has been an example and a model for candidates of most democratic countries, and a considerable number of studies have been carried out or have referred to it, and also to the fact that social networks have become a benchmark for candidates in elections in countries with stable democracies (Beas, 2011, Casero-Ripollés, Feenstra and Tormey, 2016, Cervi and Roca, 2017, Costa, 2009, Enli, 2017b, Persily, 2017).

In this investigation we have focused on the electoral campaign of the Spanish general elections of 2011, in which Mariano Rajoy (PP - Popular Party) and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (PSOE-Socialist Party), the two main candidates, confronted each other; in addition, we have also considered the elections of 2015, which was a confrontation involving Mariano Rajoy (PP), Pedro Sánchez Castejón (PSOE), Albert Rivera (Ciudadanos) and Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), in order to analyze the quanti-tative and qualitative use these candidates made of their Twitter accounts. It should be added that the personal profiles of the candidates, rather than the party profiles, have been used due to the fact that electoral campaigns have become more personalized: “Social media such as Facebook and Twitter place the focus on the individual politician rather than on the political party, thus expanding the political arena for increased personalized campaigning”, as observed by Enli and Sko-gerbø (2013: 758).

The research was carried out from a national perspective, so we must remember that the political, electoral and party sys-tem that the candidates endorse, as well as their political culture (Almond and Verba, 1963, Duverger, 1957, Kirchheimer, 1969; Lijphart, 1999, Lipset and Rokkan, 1967 and Sartori, 1980), can influence the way political candidates deal with elec-toral campaigns, as it is possible that limits will be established in their development.

According to the compilation of Hallin and Mancini (2004), the Spanish political system is considered a Polarized Pluralist model, and this must be taken it into account in order to understand the limits of Internet use, as well as the fact that this is a recent democracy with previously long periods of authoritarianism. In addition, we have seen that even though the campaigns are being personalized, the parties still have a lot of power in the development of campaigns, while the role of volunteerism is not fundamental in focusing the electoral campaign, nor do candidates need to ask for funding, as the campaigns are financed with public money.

The PP won the 2011 elections, in which 68.94% of the voters participated, and this party gained 186 Representative seats and 44.63% of the vote. Consequently, Mariano Rajoy won the election with an absolute majority. The PSOE, with Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba leading the bid, won 110 Representative seats and 28.76% of the vote.

The general elections on December 20, 2015 (with a slight increase in participation at 69.97%) represented a turning point in the history of Spanish politics. The election campaign was a struggle between the candidates of the so-called “old poli-tics”, Mariano Rajoy (PP) and Pedro Sánchez Castejón (PSOE), and the representatives of the “new politics” with candidates such as Albert Rivera (Ciudadanos) and Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), and there was a certain risk of breaking the bipartisan-