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The present article, placed within the epistemological framework of Political Communication, analyses citizens’ reaction to politicians’ messages on the social network Twitter during the presidential elections in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, and Chile, held between 2015 and 2017. Through a script developed for the present research, almost 200,000 tweets have been studied according to the following questions: What are citizens’ emotional reactions to the messages of presidential candidates? Does digital public opinion analysis have a predictive nature from the electoral point of view? As a result, we note the existence of “sympathy currents” and “antipathy currents” on social media, where positive emotions prevail, especially towards candidates on the right side of the ideological spectrum, with progressive politicians generating a higher anger and sadness index than conservative ones. Similarly, emotions on social media largely correlate to the subsequent electoral result.

Since the last century, various scholars have put forward and demonstrated a number of theories on the effects mass media have on citizens. However, these theories do not pay attention to one of the elements that have become the source of much attention in recent times in the field of political science and communication: the affective domain. In this article, we will approach the feelings towards politics by Spanish population from the point of view of what the effects are of being informed or not about politics. The aim is to find out whether an information deficit on this issue is associated with an increased degree of negative feelings or vice versa. To this end, we will use a battery of seven feelings towards politics. This battery will be subjected to a correlation analysis with the frequency with which political information is followed in the traditional media (radio, TV, press) and the Internet. Besides, we will use mean comparison analysis to find out whether there are differences between the feelings towards politics in those who prefer to inform themselves in digital media, print media or both. Among the main results, it was found that greater exposure to political information is correlated with the fact of showing positive feelings towards politics.

Electoral debates in television are one of the most powerful instruments that broadcasters, namely those of a public nature, have to comply with one of their more relevant objectives: to contribute to the shaping of an informed and educated public opinion, strengthening citizen participation in public issues, legitimizing those institutions with which, this way, they identify, and, ultimately, improving their trust on their political system and reinforcing democracy. On this ground, after conducting a thorough study of the electoral debates that have been organized in Spain thus far, this chapter proposes a set of indicators of value for television debates that allows for the standardization of the evaluation of this format.

Electoral debates on television, in addition to being an electoral political communication tool and a basic instrument for improving the quality of public opinion and, ultimately, the democratic quality of any country, are a television show, a strategic space in the programming of those operators that bet on this formula that reports millions of audiences, only comparable to those of major sporting events. It is in this context in which this article is explained, which analyzes the communication sector in Spain from a business economic point of view, as a framework in which electoral debates are organized, held and televised, a formula that, although punctual, it reports important positive results for television networks.

One of the features of current society is linked to the ever-increasing demand that both public and private institutions account for their daily activities through the publication of information and data related to them. In this sense, the media are dually obliged, because they are companies and they also work with a public service body, as is the case of information. This chapter takes on the need for conceptually systematizing what we know as accountability, governance and transparency regarding public service television broadcasters, and we will do so by means of a comprehensive bibliographic review. In addition, the main transparency assessment models for these institutions are here highlighted and scored, describing their implementation already fulfilled in various geographical areas, together with their different results but with just a single reading: society—and law—goes far ahead of the institutions’ answer.

Public service televisions must face a double challenge in the scope of accountability. On the one hand, the need of providing the citizens with all the data related to the institution’s daily activities. On the other hand, the requirement of making the production stages transparent in order to prove the degree of compliance and commitment to a quality service. This paper analyzes the information available on the websites of the public service televisions in the American Southern Cone, meaning Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. When it comes to performance, the fulfilment of these indicators can be concluded as unsatisfactory, even though transparency in audiovisual corporations becomes one of the most appreciated intangible values that enable the television public service to regain credibility.

On the Internet, as the greatest global information platform today, an unceasingly important element is revealed and deployed: the social network. With the generation of these web portals, a huge and deep change in social relations and communication models of the contemporary generation is undergoing. A reality no different in the atmosphere of political, activism and speech communication from the digital site. The objective of this research is to compare the contents and discourse of the two Twitter accounts, the personal one (@realDonaldTrump) and the institutional one (@POTUS), of the President of United States, Donald Trump, through the crossing of the data analysis, obtained between March 9th and April 5th, and by the application of the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC). Therefore, based on the Agenda-Setting Theory, the method managed has been the analytical one, based on a mixed methodology (quantitative and qualitative) and effected with the FanPage Karma software and analytical file. And from this analysis, the results are summarized in three main ideas: a clear similarity between both accounts as to the contents of their posts, though not quite in its form; so, an equivalent agenda was also perceived between the two digital accounts; by contrast, concerning the actors of the tweets and the use, there were prominent dissimilarities that face the standardization and customization of Twitter as two systems of use from the position of an international public leader.

One of the distinctive features of the current citizenry is its growing demand for an increasing ethical commitment and transparency from its political representatives and the public or private institutions related to them. This growing demand should also apply to public television broadcasters, since they are usually funded by state resources. Moreover, they play an important role in the citizens' full enjoyment of their right to information, thereby favoring a formed public opinion and, in consequence, having an impact on the quality of democracy in their countries. Therefore, this paper proposes 58 indicators aimed at generally analyzing and assessing the transparency of television broadcasters and being applied to state-owned public broadcasters in the Iberian Peninsula: Spain and Portugal.

One of the distinctive features of the current citizenry is its growing demand for an increasing ethical commitment and transparency from its political representatives and the public or private institutions related to them. This growing demand should also apply to public television broadcasters, since they are usually funded by state resources. Moreover, they play an important role in the citizens’ full enjoyment of their right to information, thereby favoring a formed public opinion and, in consequence, having an impact on the quality of democracy in their countries. Therefore, this paper proposes 29 indicators aimed at generally analyzing and assessing the transparency of television broadcasters and being applied to state-level public televisions in the Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.