Comunicación Política y agenda digital: debates on-line y off-line en las elecciones brasileñas del año 2018

Electoral debates occur online before, during and after TV debates. For two months this study has analysed the Facebook accounts of the main presidential candidates in Brasil in 2018 (Alvaro Dias, Cabo Daciolo, Geraldo Alckmin, Marina Silva, Jair Bolsonaro, Guilherme Boulos, Henrique Meirelles and Ciro Gomes) in order to determine through the “area of impact” concept the consistency between the digital agenda and the topical agenda of the debate held on TV Band on Thursday 9th of August. Through the tool Netvizz, a Facebook extension, we have extracted 843 messages from 9th of June to 8th of August 2018. As a result, it is noted that Facebook does not predict analogical topics, which are very focused on “hard” agenda topics: economic policy, corruption and security. Similarly, we have obtained a model called issue campaign which challenges the results of previous research, leading to the conclusion that Facebook is more prone to debate and proposals and that Twitter is the scene of a “horse race” with the existence of a “crossed discussion” among candidates.