The Role of Minority Political Groups in the Dissemination of Disinformation. The Case of Spain

Abstract

This study seeks to understand better the role played by minority political groups in Spain in promoting disinformation on Twitter. The study applies statistical analysis and topic modelling to posts (tweets and retweets) published in Spanish on Twitter (n = 20,481 tweets) and to content identified as disinformation (n = 2,730) by two independent fact-checking projects in Spain from August 2019 to March 2020. The data reveal that the political communication strategy focuses primarily on the confrontation between the majority of political groups at the national level and on legitimizing the political projects of these groups to their potential voters through specific issues. The data also reveal a co-occurrence between messages published by political actors and content identified as disinformation by fact-checkers, which depends on the tweets’ political profile, virality, and sentimental load. For this reason, the digital presence of these actors creates favourable conditions for the viral dissemination of disinformation, mainly when their content focuses on mobilizing potential voters through emotional messages. It could be helpful for fact-checkers to identify and understand the role of these actors in promoting this content.