Social Media and Political Parties. Partial Normalization, Party Centralization and Digital Pessimism in Spain

Political parties’ communication has been strongly impacted by the advent of the social media. Scholarly attention has mostly focused on native digital organizations, while largely neglecting how social media have impinged upon parties across the board. Based on 19 interviews to party heads of (digital) communication and consultants, this article explores how Spanish parties have adopted social media, how they have coped in terms of labor resources and what their perspectives on such affordances are. The article argues that a partial normalization has taken place, as all parties are involved with different degrees of confidence in the most important social media, although native digital organizations still maintain the upper hand. Moreover, the paper suggests that parties have internalized digital tasks rather than relying on external actors, thus reinforcing the role played by the party in central office. Finally, despite the merits that social media have had in honing political communication, there emerge increasing reservations due to phenomena such as platforms’ unaccountability, hate speech, fake news and trolling.