Political profiles on Twitter: the electoral use of the word education

This paper analyses outstanding political parties' Twitter profiles that contested the Spanish general elections in 26th June, 2016. The compilation of data takes the last 3,200 tweets from each account. The objectives of the study seek, on the one hand to review the discursive structure of the tweets published by the parties' accounts (PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos, Podemos and IU); on the other hand, the objectives try to determine what the qualitative use that these political profiles give to the term education is, a relevant concept in general elections of 2016, when it was linked to the need for innovation, to the regular protests against the Organic Law on Education (LOMCE), and to the long-term rejection of budget cuts. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is applied to a sample of 20 tweets from among the 339 tweets that use this term prominently to determine the discursive meanings that underlie in these messages. The main results indicate a use of the term which is more linked to the political leaders' personalities and to electoral interests than to a social use or to the dissemination of political programmes. At the same time, ideological meanings that are not evident on the textual surface emerge with this deeper analysis.