YOUNG PEOPLE IN ELECTORAL TARGETING: VOX'S CAMPAIGN IN ANDALUSIA 2022

Young people have become the main targets of campaigns of European radical right-wing populist parties. The aim of this research is to analyze the messages delivered to the youth electorate by the political party Vox during the 19 June 2022 campaign for the Parliament of Andalusia (Spain). Critical discourse analysis (CDA) of a selection of general press sources and the party's electoral program revealed how nativist and conservative messages generated a unitary, essentialist and stereotyped vision of youth as part of the Spanish nation. Based on the emotionalization and spectacularization of the campaign and its protagonists, the retrotopic discourses were constructed from a double rhetoric of confrontation and victimization of the young population. From a gender perspective, the analysis also revealed that the emotional connection with young people was based on the male supremacy of Santiago Abascal and the subordination of the presidential candidate, Macarena Olona, whose media projection combined the traditional model of femininity with the image of a combative and competent woman, an exponent of the struggle for Spanish values.