El impacto en las redes sociales de los diseños de comunicación de Casas Realesuna comparativa de actos protocolarios de la monarquía inglesa y española

Resumen

The way of communicating of the monarchy perceived by the public as a historical, traditional and political body, has been shifting the emergence of new channels of communication of the digital age. The new technologies have been a source of unrest, stemming from the new ways those tools can interact with the royal institution. There is no doubt that the media is one of the main communication tools to create and influence public opinion. Accordingly, Twitter becomes a critical factor of influence over public opinion. The purpose of this research was: to get an understanding for the communications actions of the Spanish and British monarchy and their effects on Twitter users, to find out if their respective communication strategy benefits or is harmful to their image as an institution of the State and to determine whether the bidirectionality of messages with the public is encouraged. Twitter is chosen because it is a clear and transparent social network with equal access. It has been chosen to select acts that had a sufficient level of impact on society to obtain conclusions that would contribute to the content of the investigation. Some publications from Felipe VI and Elizabeth II (2018 - 2020) have been chosen for this comparative study. The methodology was based on virtual ethnography using quantitative and qualitative approaches with an observational and interpretative component focused on the content of the analysis. In order to compare the communicative interaction via Twitter for those two contemporary monarchies, I chose in both monarchies reference events for which both began their speech on Twitter in the recent years: The Monarch‘s birthday (it happened that, even on different date, it is repeated every year and of a biographical nature); Christmas greeting (also happens annually but festive and social in nature); Covid-19: a case of social crisis. Those 3 events were selected specifically with the same themes: a news event for each monarchy in a period of 3 calendar years: 2018, 2019 and 2020. In addition, the strategy of selecting and recording as closely as possible the reactions on Twitter for each event in the last year has been chosen specifically, as was the celebration of the birthday of Elizabeth II and Felipe VI: a private biographical event); another, the Christmas speech of both monarchs as it is 9 a traditional act of an institutional nature; and the extraordinary institutional discourse on the occasion of the Covid-19 global pandemic. The study focuses on the publication of videos on Twitter featuring Felipe VI and Isabel II, with the exception of the birthday of the Spanish monarch, who does not publish a video. In order to address this object of study, I have chosen the strategy of selecting and registering each event, as approximately as possible, the first 100 tweets of response on the same day of each event whose publication appears on the official accounts that each monarchy has on Twitter. In the case in the Christmas Speech from Felipe VI, there are 61 tweets and in the act of the anniversary of Elizabeth II the absolute numbers are 104, being obliged to respect that it is the same day of the publication that each monarchy makes on their Twitter accounts. This selection of approximately 100 messages per publication and event should not only allow greater precision for the comparison, but also, and above all, to perceive the profiles coming from the initiative of those who supposedly twitter more actively and urgently in order to publish their most immediate assessments in front of their monarch. The conclusions confirm that both monarchies make use of a communication strategy of public institutions that aim to achieve a good image for their citizens, which require greater transparency of information. However, the results of the analysis show that Twitter does not develop the bidirectionality or interaction of its nature as a social network, it is not favorable of the Spanish Royal Family in the face of public opinion, the opposite case happens to the British crown which becomes a channel of praise towards the institution.