Political entrepreneurs in social media: Self-monitoring, authenticity and connective democracy. The case of Íñigo Errejón

Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 Available online 27 January 2023 2405-8440/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Research article Political entrepreneurs in social media: Self-monitoring, authenticity and connective democracy. The case of ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on Maria Iranzo-Cabrera a , * , Andreu Casero-Ripoll´ es b a Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain b Department of Communication Sciences, Universitat Jaume I, Castell´ on, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Political communication Social media Digital Accountability Twitch Monitory democracy Deliberative democracy Connective democracy ABSTRACT Political entrepreneurs seek to mobilise public opinion and access large audiences who are not directly interested in politics, but are exposed to the digital environment. The aim of this research was to analyse how these figures promote experimental communication uses on channels far removed from political activity. We focused on Twitch, a successful platform for promoting entertainment and learning in the video games field. To do so, we conducted a significant case study, that of ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on, a Spanish male Member of Parliament, in 2021 through 18 live streamings that lasted 1223 min. We specifically described the conception and use of Twitch, measured the audience’s impact, analysed the accountability exercise through this platform and evaluated the deliberative quality of conversation with users. To conclude, we identified three novel contributions of Twitch to digital political communication: self-monitoring, insofar as the elected politician himself proactively exercises accountability to the public without a third party intervening; the activation of mediated authenticity as a key value in the political actor’s public construction; promoting connective democracy, which would help those sectors not used to employing political information to take an interest in it by detecting attention being paid to their needs and questions. 1. Introduction On January 29, 2021, ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on, a Spanish male Member of Parliament, a founder of the Podemos political party, and now a member of the M´ as País political party, started broadcasting via his Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/ierrejon). He was the first Spanish politician to do so and was, internationally, one of the first Members of Parliament to use this platform. Earlier in October 2020, US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had employed this digital means, but only sporadically. Since October 2018, French politician Jean-Luc M´ elenchon has had a Twitch account where he has occasionally broadcast public events, made unidirectional messages and answered citizens via chat, but not frequently. When Errej´ on started using this platform, he stated: “Official politics always tends to be separated from the real world because, in the end, politicians and journalists only talk to one another. Using the phone to be able to interact with people to expose your fears or criticisms is a reality check that I believe is enriching” [1]. Along with this important declaration of principles, Errej´ on’s decision involves a highly innovative component: employing this live streaming service, which is preferentially oriented to video games, and to promote other ways of doing politics. This reveals how politicians are utilising digital means to reach the public with their positions and policies. These platforms allow * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Iranzo-Cabrera). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Heliyon journal homepage: www.cell.com/heliyon https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e13262 Received 22 December 2022; Received in revised form 13 January 2023; Accepted 24 January 2023 Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 2 new strategies, new practices, new actors and new contents to emerge, which are changing how political information is produced, distributed and used [2]. These processes influence politics because they generate many effects that influence how democracy works and open up a field for experimentation. The depth and importance of such changes mean that social media are retooling politics in contemporary democracies [3]. Digital platforms have three essential characteristics for this purpose: interactivity, connectivity and accessibility [4]. First of all, they offer the chance to communicate to one another by driving exchanges and dialogic practices. By means of the many-to-many communication model, these platforms allow the capacity to respond, or feedback, which offers the possibility of generating interactivity. Nevertheless, former research works have demonstrated that politicians scarcely use and interact with digital technologies [5]. Likewise, social media favour connectivity among citizens which, thanks to these platforms, can establish links with other people, and allow them to collaborate or connect with one another. Accessibility refers to the capacity to employ contents, but to also produce and distribute them. Digital technologies have drastically cut the costs of creating, producing and distributing them. Any user can create and disseminate his/her own contents autonomously without intermediaries. This favours a more open and decentralised scenario where competition to control the information flow is fierce [6]. The marked leading role of news media and journalists as gatekeepers in relation to the information that reaches the public is weakening because numerous voices in the digital realm have emerged. Political actors have started opening accounts with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms to directly reach large audiences. Apart from conventional political parties, this has allowed a series of emerging actors to look at social media and to actively perform in these spaces. They are political entrepreneurs [7] who seek to mobilise public opinion and to access large audiences that are not directly interested in politics, but are exposed to the digital environment. To this end, they make a basic element of their activity out of their highly innovative communication strategies on digital media [8]. The literature has focused on demonstrating that politics use social media to diffuse information, but has paid less attention to political entrepreneurs’ innovative communication practices and their democratic consequences [9]. To bridge this gap, we focus on how these politicians drive the experimental communication uses of digital platforms that are far-removed from political activity, such as Twitch. For this purpose, we analysed ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s channel on this platform throughout 2021 by means of 18 live streamings, which collectively lasted 1223 min. There are three reasons for choosing this case study. The first one is because he is the only politician with a seat in Parliament to use this tool in Spain, and one of the few Members of Parliament who do so internationally. So, we can consider him a political entrepreneur. The second reason is that he frequently uses this platform. Other politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also employed this digital means, but not so intensely. The third and final reason is his pioneering and innovative experience because he employs a platform that is more oriented to video games and e-sports for a political use. These three reasons make this case study interesting and relevant for knowing political actors’ communication practices on Twitch and their democratic incidence. This research work specifically takes the case study of Errej´ on to: detect and describe the conception and use of the Twitch channel; measure the impact on the audience; analyse the accountability exercise by means of this platform; evaluate the channel’s deliberative activity. 2. Literature review 2.1. Social media, connective democracy and political entrepreneurs Social media possess specific affordances that allow new communication dynamics to be activated [4], that are capable of potentially transforming politics and exercising power [10]. For example, users being able to autonomously generate and distribute contents to third parties, and having the capacity to establish connections among citizens or to generate cooperation mechanisms with legacy media by shaping a hybrid and high-density communication environment are some of the main affordances [6]. Several previous research works have analysed the impact that these digital platforms have on ways of doing politics by detecting different effects [2]. Some works have demonstrated the potential of social media for citizen activism and for encouraging political participation [11–13] to introduce new ways to build the agenda [14] or to make new communication strategies emerge [8]. Other research works have, conversely, revealed that these digital media have favoured the new leading role of old problems, such as disinformation [15,16] or polarisation [17,18], by contributing to produce disruptive public spheres [19] that are becoming increasingly fractured [20]. In this context, our democracy is witnessing a redefinition process. This is also being driven by a growing disconnection between citizens and democratic institutions that reinforces mistrust and disappointment of formal politics [21]. Political actors are perceived as a privileged class who have no idea about common people’s problems and concerns. This public discontent scenario has encouraged extremism and populism to grow in different parts of the world [22]. Social media are ideal tools for generating new connections among citizens. Given their affordances, these platforms are extremely capable of creating links among individuals and of cementing relationships with them [4]. To this end, they are fundamental for promoting connections in the public sphere. Such connections are a basic ingredient for democracy, and act as the basis for forming a political community [23]. Indeed previous research works have identified several formulae by means of which digital platforms are capable of generating political connections with a democratic value. The first one is the monitoring involved in activating processes to oversee political, economic and media power [24]. Abundant information favoured by an online setting and advancing with transparency in the political field mean that any citizen can access a large quantity of data, which can be used to scrutinise social elites’ actions and decisions. Moreover, social media are converted into a channel by means of which denunciations of abuses of power can be quickly and easily diffused. The fact that digital platforms are open in nature means that this monitoring action can also be done by citizens for a civic purpose [25]. This dynamics, which is related to the M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 3 monitory democracy concept [26], results from lack of trust in and disliking institutional power. Its activation places the focal point on accountability, which aims to ensure power’s responsible performance, which is capable of exposing, justifying and publicly defending their decisions. This practice has the potential to connect citizens to democracy [27] because it favours the public’s empowerment. In the last decade, social media have led some examples of monitoring in several countries to emerge, including Spain [28]. The second one is political actors’ humanisation. Digital platforms allow these leaders to promote the self-mediation of their communication by directly addressing citizens without intermediaries. This enables the possibility of activating different communication strategies to connect to the public. One of them consists in showing certain political leaders’ intimate aspects, such as personal details of their lives, their likings or hobbies, their everyday habits or their emotional facet [29]. In this way, they create illusions of authenticity that make them appear to be more realistic, genuine and trustworthy because they employ the characteristic elements of mediated authenticity, such as spontaneity, immediacy, imperfection, confessions or ordinariness [30]. This not only allows a direct relationship based on closeness with the public to be established, but also cuts the distance between citizens and elected representatives. This especially occurs when politicians “have insight into voters’ demands and feelings at a time such as the present when the declining influence of party politics and traditional ideologies has left avoid in voters’ allegiances” [31]. So, it could foster attachment and trust [32] by improving the public’s connection with democracy. This strategy is quite normal with populist politicians given their intention to represent “the people” and defend common people’s interests [33]. The third one involves promoting the discursive spaces that favour constructive deliberative debate. Despite its interactive potential, as previously mentioned, social media have contributed to drive social and political divisions by stressing affective polarisation [17]. Moreover, political actors have mostly denied using these digital platforms to encourage dialogue with citizens. Conversely, a conception based on one-way communication has predominated, which shapes these media as channels that distribute information and contents, but barely interact with the public [2]. This has enhanced the disconnection between politics and citizens in the digital setting. Furthermore, previous research into citizens’ comments posted on social media evidences very little discussion of a rational kind [34]. Two determining factors have an influence here: homophily and selective exposure [23]. Citizens tend to avoid cognitive dissonance [35], and usually follow those with whom they share an ideological, cultural or behavioural link. This creates informative bubbles or echo chambers that generate polarisation [36,37], although some authors have questioned its effects [38]. To revert this situation, some authors propose promoting connective democracy [39]. Here the objective is to generate quality connections that allow opinions and pieces of information to freely flow, bidirectional public discussion and respect for the other person as a member of the same political community [23]. The intention here is to solve polarisation and disconnection problems by listening and deliberation [40]. In this way, connective democracy is linked with the Habermasian public sphere notion [41], which understands political deliberation with interactions sustained in discursive diversity, argumentation and reciprocity that derive from the social action of listening. Meeting these three standards means that political conversations move towards a deliberative ideal [42] and, by doing so, towards a consensus being reached. The principle of parrhesia is also a political actors’ obligation; that is, speaking the truth [43]. These three monitoring, humanisation and connective democracy formulae are laid down on daily, intentional and creative practices that seek to renew political connections among citizens by developing a mending democracy dynamics [44]. When activating them, political entrepreneurs play a crucial role because they are capable of not only mobilising resources and emotions to impact citizens, but of also activating the public’s reactions. These actors work on a small scale to re-establish citizens’ links with different parts of the democratic process by applying ingenious forms of engagement [45]. To accomplish this, they apply innovative communication strategies, such as resorting to new digital formats of contents to diffuse their messages [7], and building an agenda that focuses on new and alternative themes [46], which are excluded from news organisations or the criticism of the establishment. They are vectors that bring about political change to make democracy strong or weak. Despite their importance, studying these political entrepreneurs is a poorly explored area. Therefore, we propose studying a significant case to advance in knowledge about not only the role of these figures in the digital setting, but also about their capacity to create connections and to mend democracy. 2.2. Twitch: a digital live streaming platform Twitch is a digital live streaming service that first appeared in 2011. Amazon has owned it since 2014 when it purchased it for 970 million dollars. Its content preferentially focuses on video games and e-sports, although it is potentially open to all kinds of themes. In fact according to TwitchTracker, its “just chatting” content has increased by 200% since 2021 with 15% of viewers. In all, it has 7.1 million active channels, its average number of daily visits is 31 million and it used up 1.3 trillion minutes in 2021 (https://www.twitch. tv/p/press-center/). Its public profile is mostly young people because 75% of users are aged from 16 to 34 years, who form part of Generation Z. Twitch had increased its social impact in recent times. During COVID-19, its number of users grew by 200%. This, along with the growing interest in video games and e-sports, plus the consolidation of outstanding streamers (https://socialblade.com/twitch/top/ 50), or content creators like Ninja (with 18.8 million followers), Auronplay (14 million), Rubius (12.8 million) or Ibai Llanos (11.7 million), have encouraged Twitch usage worldwide. In accordance with Spilker and Colbjørnsen’s [47] characterization of streaming services, Twitch offers user-generated, live, on focused and general-audience streaming. This platform is based on three traits: immediacy, interaction and generating a community around a given passion, which could be related to video games, a sport, cryptocurrencies or politics. First of all, and unlike YouTube, contents can only be created live and edited products cannot be diffused. Anybody with certain technical knowledge and, above all, anyone with a rapid Internet connection, can broadcast. However, Twitch requires not only ensuring quality live streaming, but also the skill to broadcast authenticity [30]. A streamer, or a content creator on Twitch, must know how to express oneself, talk and M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 4 communicate “in a manner relevant to the subculture one wishes to engage with” and must do so “easily and comfortably” [48]. Talking enthusiastically about what one knows and likes is an outstanding quality on this digital platform. The contents on Twitch appear live and are perishable (they disappear a few days after being broadcast), which encourages users to wish to personally witness streamings. Twitch channels fit the “third places” description [49–51]. Such spaces periodically host meetings. They are voluntary and informal, and are happily anticipated by individuals beyond their homes or workplaces. Nonetheless, hybrid logics operates between Twitch and YouTube [52] insofar as the latter acts as a repository of streamers to multiply diffusion [53]. This avoids contents disappearing, and also extends their useful life and their diffusion. The second requirement for content creators, and Twitch’s true challenge, is to know how to manage both their intervention and the audience’s attention and satisfaction in real time [54]. For this reason, as they gain followers, they make up a team of moderators (with at least three or four people) that can be in charge of performing and controlling the chat to particularly avoid trolls intervening because they block conversation. On this matter, different research works point out the positive effect of playing this role in achieving deliberative quality, provided that it acts responsibly [55,56]. The user’s interface and experience are designed for the audience to participate live. For this purpose, the chat occupies a relevant place on the screen. Indeed to favour interaction, it is possible to slow down the comments that appear so that the streamer “can realistically expect to read every message they get sent, reply to them, and build a sense of community” [48]. For Hilvert-Bruce et al. [57], content creators who broadcast over small channels (with fewer than 500 followers) come over as being more motivated to make social engagement by addressing themselves using participants’ names. Therefore, Twitch integrates a double screen [58]: conventional live streamings (broadcast media) and interaction by means of chat (social media). True engagement appears on the latter screen [59]. To date, research into this platform has centred mostly on the uses and gratifications that it generates for the so-called gamers [48, 60]. Essentially, entertainment and learning [61] have been identified as the main claims for live viewing, as well as the building of an online social community via chat: “viewers express support, opinions, suggestions, requests, even criticism via chat in real-time as the streamers produce content tailored to their live audience” [62]. Streamers’ motivations are the communicative interaction and the audience’s commitment [63]. Ask et al. [64] propose five dimensions that determine the user-platform relationship in Twitch. These are: 1) Sociality: community or individual use; 2) Audience: specific or general; 3) Moderation: strictly moderated or laissez-faire; 4) Content: user-generated or commercial; 5) Scope: specialized or multi-feature. As an exception we should point out the exploratory study that Ruiz-Bravo et al. [65] have made of the usage of live chats in e-games channels for promote political activism, related to the protests in Hong Kong in 2019. However, Twitch remains unexplored from the point of view of political communication and its connection with democracy. Its potential as a political communication tool has been proven by US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is popularly known by her initials as AOC. She opened her account on March 23, 2020, but her first streaming did not take place until 20 October. This democratic lady politician has had three live streamings. The first two were video game sessions, which drew 430,000 simultaneous spectators. The third was used to explain and contextualise the company game STOP’s rise on the stock exchange. Several experts intervened in this live streaming, who simply explained the world of the stock exchange and shares. Ocasio-Cortez did not attempt to replicate the strategy and type of messages from other social networks on Twitch, but gave a differential value to the way to communicate on this platform. Nevertheless, her experience was limited and sporadic. The naturalness with which she dealt with the mistakes made while broadcasting and extending live streamings “contrasts with the figure that is usually associated with an immaculate politician who must never make a mistake” [66]. Jean-Luc M´ elenchon, the leader of the La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) political party, has used this platform to broadcast the party’s events since October 4, 2018. Gifted with “his talent as a speaker”, according to Bonet [67] one of the reasons for his success in the April 2022 presidential elections “was young people’s support, and for being the most voted person by voters aged from 18 to 34 years”. Influencers asked for the eco-socialist leader’s vote, who ended the campaign with a long streaming via Twitch. Earlier he had also used this platform to answer the audience’s questions, which he did on six occasions: May 29, 2020 (2 h, 11′), July 16, 2020 (2 h, 15′), November 8, 2021 (1 h, 53′), February 1, 2022 (1 h, 24′), April 8, 2022 (1 h, 24′) and June 17, 2022 (1 h, 21′). His website includes a repository of the last three streamings (https://melenchon.fr/categorie/videos/allo-melenchon/), which were broadcast from a set with two moderators. He identifies this format with the hashatg #AlloMelenchon. Nonetheless, the political use of Twitch for accountability has been limited to only a few sporadic cases. One of the most interesting ones is that led by ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on, a Spanish male Member of Parliament. This political entrepreneur has frequently used this digital platform throughout 2021. We pose the following research questions. RQ1: How does ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on use his Twitch channel (streaming frequency and themes) and how does it impact the audience (viewings, followers and spectators)? RQ2: How is the political actor’s construction formed on ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s Twitch account? RQ3: How is accountability implemented on ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s Twitch account? RQ4: What deliberative characteristics do the creator-audience dialogic debate and the forms of engagement that are employed in ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s Twitch account have? 3. Materials and methods: four analysis dimensions The present research work applies the case study methodology, which implies analysing “exhaustively a singular case interpreted in particular socio-political contexts” [68]. ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on is the only leader of a political party with parliamentary representation in Spain M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 5 who has used this streaming platform to continuously communicate with his followers over time. This makes him a political entrepreneur because he has included innovations in his political communication formulae to relate to citizens. As this is a “case in action” [69], an approach strategy was designed with four analytical dimensions (Fig. 1) that answer the research questions from more general aspects to more specific ones, and also from quantitative data to qualitative ones. Each analytical dimension respectively requires an interpretation method and a specific sample, and they are all related to the studied case. The conception and use of the channel is dealt with on the first analytical dimension. To do so, the descriptive observation of dates, times and duration of streamings, and of the 18 live streamings themes by ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on channel in 2021, was carried out (Table 1). The second analytical dimension explores the impact on the audience by means of the quantitative data recorded by the TwitchTracker and SullyGnome monitoring applications in the sample found in Table 2. The following variables specifically apply: mean number of spectators, peak of spectators, gained followers and viewings. The third analytical dimension focuses on accountability. The employed method is the analysis of the qualitative discourse of the contents on Errej´ on’s Twitch channel. The sample is made up of 10 live streamings (Table 3). The long duration of these live streaming (each one lasting about 60 min) is the reason why we decided to work on this dimension with 55.55% of the population. For the analysis, a transcription was done of 552 min. With the Atlas.ti programme, the frames by means of which the political actor defines the contents broadcast on this digital platform were observed. For coding, the classification of the four main theme categories taken from Patterson’s typology (1980) was used. They encompass the 109 detected frames. The four main theme categories were. - political issues: questions relating to the party’s ideology, alliances with parties, and relations with civil society and the groups governing at the time - sectorial policy issues: health, education, economy, etc. - personal issues: issues related to candidates’ life and activities, their character and hobbies, among others - campaign issues: matters related to the organisation of electoral campaigns; in our case, the Madrid campaign (campaign events, surveys, candidacies) Finally, the fourth analytical dimension studies the creator-audience deliberative debate and the employed engagement forms. To do so, a qualitative discourse analysis was carried out of the audience during the chat of two live streaming that were broadcast at the beginning and end of 2021 (Table 4). They were chosen because one was the live streaming that aroused more interest and centred on Errej´ on’s most applauded speech from the Parliament Stand, and the other was that which the leader gave on a controversial matter: appointing Marta Ortega as Chair of Inditex and meritocracy in Spain. Both speeches were analysed by manual coding and by applying the variables below [34] to analyse the democratic value of both these political conversations. •Theme. This variable evaluates coherence in conversation. The participants should reflect mainly on the themes that this political leader also addresses during his speech •Homophy. It is defined as an ideological affinity between the political actor and the participants. Comments were coded by these categories: a) against, b) neutral and c) in favour of the opinion that ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on expressed. •Rationality of arguments. This was measured by detecting those comments that included theoretical citations, and also those with an argument (those that used causal conjunctions or explicitly included data or evidence to sustain his statement). All these comments were based on fallible knowledge •The reciprocal interaction. During conversation, the participants show certain willingness to listen to the ideas and views of the other fellow participants, and to exchange questions and reasons. This category is operationalised by means of five indicators: a) Fig. 1. The analytical dimensions of this research. Source: the authors. M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 6 number of interventions in the chat; b) direct answers or mentions made by the leader to comments; c) number of repeated comments (evidence for the speaker’s disregard and him insisting on seeking an answer); d) number of questions asked; e) use of vocatives (reflecting the desire to interact) •Respectful discourse. This analyses the type of language that commentators use according to these categories: a) respectful, neutral language; b) offensive language (insults, capitals); c) offensive language addressing certain people. Given the widespread use of iconography and some comments being made only with emojis, a distinction was also made between positive emojis (they convey supportive messages and are, therefore, taken as respectful, neutral language) and negative emojis (they convey aggressive messages and are, therefore, taken as offensive language) Table 1 Dates, times and durations, plus streaming theme. Date Month Day of the week Title Streaming type Duration (in minutes) Start time End time 30 November Tuesday Meritocracy alone 40 18:37 19:17 18 October Monday Talk with In´ es Hernand dialogue 85 16:03 17:28 30 September Thursday We talk about the Law on Cannabis alone 31 12:33 13:05 7 September Tuesday We return to Twitch alone 44 12:21 13:05 4 May Tuesday Talking live #M´ asMadrid4M discussion 31 17:24 17:55 2 May Sunday Campaign closure! discussion 27 19:08 19:35 1 May Saturday We’re in M´ ostoles! discussion 86 18:49 19:15 29 April Thursday Video games, e-sports, economy and culture with ´ Angel Quintana dialogue 66 13:09 14:15 23 April Friday Talking with Javier Giner about his book ‘Me, an addict’ dialogue 73 13:22 14:35 21 April Wednesday Daily LGTBIphobia with Víctor Guti´ errez dialogue 70 19:15 20:25 16 April Friday Campaign ideas discussion 74 13:11 14:25 6 April Tuesday Talking with M´ onica García about mental health dialogue 72 13:23 14:35 25 March Thursday Talking live from Parliament alone 52 17:13 18:05 12 March Friday With Elizabeth Duval dialogue 114 13:01 14:55 25 February Thursday Talking about mental health from Parliament alone 63 13:12 14:15 19 February Friday No title alone 90 20:14 21:45 4 February Thursday No title alone 117 20:38 22:35 29 January Friday No title alone 88 19:57 21:25 Table 2 Impact on the audience according to TwitchTracker (T) and SullyGnome (S). Title Spectators (mean) T Spectators (mean) S Spectators (peak) T Spectators (peak) S Followers gained T Followers gained S Viewings T Viewings S Meritocracy 286 286 338 338 53 53 280 280 Talk with In´ es Hernand 564 566 609 609 63 57 571 571 We talk about the Law on Cannabis 290 311 348 348 34 22 254 254 We return to Twitch 269 249 323 336 40 40 391 391 Let’s talk live #M´ asMadrid4M 1279 1161 1664 1846 334 269 1955 1955 Campaign closure! 442 396 566 566 31 48 0 0 We’re in M´ ostoles! 412 362 462 362 33 0 0 0 Video games, e-sports, economy and culture with ´ Angel Quintana 794 592 971 971 363 339 1575 1575 Talking with Javier Giner about his book ‘Me, an addict’ 411 405 464 482 204 215 1542 1542 Daily LGTBIphobia with Víctor Guti´ errez 379 403 153 453 153 119 853 698 Campaign ideas 311 264 337 349 56 60 442 442 Talking with M´ onica García about mental health 485 487 647 647 123 124 355 843 Talking live from Parliament 497 553 646 714 233 204 274 0 with Elizabeth Duval 515 530 636 662 194 188 1579 1407 Talking about mental health from Parliament 817 672 1037 1037 442 393 1968 1968 No title 492 519 673 581 188 172 725 725 No title 524 549 634 634 377 396 1986 1986 No title 875 900 1032 1032 641 556 968 968 M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 7 Apart from these five variables, quantitative data were obtained: user name and; if it was of the Twitch ‘premium’ condition (paying the platform 3.99 euros a month to enjoy certain advantages, such as more viewing during his speeches), in order to confirm if this meant more presence during dialogue; followers’ age, their profession and location if explicitly made known in comments. The process of collecting data and coding ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s speeches was followed by the same researcher descriptively to reduce the risk of subjective interpretation in this analysis stage. In the second phase, two researchers worked together to interpret the collected data. 4. Results 4.1. Conception and use of the channel ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on started broadcasting on Twitch on January 29, 2021, and his last streaming started on November 30, 2021 (Fig. 2). During this period, he did 18 live streamings, which can be classified as these three types: interactions alone and with an audience (44.5%, n =8); dialogue with guests (writer Elizabeth Duval, M´ as Madrid party candidate M´ onica García, water polo player Víctor Guti´ errez, producer Javier Giner, professor of History and Cinema Theory ´ Angel Quintana and communicator In´ es Hernand) (33.3%, n =6); talks held with M´ as Madrid Party candidates and members as part of the local Madrid elections (22.2%, n =4). In accordance with the five dimensions that determine the user-platform relationship proposed by Ask et al. [64], Errej´ on’s Twitch channel should be defined by its community use, general audience, moderated chat, user-generated and specialized purpose: reconnecting the politician with the interests and concerns of the citizenry. Despite the fact that during his first streamings Errej´ on mentioned that he would do one streaming “at least every fortnight”, this actually occurred only between February and April. After the M´ as Madrid electoral campaign in the Madrid Community (May 4, 2021), he did none for 4 months. He organised four more live streamings between September and November. The days when plenary sessions are held in Parliament (Tuesdays and Thursdays), and also Fridays when Parliament has no Table 3 Accountability sample. Date Month Title Participants 30 November Meritocracy ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on 18 October Talk with In´ es Hernand ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on and In´ es Hern´ andez (In´ es Hernand) 30 September We talk about the Law on Cannabis ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on 7 September We return to Twitch ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on 23 April Talking with Javier Giner about his book ‘Me, an addict’ ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on and Javier Giner 21 April Daily LGTBIphobia with Víctor Guti´ errez ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on and Víctor Guti´ errez 16 April Campaign ideas ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on, Gala San Migule, Gabi Ortega, Daniel Ayuso, Ana Gonz´ alez and Clara Mench´ en 6 April Talking with M´ onica García about mental health ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on and M´ onica García 25 February Talking about mental health from Parliament ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on 29 January No title ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on Table 4 Sample used to analyse the democratic value of political conversations. Date Month Title Spectators (mean) Spectators (peak) Participants in the chat Messages sent 30 November Meritocracy 286 338 147 421 25 March Talking live from Parliament 525 680 451 1122 Fig. 2. ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s live streamings on Twitch in 2021. Source: TwitchTracker. M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 8 organised events, were the days when Errej´ on did more live streamings (totalling 77.7% in all). Of the total, 55.5% (n =10) were scheduled in the late afternoon/evening (15:00–22:00 h) and 44.5% (n =8) in the morning/early afternoon (8:00h-15:00 h). The latter streamings were scheduled at around 13:00 h. Their average duration was 68 min each. Regarding themes, 33.3% (n =6) had no specific theme, 27.8% (n =5) were about mental health (including the management of LGTBIphobia or addictions) and 22.2% (n =4) were used as a political programme for his party M´ as Madrid. Apart from these, there were three other streamings (16.7%) about sectorial topics: one to talk about his proposal to legalise cannabis, another to question meritocracy in Spain and a third about the video games and e-sports sector. 4.2. Impact on the audience Errej´ on’s Twitch channel attracted a mean of 523.53 simultaneous spectators in 2021, according to the average of the data recorded by TwitchTracker and SullyGnome. A mean of more than 700 followers listened to three speeches: his first live streaming (21 January, 887.5), his broadcast on the day after the speech he made from the Parliament Stand about paying more public attention to mental health (25 February, 744.5) and on the day that the local Madrid Community elections took place (4 May, 1220). His audience peaked during these three live streamings. The maximum peak was 1755 followers (4 May). Not meeting a set streamings frequency influenced the number of followers. During the last 4-monthly period, when his speeches were more spread out in time and after no streaming in summer months, the peak did not reach his mean number of followers at the beginning of the year: 352.5 followers versus the mean of 572.35 followers recorded from January to May (Fig. 3). Therefore, the data indicate more public attention at the beginning than at the end of the studied period. The increase in the number of followers of this channel was greater for the first four live streamings (more than 350 new followers per streaming). Their number did not change on May 4, 2021 with 11,938. Therefore in 4 months, his followers increased by 425.44%. In December 2021, the community came to 13,655. The resulting mean was 189.36 new followers per live streaming. There was a mean of 870 single viewings for each live streaming. Three live streamings stood out with around 2000 viewings: his second live streaming about several themes (1,986), the one about defending mental health in Parliament (1,968) and his live talk #M´ asMadrid4M (1,955). Conversely with no viewings, there were two live streamings that focused on the electoral campaign. This demonstrates that the broadcasts dealing more with electoral persuasion attracted less citizen interest. 4.3. Accountability During his first live streaming on January 21, 2021, ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on justified using this channel as a “public server’s” “bidirectional communication” means with society; “a kind of contact without filters or intermediaries”. For this politician, “making this effort to go out and listen” is necessary to know the “problems, questions, concerns, desires or themes on the street that perhaps do not reach institutions”. The following are pointed out as the advantages over social networks: @ierrejon: “This [accountability] should be practiced by more Members of Parliament because it helps to explain what is done, to justify reasons, to accept critical questions” (29 September 2021). @ierrejon: “Live streaming like this gives you some opportunities that the rest don’t, with things you don’t have to explain in just two sentences because here you can expand on things a bit more” (30 November 2021). In the conception of this digital platform as part of Errej´ on’s communication strategies, orientation towards accountability is detected. Errej´ on conceives his Twitch channel as a way to practice monitory democracy [25,26] because he seeks to supervise public representatives’ actions as, in his case, a Member of Parliament. As this was driven by him, we could call it self-monitoring. With this digital means, he intends to provide explanations about his proposals and political decisions by applying the principle of transparency by submitting himself to citizens’ scrutiny. In order to analyse how accountability is put into practice on this Twitch channel and to answer RQ3, the frameworks of Errej´ on’s speech were taken by analysing 667 citations (Table 5) that fall in four categories (campaign issues, sectorial polity issues, personal Fig. 3. Spectators for the @ierrejon streaming on Twitch in 2021. Source: TwitchTracker and SullyGnome. M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es Heliyon 9 (2023) e13262 9 Table 5 Frameworks of ´ I˜ nigo Errej´ on’s speech on Twitch. Source: Atlas.ti 21012021_First live streaming on Twitch 20092021_ We talk about the Law on Cannabis 30112021_ Meritocracy 19102021_ Errej´ on and Ines Hernand 25022021_ Talking about mental health from Parliament 23042021_ Talking with Javier Giner about his book ‘Me, an addict’ 21042021_Daily LGTBIphobia with Victor Gutierrez 2 06042021_ Talking with M´ onica García about mental health 07092021_We return to Twitch 2 de 2 16042021_ Campaign ideas 2 Total Relative total Campaign issues 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 21 26 3.90% Sectorial policy issues 43 43 43 30 80 22 26 20 6 16 329 49.33% Personal issues 75 7 4 4 21 7 3 2 1 6 130 19.49% Political issues 37 24 19 3 44 10 16 9 8 12 182 27.29% 667 100% M. Iranzo-Cabrera and A. Casero-Ripoll´ es