Covid-19 in Spain

Steve Bannon, the main ideologue of Donald Trump's media campaign, points out that populist political leaders are more likely to govern a country when there is a deep social and economic crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has generated a very serious impact on the world economy. Specifically, the GDP of Spain fell by 11.6% in 2020 (Kahan, 2018). Although the social, health and economic consequences of the crisis remain to be seen, we can analyze how the popularity of Spanish politicians has changed, and specifically of those considered populists, during the first year and a half of the pandemic. The measures imposed by the Spanish government to curb the Covid-19 pandemic have been highly criticized by Vox, a party led by Santiago Abascal, and considered by several recent studies (Google & Trends, 2021; Vampa, 2020) as an example of right-wing populism in Spain. Vox's criticism of the government for the management of the pandemic reached Congress in October 2020 through a motion of censure that unsuccessfully tried to remove Pedro Sánchez from Moncloa.

In early 2020, Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the Covid-19 outbreak had become a pandemic. Given the increase in deaths and infections, the Spanish government decreed a state of alert on March 14^th, allowing citizens to leave their homes only in certain circumstances.

On October 25^th, 2020, given the escalation of positive cases of Covid-19, the Spanish government declared a second state of alert, and on October 29^th, the House of Representatives approved the extension of the state of alert until May 2021. Both states of alarm were challenged by Vox before the constitutional court and both were declared unconstitutional.

Populism: concept and political parties

Populism comes from the suffix ism (doctrine and/or tendency) and the word “popular”, from the Latin popularis, relative to the people ( ; DEEL, 2020) (López, 2000). In the 20^th century, during the interwar period, the term was used to refer to very heterogeneous political movements, both rural and urban, throughout the world (Rivas, 2019). If fascism was a reaction against the emancipatory possibilities of its time, contemporary populism is a reaction against the lack of ideas and political reactions that current society is experiencing (Matthews-Ferrero, 2018). For some authors (Rivas, 2019), this may constitute a threat to democratic values ​​when its substantial content is exclusive and anti-democratic.

The idea of ​​populism is used in politics in a pejorative way to denigrate political opponents to relate it to demagoguery (Álvarez, 2014; ) (Ylarri, 2015). In the second decade of the 21^st century, several authors (Romera, Mudde, Kaltwasser, & Cristóbal, 2019) consider that populism causes the division of society into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the pure people versus the corrupt elite. And, therefore, populism defends that politics should be the expression of the general will of the people (Romera et al., 2019).

Populism itself cannot be placed on the political spectrum of the left and/or right, therefore, there are populist discourses of different political courts. Likewise, populist movements can also mix left or right-wing positions, for example, combining xenophobic attitudes, commonly associated with the extreme right, with redistributive economic policies closer to those of the left.

The ideologies with which populism can be paired can be contradictory, giving rise to different forms of populism that can oppose each other (Brett, 2013). For example, in Latin America during the 1990s, populism was often associated with politicians like Peru's Alberto Fujimori who promoted neoliberal economics, while in the 2000s it was associated with those that promoted socialist programs, like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (Ylarri, 2015). Besides left-wing and right-wing populists, populist figures such as Italy's Beppe Grillo have been characterized as centrist and liberal, while groups such as Turkey's Justice and Development Party have been described as conflating populism with Islamism (Park, 2018), and India's Bharatiya, the Janata Party has been considered to conflate populism with Hindu nationalism (Mcdonnell & Cabrera, 2019). Although populists from different ideological traditions can oppose each other, they can also form coalitions, as seen in the Greek coalition government that brought together left-wing populist Syriza and Greek independent right-wing populists in 2015 (Brett, 2013).

Supporters of the ideational definition (Romera et al., 2019) have also distinguished left-wing and right-wing populists. The latter manifests itself as the juxtaposition of the people and the elite, as well as an additional group, which is also considered a group separate from the people and favored by the elite, such as immigrants, homosexuals, travelers, or communists. In terms of political rights, populism is often conflated with nationalism, and people and nations become interchangeable categories in its discourse.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, a wave of populist parties has flooded the international political arena. Several recent studies (Cortese and Proffitt, 2012; Berrocal-Gonzalo et al., 2017; Matthews-Ferrero, 2018; Sánchez Castillo, 2018; Zugasti and García, 2018; Rivas, 2019; Rodríguez-Serrano et al., 2019; Żuk and Żuk, 2020) (Berrocal-Gonzalo, Martín-Jiménez, & Gil-Torres, 2017; Cortese & Proffitt, 2012; Matthews-Ferrero, 2018; Rivas, 2019; Żuk & Żuk, 2020) have researched populist discourses and the influence of their leaders on the electorate. The arrival of Donald Trump to the United States government marks a climax in this type of political speech on the international scene (Villa-Gracia and Cerdán, 2020). As well as LePen's success in the French elections, some Brexit speeches, or a sector of the Catalan independence movement. Beyond mixing with other ideologies, the core of populism consists of the simplification and restriction of ideological concepts to better reach the electorate (Matthews-Ferrero, 2018).

In Spain, several studies ( ; Barberá & Martín del Fresno, 2019) (Casero-Ripollés, Sintes-Olivella, & Franch, 2017) have researched the populist nature of the Podemos political party and its leader Pablo Iglesias, others have done so on the incursion of the extreme right in the Spanish political landscape, through Vox and its leader Santiago Abascal (Dementiev, 2019; Ferreira, 2019; Rinken, 2019; Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019; Vampa, 2020).

Although Vox and Podemos were founded in the early 2010s, the two parties have followed different paths. Podemos won, four months after its formation (2014), five seats with 7.98% of the votes in the European elections (Vidal, 2018). And since then, it has achieved a presence in public institutions, becoming, since 2020, one of the parties that are part of the Spanish government after reaching an agreement with the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español).

Vox was founded in 2013 and did not have parliamentary representatives until the Andalusian elections of December 2018, where it won 12 seats and approximately 11% of the votes. On April 28^th, 2019, Vox increased its presence in Spanish institutions, when the party obtained 10.26% of the votes in the general elections. Much of the success of Vox, according to recent studies (Ferreira, 2019; Google & Trends, 2021) arose through the interaction of messages with political content on various social networks, including YouTube.

Although several authors (Ferreira, 2019; Google & Trends, 2021; Google & Trends, 2021; Rinken, 2019; Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019) have related the policies of Vox and Podemos (or Unidas Podemos) with that of populist parties, other authors (Google & Trends, 2021; Google & Trends, 2021) indicate that some parties and candidates from traditional parties such as PSOE or PP have adopted populist discourses in recent years.

Populism, fake news, post-truth

The rise of political parties with populist discourses has increased in the world since the financial crisis of 2008 but also due to the development of new technologies that allow a faster exchange of messages and ideological content. According to several authors (Cavaller, 2017; Hernández-Santaolalla & Sola-Morales, 2019), technological advances have allowed users to comment and interact in real-time while the news is happening. So, there is a greater risk than in the information exchange of the 20^th century, that a piece of news is not verified and is spread to millions of people who take it as true. This new proliferation of fake news is due to the immediacy offered by new information technologies in data exchange ( ; Hernández Conde and Fernández García, 2019) (Cavaller, 2017).

Even though a piece of news is identified as false a few hours after it has been broadcast, many users will not want to assume that it is false because the content of the news fits their ideology or they are simply not interested in knowing the truth. Several authors (Cavaller, 2017; Hernández-Santaolalla & Sola-Morales, 2019) have called this type of interaction “post-truth”, typical of the strategies of populist parties (Hernández Conde and Fernández García, 2019).

According to several research works (Ferreira, 2019; Rinken, 2019; Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019), these types of attitudes tend to develop more effectively in conflictive environments such as an economic crisis or a pandemic. In complicated social situations, citizens are more likely to act guided by their emotions, without contrasting the information they are consuming or disseminating on social networks. One of the latest, most prominent examples was the dissemination of messages on Twitter by former President Donald Trump denouncing, without definitive evidence, fraud in the last presidential elections in the United States. This speech, aimed at the emotions of a part of his electorate, culminated in the assault on the United States Capitol (Cottrell et al., 2018). The event ended with 4 civilians dead, 52 people arrested, a policeman killed, and 14 injured. NATO intelligence services informed their governments that the incidents were part of an attempted coup carried out by President Trump with the possible support of members of the federal security agencies (Google & Trends, 2021). This caused the social network Twitter to expel a president of the United States for the first time in history.

New technologies and the aestheticization of politics

The study of the influence of the media on politics is not something new. Several authors (Google & Trends, 2021; Rancière, 2006; Rockhill & Watts, 2009; Ungureanu, 2015) have determined that much of the populist discourse is determined by Walter Benjamin's philosophical idea of ​​political aestheticization. That is the ability of politicians, through the use of technological advances, to transmit ideas, ideologies, and even myths to citizens and even modify human behavior.

Mobile phones, computers, and modern televisions can connect the world's citizens through social networks and the Internet. These changes modify, according to some authors (Losiggio, 2018; Ungureanu, 2015), the way of understanding and participating in politics.

The aestheticization of politics (Babul, 2011; Google & Trends, 2021) ensures that one of the main characteristics of current societies is the importance of image or spectacle, where a modification of the real image of society is produced, to transform it into a more entertaining product, more attractive to consumers.

Political, advertising and marketing activities are responsible for educating consumer tastes through meaningful information in a specific context and for a specific purpose: to sell products, ideas, and make certain things look good, interesting, and convenient (Ungureanu, 2015). The media provide ideological information that is transformed into attitudes towards the world because they form and train senses, feelings, and create beliefs to determine certain social practices. With the appearance of the Internet and, later, social networks, this exchange of ideological information becomes a more complex process, where users actively intervene creating content of all kinds, be it texts, images, memes, videos... This unstoppable activity has modified the way that 20^th-century users had to consume television, radio, or other traditional mass media (Báez, Domínguez, & Delgado, 2019). And, therefore, it has modified the interaction of voters with their leaders and, above all, communication strategies in electoral campaigns.

All these factors greatly influence the success or failure of a politician. The degree of popularity is conditioned by technological factors that determine the so-called aestheticization of politics (Rosario and Quintana, 2010; ) (Google & Trends, 2021). If political candidates do not have a presence on television or the Internet, it is very difficult for citizens to know them and vote for them. Hence, the current importance of political candidates having a resonance in Internet searches, either on search engines such as Google or on social networks such as YouTube (Lobillo Mora and Gallart Moreno, 2020).

The multiscreen and YouTube

The audiovisual industry is undergoing an unprecedented transformation stage due to the technological innovations of the 21^st century (Guerrero et al., 2018; ) (Google & Trends, 2021). From a linear television model to an interconnected, multiscreen, interactive, and personalized television, the processes of production, marketing, and viewing of audiovisual content have been modified and simplified. This digital convergence merges three main industries: audiovisual, information technology, and telecommunications (Google & Trends, 2021). According to Guerrero et al. (2018), the possibility of YouTube users' videos gaining millions of views over traditional works of the advertising or television industry with a moderate budget is of great importance for contemporary audiovisual scenes, and most importantly, before the rise of digital natives.

This transformation in modern societies of audiovisual consumption through the Internet also has implications and is related to political changes. All populist leaders have a prominent presence on YouTube, either in their own content or generated by users who support or are opposed to their policies. For several authors (Rodríguez-Serrano et al., 2019), the proliferation of these types of videos on YouTube has generated an increase in populist political speeches, such as videos that incite Islamophobia and anti-Europeanism (Rodríguez-Serrano et al., 2019).

For years, the political content broadcast on traditional television has been related to the interaction that citizens make on the Internet. Besides searching Google for content related to what they saw on television, future voters also consume videos on YouTube about current political issues (Rodríguez-Serrano, García-Catalán, & Martín-Núñez, 2019). And in this sense, the Spanish populist parties have a large number of YouTube subscribers. For example, Vox has 382,000 subscribers and Podemos has 116,000. The generalist parties, with a more moderate ideology, PP (Partido Popular), PSOE, and Ciudadanos have less influence on YouTube "viewers". The PP has 79,700, Ciudadanos has 54,200, and the PSOE has 26,700 subscribers.

Although several studies have been carried out on the influence of Spanish populist parties on YouTube and other social networks (Ferreira, 2019; Sampietro & Sánchez-Castillo, 2020; Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019), to date no work researches the evolution of searches about Spanish populist parties on YouTube during the Covid-19 pandemic and neither in the last decade (2010-2020).