“Sorry. Do you know what?”: proximity and intimate ethos in @CFKArgentina

Abstract

This article seeks to establish itself as a space for reflection around a theme that, some years ago, has gained space in social sciences and, particularly, in communication´s field: political discourse in social networks on the internet –particularly on Twitter–. Against some optics who considers that the social networks generate a more participatory type of democracy, we approach the corpus with a critical look in relation to these considerations. Therefore, our objective transits in at least two ways. On the one hand, we characterize, in a general way, the social network Twitter; network that, as time goes on, brings together numerous researchers who link the field of communication with politics. On the other, based on the analysis of the account of former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (@CFKArgentina), we gave some approximations and hypotheses about the use of the tool. The modalities of use of Twitter are also connected with certain developments reflected in our doctoral thesis around the category of intimate ethos and complementarily recovering the notion of proximity proposed by Rosanvallon (2009). We postulate, therefore, that the former president generates on Twitter an environment of proximity that requires an active and previously convinced reader.