Influencia de las redes sociales en las estrategias de comunicación política durante los procesos electorales presidenciales del 2025 en el cantón Tosagua, Manabí

Abstract

Abstract: In recent years, social media has become a channel for political engagement both in large cities and in localities like the Tosagua canton, where urban and rural dynamics coexist with varying levels of connectivity. Given the limited existence of research in these types of contexts, the objective of this research was to analyze how the Tosagua electorate receives and understands political messages shared on social media during the 2025 presidential elections. To this end, a quantitative approach was used, with a non-experimental, cross-sectional design, in which a structured survey was administered to a stratified probability sample of voters. The findings indicate that WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok are the main sources of political information, and that short videos have high recall, but still do not have a direct influence on voting intentions. This means that viral misinformation, fueled by interpersonal trust, creates an information ecosystem that affects how people remember and value political messages, without automatically determining their vote.