In the era of TikTok and digital media, what matters for generating engagement is telling a good story—one that moves and impacts. This phenomenon could be called the rise of digital storytelling, and in politics, it has brought about a transformation in communication where emotion and performance have become crucial to winning political sympathies. Two Latin American leaders embody this new trend with particular clarity: the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and the President of Argentina, Javier Milei. Both have made social media their main stage.
The relationship between emotion, politics, and social media had already been noted by sociologist Manuel Castells in Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age over a decade ago. Today, scholars such as BJ Fogg, Brian Massumi, Zeynep Tufekci, and Zizi Papacharissi have expanded this field of study, showing how digital media not only transmit ideas but also mobilize emotions and shape emotional publics.
In this context, it is crucial to pay attention to the sensitivities embedded in digital narratives. This combination—strategic storytelling and emotional appeal—is not new; it has long been successfully applied in digital marketing. What we are now seeing is that this logic has forcefully migrated to politics, where telling emotionally resonant stories has become a key tactic for persuasion and virality.
Platforms are designed to amplify what stirs emotion. Algorithms reward what provokes intense reactions: likes, shares, visceral comments. This is why the content posted on Bukele’s and Milei’s social media accounts is brief, direct, and often aggressive. Rather than inform, it aims to provoke. Their communication is essentially performative: every gesture, every phrase serves a dramatic function.
Bukele and Milei are more than effective communicators; they are true digital political storytellers who understand that governing today also means constructing themselves as narrative characters capable of eliciting emotional identification, controversy, and spectacle.
They are carefully crafted personas built to make an impact on platforms like TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook. For instance, Bukele has fired officials via X, showcases public works inaugurations on TikTok, and posts short, punchy speeches that circulate across the region. Milei, guided by his digital strategist Iñaki Gutiérrez, uploads unedited, short, direct, and “authentic” videos. The goal is to appear genuine. This is not spontaneity—it is a strategic performance of spontaneity.
Both presidents have grasped a fundamental truth: on social media, success does not depend solely on the depth of an argument, but on the ability to create emotional connection. That is why their speeches appeal directly to passions: anger, hope, fear, pride. And above all, indignation.
Moreover, phrases like “the caste,” “the coolest president in the world,” and “socialism is a disease of the soul” function as keywords, as tags designed to circulate, go viral, and rank on search engines. These are emotionally charged soundbites, crafted to be reproduced by the very logic of the platforms.
This new way of doing politics has a deeper background. Bukele and Milei are not just governing; they act as redeemers, as heroes in a story where they alone confront evil. This heroic narrative is simple and powerful: the country is broken, the political class is corrupt, and only they can save it. It doesn’t matter whether their proposed solutions are viable. What matters is that the story sounds emotionally credible.
And this narrative succeeds because it fits within a broader emotional structure. As anthropologist Alejandro Grimson has said, we live in an “emotional landscape” marked by disillusionment, fear of the future, and the sense that the world is collapsing. Populist leaders who understand this emotional climate don’t need technical arguments—they need to know how to tell a story that conveys the feeling of salvation.
This emotional turn has consequences. In an environment dominated by the logic of virality, truth matters less and less. Rigor is not rewarded—impact is. Politics becomes entertainment, and leaders become influencers. The line between information and fiction blurs, leaving behind communication strategies crafted by media experts.
This does not mean that emotion is the enemy of democracy. But when narrative replaces thought, when the algorithm replaces debate, we enter dangerous territory. Because an emotional democracy, with no room for criticism or reason, risks turning into a spectacle-driven democracy—volatile and authoritarian.
Understanding the mechanisms of digital storytelling and the emotional turn in politics is essential for rethinking the politics of today and tomorrow. It’s not just about pointing fingers at Presidents Bukele and Milei, but about understanding why their way of communicating is so successful.
*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.
Autor
Sociologist and digital media expert. Doctoral researcher at Bielefeld University, Germany. His research interests encompass the intersection of digital media, digital politics, and contemporary cultural studies.
