Opinion: What the Phenomenon Mariana Rodríguez explains of current Mexican politics

Fernando Bustos Gorozpe is an academic at the Universidad Anáhuac Norte y Sur and also at the University of Communication in Mexico.He is a PhD in Philosophy.

A few weeks ago, the Out of ContextDigital with potential to become viralized memes only at the rate of your ridicule.

This material shows the little understanding that the candidates and their teams have about the digital image, their possible power as meme, and how to communicate on platforms such as Tiktok, which has almost 23 million users in the country, of theWhich more than half are under 24 years old.

The lack of expertise is not only to understand the new languages of these communicational channels, but to speak volume: the ability to speak for the masses and viralize what is said on social networks, which has to do with exposing an apparent authenticity and havingA great level of synthesis.The candidates fail to speak it and only laugh, they are weak and no electoral meaning, far from the Weaponized Memes, who have a political purpose of molding and changing public opinion when they viralize, which used the Alt-Right inAmerican elections in 2016 or Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections of 2018.

Who is doing great digital communication is Mariana Rodríguez Cantú, Megainfluencer, businesswoman and wife of the candidate for the governorship of Nuevo León for Citizen Movement, Samuel García, 33 years old.Currently 1.5 million accounts are followed on Instagram (her husband is followed by 714,000) and, although it is very difficult to obtain clear data, it is considered one of the influencers that has the most profits in the country.

In his account he announces various makeup products (including his own brand, Mar Cosmetics), articles for skin care, jewelry, restaurants and also Samuel García.From his platform he has given him the impulse he does not get on social networks, to return another product to promote.

For weeks, among her posts on makeup and her personal life, she places the electoral actions that she and her husband do: she announces where they will be hitting stickers, reposte stories from those who go to their events on the street, confront or expose to theAdversaries of her husband, speak of Garcia (without him necessarily appearing in the stories) and posts from her secondary account products that the owners of small businesses lead to her campaign acts for her to promote them.

More than Samuel, it is Mariana who seems to have the power of real call.It is one of her who people want photos and it is on her Instagram account that they want to appear, especially business owners and owners, because a mention promises a good exhibition.It is not surprising that there are Mariana's theme birthday parties or people buying the tennis "phospho-fosfo" that popularized.Even the contestants at different political positions in Nuevo León by Citizen Movement met with her.

Rodriguez has become the center and face of a political movement in that state that is not only on the Internet but also jumps to reality.According to the latest survey by Reforma, Garcia went from having an electoral preference of 8% to 36% in two months, and leads the preferences despite the mistakes that the couple has had due to the constant exposure of their private life on social networks and Internet.

There are several examples, such as the live broadcast where Garcia demands Mariana to lower her knee because she is "teaching a lot with his dad.It is no accident that Garcia is the candidate in Nuevo León who reports more digital campaign expenses, because he knows that he has to minimize risks and improve the strategy.

Garcia's opponents also perfectly understand what Mariana means for the campaign.A few days ago Rodríguez was denounced by four games against the National Electoral Institute for his Stories on Instagram where he shows the products that people take.It is requested to be considered as a campaign expense of Garcia.In 2018 something similar happened, when the influencer was accused of making electoral propaganda through Facebook, but it was considered unfounded.

There are those who find the culture of like and the logic of influencer in the world of politics worrying.But one might ask if we have not been setting up in the bureaucracy of the show and applicants who position themselves media as products.Rodríguez and García is just the continuation of what happened in the 2012 elections with former President Enrique Peña Nieto and his then wife Angélica Rivera, famous telenovelas actress.The difference is that Garcia's candidacy is not being built from a television station, but from his wife's digital media power.Some political games continue to bet on the characters that are already known thanks to television, such as the fighter Sacred Mask, the singer Paquita La del Barrio or the driver Alfredo Adame.Soon, some will begin to do it with influencers born on social networks.Like the media, politics continually appeals to citizens' emotions.

This is just the beginning of a political game that seeks to attract the electorate through (not so) new communication channels.As Alex González pointed out in Rest of World, political influencers are already coming.In Tiktok there are young people with more than 100,000 followers talking about politics and who have made fans from their opinions.They are potential figures for the parties.And although it is clear that there are worrying ethical problems around the influencers, such as the ability to reproduce fake news and speak superficially or without sufficient information about different topics, its media power will not disappear as long as we are not able to give up the logics of the logics of theshow and the cult of celebrity.

Even when you can displease how it operates, Mariana Rodríguez seems to be so far the best political communicator of these elections, and what she has done with Samuel García's team is a way to possible new logics of political campaigns.Many of the dances in Tiktok and memes generated by different contenders will go into oblivion, as they are digital waste that is meaningless.But what she has done will probably remain in time and will be replicated in the following campaigns, both good and bad.

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