Affective citizenship: dynamics of emotional responses to digital news content during an election in Ecuador

Introduction Political participation is not limited to direct involvement in electoral campaigns or political organizations. For many citizens, elections are experienced primarily through exposure to the surrounding information environment. This study examines the affective responses of citizens without direct electoral involvement to political news during the second round of the 2025 Ecuadorian presidential election. Methods Twenty-two participants evaluated two standardized news leads per day across a nine-day observation period, comprising 6 days before and 3 days after the election, yielding 396 observations per affective outcome. Two dimensions of affective response were assessed: perceived emotional impact and pleasantness. Linear mixed-effects models accounted for repeated observations within participants and variability between news stimuli. Results In the primary analysis of 22 participants who completed the full protocol (396 observations), perceived emotional impact was significantly higher in the post-election than in the pre-election phase. This association was no longer statistically significant in a sensitivity analysis including 85 participants —comprising the 22 completers and 63 participants with partial data— and 989 observations. An exploratory temporal analysis found no systematic linear trajectory in emotional impact across the observation period. Pleasantness did not differ significantly between electoral phases. In an exploratory stimulus-level analysis, positive-toned news leads received significantly lower pleasantness ratings than negative-toned leads, whereas neutral-toned leads did not differ significantly from negative-toned leads. Discussion Taken together, these findings contribute to understanding how citizens without direct electoral involvement may respond to political news during an electoral process. They highlight the importance of distinguishing perceived emotional impact from pleasantness and suggest that immediate affective responses may be associated both with an electoral phase and with characteristics of individual news stimuli. Although these findings remain exploratory and are bounded by the observational design and the limited number of stimuli, they provide a basis for further research on the affective dimensions of citizens’ exposure to electoral information.