## 4 Results
### Experimental Results
#### 4.4.3 Televised Debates  
Debates are arguably the most relevant events during electoral processes, and in particular, televised leaders' debates. The conversation during political debates on TV often migrates to the online plane, so it is also relevant to look at the behavior of the unmanned methodology proposed here in regard to the main televised debates that happened during the Spanish general election process, which are summarized in Table 3.  
Figure 10: Daily relative amount of tweets extracted using the PSOE-related hashtags in percentage (#laespanfaaquieques, #hazquepase, #hicisteisquepasara, #siemprehaciadelante, and #votapsoe). Notice how the activity responds to the electoral processes.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Hashtag** & **TV Channel** & **Date** & **Tweets Extracted** \\ \hline \#folendebate & La Sexta & 13/04/19 22:00 & 72,749 \\ \#feldebateenrtvce & TVE & 22/04/19 22:00 & 952,546 \\ \#debateatresmedia & A3/La Sexta & 23/04/19 22:00 & 116,732 \\ \#ledebatedecisivo & A3/La Sexta & (*) & 971,681 \\ \#debattv3 & TV3 & 24/04/19 22:00 & 90,937 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 3: Summary of the debates’ hashtags. (*) Note that féldebatedecisivo was not the hashtag for the debate but was widely used for the talk-shows that discussed its outcome.  
Figure 9: The evolution of PSOE-related hashtags, since the Spanish general elections pre-campaign to the European post-campaign.  
During the first weekend of the campaign, a warm-up debate among female candidates--hashtagged with #L6 Neldebate--was held on La Sexta Noche, a political late night show. Then, the two main debates with the leaders of the main parties took place on the 22 nd in the public television (TVE) and the 23 rd in Atresmedia (a media corporation providing signal to both Antenna 3 and La Sexta tv channels). Other regional debates, such as the one on Catalan public television (TV3), were also captured; this one on the 24 th of April, in particular, involved the leading candidates for Barcelona.  
Besides the detection of the topics themselves (see Figure 11), a few things are worth considering. First, the wording used in the hashtags is inconsistent, so again, even if the TVE debate is tracked with #eldebateenrtve, the Atresmedia one shortens the correct sentence \"el debate en Atresmedia\" into #debateatresmedia. Second, different languages are captured without the need for adaptation; #debattv3, for instance, which is in Catalan instead of Spanish. Third, all events happen during prime time on the nights of their respective days, but the discussion is as important (or, in some cases, even stronger) on the following day (see Figure 12). Therefore, had we tracked the hashtag only during the TV program, at least half of the information would have been lost. Finally, notice how the Atresmedia debate was actually discussed on talk-shows using a different hashtag (#eldebatedecisivo, the deciding debate); this results in a dual conversation, one much weaker--hashtagged with the \"official\" #debateatresmedia, only 116,732 tweets--and another one which generates much more conversation--hashtagged with the spontaneous #eldebatedecisivo, 971,681 tweets. Thus, tracking only the official hashtag for the debate would have meant a loss of almost a million tweets containing the bulk of the discussion.  
Figure 11: Calendar heatmap for the multiple televised debates with candidates.  
Figure 12: Daily relative amount of tweets extracted using the hashtags for each political debate in percentage (#léoneldebate, #eldebateenrtve, #debateatresmedia, #eldebatedecisivo, and #debattv3). For the purposes of clarity, notice that the y-axis scale is not equal across all hashtags.