Resumen: El presente artículo aborda la comunicación digital, emitida por 10 presidentes sudamericanos, en el contexto de salida de la pandemia del Covid-19 (segundo semestre 2021). En ello, se analiza el liderazgo comunicacional presidencial en el ámbito de las relaciones internacionales y, particularmente, respecto de la atención que en sus comunicaciones brindan a temáticas del plano internacional, así como la dirección que dicha atención asume.La estrategia metodológica puesta en práctica adapta mecanismos utilizados en estudios similares, combinando elementos del big data, con aquellos propios del análisis de contenido. En total se analizaron 11.616 datos/mensajes.Los hallazgos obtenidos explicitan que la comunicación digital presidencial en Sudamérica presta poca atención al ámbito internacional y, en los escasos espacios que se le reserva a esta temática, dicha comunicación se direcciona en virtud de temáticas de orden global, por sobre las bilaterales o multilaterales. Ello, en parcial contraste con nuestra hipótesis, que postula que la comunicación digital presidencial en Sudamérica presta sí poca atención al ámbito internacional, pero que en los escasos espacios que se le reserva a esta temática, dicha comunicación se direcciona en virtud de rivalidades bilaterales.

Abstract: Presidential leadership in South America plays a crucial role in the understanding of political behavior in both international relations and the formulation and implementation of foreign policies in each country. Beyond the inherent logics that underpin the presidential systems in Latin America, this leadership has been assuming significant communicational characteristics. These are primarily characterized by deployment in the digital environment that -with even greater autonomy- the region's presidents put into practice; during the COVID-19 pandemic, this leadership became even more vertiginous. In this article we address the communication that South American presidents put into practice in the digital political territory during the second half of 2021. This, in order to understand three analytical dimensions: a) presence and technical strategies put into practice; b) levels of thematic attention placed at the international level; and c) direction that such attention assumes, either bilaterally, multilaterally or globally. It is these three levels that order the questions that guide this research and the analysis of the 11,616 data that compose it. The adopted methodological approach combines content analysis and big data components, using methods from previous investigations. The resulting hypothesis follows the following logic: South American presidential digital communication pays little attention to the international sphere, and in the few spaces reserved to this topic, said communication is addressed either because of global aspects along the same lines or because of "rivalries" from which domestic benefits can be derived. There won't be many regional or multinational guidelines at that point. The political and economic environment in which this study is conducted is also crucial to take into account, as the COVID-19 epidemic and its repercussions accounted for a significant portion of the presidential initiatives examined.

ABSTRACT The study of political communication that occurs from social networks has focused almost exclusively on the effectiveness of these platforms as electoral tools. However, the understanding of what we can understand as a public and political digital place, from which inputs can be obtained to improve the decision and design processes and monitoring of public policies, seems to be still unattended. This study aims to argue the existence of a “digital political territory”, where it is not only possible to deploy political action, but it is also possible to find -recognize and analyze, by means of big data techniques- deliberative elements of the politic discussion, which could serve as inputs for public action sand decisions (beyond merely electoral ones). For this we identified six specific characteristics, whose cumulative presence would make up the digital political territory, and we argued that it would only be on Twitter where we can find those characteristics.

RESUMEN El estudio de la comunicación política que se da a partir de las redes sociales se ha concentrado casi exclusivamente en la eficacia que tendrían estas plataformas como herramientas electorales. Sin embargo, la comprensión de lo que podemos entender como un espacio público y político digital, del cual puedan válidamente obtenerse insumos para mejorar los procesos de decisión y de diseño y monitoreo de políticas públicas, pareciera ser aún desatendida. Este estudio pretende argumentar la existencia de un “territorio político digital”, en donde no solo es posible desplegar la acción política, sino que también es posible encontrar -recoger y analizar, por medio de técnicas de big data- elementos deliberativos propios de la discusión política, que podrían servir como insumos para acciones y decisiones públicas (más allá de las meramente electorales). Para ello identificamos seis características específicas, cuya presencia cumulativa conformaría el territorio político digital, y argumentamos que sería solo en Twitter en donde podemos encontrar esas características