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In 2024, El Salvador underwent a transformation marked by the re-election of Nayib Bukele and his security, economic, and governance programs. Bukele consolidated his “iron fist against gangs” strategy, drastically reducing violence but generating some international concerns about human rights abuses and the weakening of the rule of law.
Although much of the population values the increase in security, the economy became their main concern, with high living costs and lack of employment. The country’s international relations oscillate between attracting technological investment and mistrust from organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the face of an unclear economic policy with announcements linked to Bitcoin. At the social level, culture and creativity have had space, but freedom of expression and the press face major restrictions.
In this scenario, El Salvador faces the challenge of balancing stability, development, and democracy.
At ProBox, we began studying digital sociopolitical discourse in El Salvador in 2023, mainly due to the increase in measures that threaten freedom of expression and control of the national media.
In 2024, we recorded 180 sociopolitical trends positioned in X, accumulating approximately 1,754,278 tweets. In the report “#ElSalvador2024: the battle of narratives on social media 2024,” we present the most relevant data from this conversation, as well as some of the events that marked the year.
Key points of the report:
- The government was the main generator of trends on X with 129 (71.67% of the total), but these accounted for only 16.36% of the tweets recorded (approximately 286,949), as the international conversation was more relevant.
- Throughout 2024, the hashtag #RégimenDeExcepción (State of Exception) trended seven times, all driven by the government, accumulating approximately 11,022 tweets. The State of Exception was first implemented in El Salvador in 2022 and has since been extended multiple times.
- Our monitoring recorded 40 trends with more than 32,000 messages about Legislative Assembly sessions, which was the most repeated narrative in the government conversation.
- Civil society was the second most relevant actor in the digital conversation, positioning 32 trends (17.78% of the total) and approximately 117,092 tweets.
- Five themes stand out among civil society: electoral fraud, criticism of Bukele, rejection of mining, regional elections, and Bukele’s inauguration.
- The Salvadoran electoral processes were the most relevant narrative of the year in terms of messages, with 39 trends and 185,695 tweets.
El Salvador has changed significantly in terms of security, but faces major economic and democratic challenges. While Bukele remains popular, his focus on government control could end up weakening the country’s institutions in the long term.
Looking ahead, the challenge is to understand how the narrative on social media impacts the political and social reality in El Salvador, especially given Bukele’s close ties to digital content creators and his rejection of the independent press.
