Affective Transfer in Digital Media Systems: Rethinking Political Legitimacy in Platform-Mediated Public

Abstract

Contemporary political crises have exposed the limitations of traditional political marketing instruments for building and sustaining legitimacy, particularly in contexts of widespread citizen rejection and low emotional identification with political leaders. Within platform-mediated communication environments—especially digitally mediated ecosystems such as TikTok—this article argues that a new mechanism has emerged: affective transfer as a form of mediated affective circulation. This mechanism operates when positive affect is not generated by political leaders themselves but by external, non-institutional mediators, and subsequently circulated and reinforced through platform logics of visibility, virality, and engagement. Adopting a qualitative and interpretive case study approach, the article examines how the circulation of a non-institutional humorous performance on TikTok may have contributed to processes of public acceptance for a sitting president in a context of acute institutional crisis. The findings suggest that the repeated circulation of such content stabilises recognizable affective codes and enables their symbolic association with presidential leadership, potentially facilitating indirect forms of legitimation without direct affective production by the leader. The article contributes by (1) conceptualizing affective transfer as a distinct interpretive mechanism within platformed communication environments; (2) differentiating it from charisma, populism, and traditional persuasion; and (3) demonstrating its implications for rethinking political legitimacy as a process that may be shaped by distributed affect within digitally mediated environments.

1. Introduction

Over recent decades, many political systems have experienced sustained institutional erosion characterised by polarisation, declining public trust, and the weakening of symbolic ties between representatives and the represented—an evolution widely documented in the contemporary literature on democratic legitimacy (Webster and Albertson 2022; Koliba 2025). In contemporary platform-mediated environments—particularly digitally mediated ecosystems such as TikTok—these transformations have reconfigured the conditions under which political legitimacy is constructed, shifting its foundations away from performance or legality towards dynamics of reputational positioning. Under such conditions, classical political marketing strategies—such as discursive persuasion, rational appeals, or the deliberate construction of charisma—show clear limitations in reversing entrenched patterns of affective rejection, particularly in contexts of prolonged distrust (Godber and Origgi 2023; Metz 2025).

In contexts of acute institutional crisis within democratic systems, where leadership emerges under conditions of widespread rejection and fragile legitimacy, new mechanisms of affective reconfiguration become observable. This article introduces the concept of affective transfer as an interpretive mechanism to explain how political legitimacy may be partially reconstructed when affect is not generated by leadership itself but is instead produced externally by non-institutional actors and subsequently associated with institutional power.

Amplified by digital platforms and their visibility and circulation dynamics, these processes are particularly visible in short-form video environments such as TikTok, where visibility, repetition, and engagement drive the circulation of symbolic content. Adopting a qualitative and interpretive approach, the article examines a presidential case in a Latin American democracy undergoing institutional crisis, analysing how the circulation of a non-institutional humorous performance may have contributed to processes of public acceptance for a sitting president without the use of conventional persuasive strategies. These dynamics have been documented both in recent scholarship on digital culture, political humour, and affective mediation (AlAfnan 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022; Barros et al. 2025) and in international media coverage of the Peruvian case following the presidential succession of 2025 (Associated Press 2025; Reuters 2025; BBC News Mundo 2025; El País 2025).

The article makes three main contributions. First, it conceptualises affective transfer as an analytical mechanism distinct from classical models of charisma, populism, and political persuasion, all of which presuppose the centrality of leadership in the direct production of affect (McMahon 2024; Metz 2025). More specifically, affective transfer is defined here as a process that occurs when (1) affect is generated externally by non-institutional actors, (2) circulates through platform-mediated environments, and (3) becomes symbolically associated with political leadership without direct affective production by that leadership. Second, it delineates the operation of this mechanism within platform-mediated media environments, where affective production is externalised and circulates beyond institutional control through mediated platform dynamics and distributed participation (Cheng and Li 2026; Daniel and Obholzer 2026). Finally, it discusses the strategic implications of this mechanism for the possible reconstruction of political legitimacy in contemporary democracies, offering a conceptual framework that is transferable to comparative analyses of institutional crisis scenarios (Gianolla et al. 2024; Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. Political Legitimacy as a Symbolic and Strategic Construction

Political legitimacy has traditionally been understood as the acceptance of the political order based on normative, legal, or procedural foundations (Koliba 2025; Warner 2025). However, recent scholarship has increasingly recognised that, under conditions of intense mediatization and declining trust, such explanations are insufficient to account for contemporary dynamics of public acceptance. In digitally mediated environments, legitimacy can no longer be reduced to institutional performance or formal authority, as it is increasingly shaped by symbolic processes that configure how leadership is perceived and evaluated (Metz 2025; Lind et al. 2025).

From this perspective, legitimacy operates as a relational and contingent phenomenon, produced through the interaction among leaders, institutions, media, and audiences. Within political marketing, affect emerges as a central symbolic resource that contributes to image formation and public acceptance beyond rational evaluations of performance (Bruns et al. 2024). As a result, legitimacy is not a stable attribute of power but an ongoing process of reputational positioning, subject to fluctuations in how leadership is interpreted within the public sphere.

Nevertheless, despite this growing emphasis on affect and symbolic construction, existing approaches remain largely centred on the assumption that affective production originates within leadership itself—whether through charisma, communicative performance, or strategic persuasion. This assumption reveals a critical limitation in contemporary digital environments, where affect increasingly circulates beyond institutional control and is shaped by platform logics of visibility, repetition, and mediated amplification processes (Bozdağ and da Silva 2025; Fernández 2025).

In this sense, contemporary digital ecosystems introduce a structural transformation that remains insufficiently theorised: political affect may be generated externally, within autonomous cultural spaces such as humour, parody, or memetic circulation, and subsequently influence perceptions of leadership without requiring its direct participation (AlAfnan 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022). While recent studies acknowledge the role of these cultural registers in shaping emotional climates, they do not fully explain how externally generated affect becomes symbolically associated with institutional power.

This theoretical gap is particularly relevant in contexts of institutional crisis, where leadership lacks the capacity to generate direct affective attachment. Under such conditions, understanding how legitimacy may be partially reconstructed through indirect and interpretive mechanisms becomes essential. It is within this unresolved tension that the present article situates its contribution.

2.2. Affect and Performance in the Construction of Political Leadership

Research in political communication has consistently demonstrated that acceptance and rejection of political leadership are not determined solely by rational or programmatic evaluations but are deeply shaped by affective dispositions structuring the relationship between citizens and power (Webster and Albertson 2022; Papacharissi et al. 2023). In contexts of institutional crisis, these dynamics become particularly salient, as affect directly influences social tolerance, communicative receptivity, and the symbolic stability of leadership (Gianolla et al. 2024).

Within political marketing, affect is not merely a spontaneous reaction but a strategic resource that modulates predispositions to accept messages, justify shortcomings, or sustain support under adverse conditions (Bozdağ and da Silva 2025; Koliba 2025). Accordingly, political communication research has traditionally linked affective production to the leader’s own performance, emphasising gestures, communicative styles, theatricality, and humour as mechanisms for generating charisma and direct emotional attachment (McMahon 2024; Artero Abellán 2025).

However, this leader-centred perspective presents clear limitations in contemporary digital contexts. It presupposes that affective legitimacy depends on the leader’s capacity to generate emotional proximity, overlooking scenarios in which leadership lacks charismatic capital, faces entrenched rejection, or operates under conditions of institutional rigidity that constrain performative flexibility (Leonard 2025). In such cases, the assumption of direct affective production becomes analytically insufficient.

Moreover, this perspective fails to account for the role of digitally mediated environments in redistributing the locus of affective production. Digital platforms—particularly short-form video ecosystems—do not merely amplify existing messages but shape conditions of visibility, repetition, and engagement, enabling affect to emerge, circulate, and stabilise independently of institutional actors (Cheng and Li 2026; Daniel and Obholzer 2026).

As a result, contemporary political communication cannot be fully understood through models centred exclusively on leadership performance. Instead, affect increasingly emerges through distributed and externally mediated processes, where non-institutional actors and platform logics play a central role in shaping the emotional conditions under which leadership is perceived.

Despite this transformation, existing theoretical frameworks remain insufficient to explain how affect generated outside institutional leadership becomes symbolically associated with political power and contributes to the reconstruction of legitimacy. To address this gap, the article introduces the concept of affective transfer as an interpretive mechanism that operates under specific conditions of external affect production, mediated circulation, and symbolic association with leadership.

2.3. Non-Institutional Mediators and Digital Platforms

The contemporary communicative ecosystem has enabled the consolidation of non-institutional actors—such as comedians, imitators, content creators, and influencers—as key intermediaries in the circulation of political narratives and affect. Operating outside formal political structures, these actors contribute to the symbolic construction of political meaning through informal, culturally resonant, and affectively engaging registers (AlAfnan 2025; Arrobo-Agila et al. 2025). Their perceived distance from institutional power enhances their credibility as “authentic” voices, allowing them to reduce affective resistance and facilitate forms of symbolic proximity that institutional actors often struggle to achieve (Barros et al. 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022).

This mediating role becomes particularly consequential within digital platforms characterised by high levels of visibility, repetition, and engagement dynamics. In such environments, the visibility and persistence of content are not determined by institutional relevance, but by platform-specific dynamics that privilege emotional intensity, recognisability, and replicability (Cheng and Li 2026; Wiggins 2025). As a result, the production and circulation of political affect increasingly occur through decentralised and networked processes that escape direct institutional control (Daniel and Obholzer 2026).

Crucially, this configuration creates the structural conditions for a form of indirect political mediation in which affect generated externally—by non-institutional actors and circulated through platform dynamics—can become symbolically associated with institutional figures. In this sense, digital platforms do not merely host political communication; they structure the pathways through which affect becomes visible and recurrent, enabling emergent mechanisms of legitimation that operate beyond traditional institutional frameworks.

3. Methodology

3.1. Methodological Approach and Research Design

This study adopts a qualitative, interpretive approach aimed at identifying the communicative mechanisms through which political legitimacy may be indirectly reconstructed under conditions of institutional crisis. Rather than measuring effects, the analysis focuses on the interpretation of relational and symbolic processes through which affect is produced, circulated, and associated with political leadership within digital environments (Lind et al. 2025; Coronel and Trigos 2025).

The research is structured as a single case study, selected for its high analytical intensity and its capacity to make visible emergent dynamics of contemporary digital political communication. In particular, the case allows for the examination of non-institutional mediation, affective circulation, and platform-mediated visibility processes as interconnected dynamics (Fernández 2025; Montaño Sánchez 2025). The objective is not statistical generalisation, but analytical generalisation: the identification of a mechanism that may be transferable to other political contexts characterised by crises of legitimacy (Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

This design is consistent with interpretive approaches that prioritise depth, contextualisation, and process-tracing over representativeness, allowing for the reconstruction of how meaning and legitimacy are dynamically configured within platform-mediated environments.

3.2. Sources and Analytical Criteria

The empirical corpus consists of 102 TikTok videos, including content produced by a digital creator acting as a presidential imitator, as well as related materials associated with the figure of the president circulating across digital and public spaces. The videos were selected based on their level of visibility and recurrence within the platform during the observation period, as well as their levels of virality, visualisation, and user engagement, prioritising those that appeared repeatedly in search results and user feeds associated with the relevant keywords and symbolic references. The observation period spans from June 2025 to January 2026, corresponding to a phase of institutional crisis and presidential succession documented by international media sources (Associated Press 2025; Reuters 2025; BBC News Mundo 2025; France 24 2025).

In addition, 1050 user comments associated with the most widely circulated videos were analysed to identify patterns of reception, including affective acceptance, rejection, identity ambiguity, and symbolic attribution of leadership. Comments were selected from high-engagement videos, prioritising those with visible interaction indicators (e.g., likes and replies), and were analysed through an interpretive coding process focused on recurring thematic and affective patterns. This dual corpus enables the examination of both production and reception processes within the same communicative environment.

The analysis focuses on visual, performative, and discursive dimensions—such as gesture, clothing, music, repetition of symbolic codes, and explicit references to leadership—as well as on the emotional expressions articulated by audiences. Analytical categories such as “identity ambiguity,” “symbolic attribution,” and “affective acceptance” were inductively identified through repeated observation of patterns within both the video content and user responses. Particular attention is given to the identification of affective registers, circulation dynamics, and mechanisms of symbolic appropriation.

Analytically, the study reconstructs the emergence of the non-institutional affective mediator, the circulation of humour as an affective register, and the subsequent processes of symbolic association with institutional leadership. While these processes are derived from direct analysis of the digital corpus, the broader context of institutional crisis and prior public rejection is substantiated through international journalistic sources, which are used exclusively for contextualisation rather than as direct evidence of causal effects or public opinion change.

On this basis, the following section presents the empirical case through a sequential reconstruction of four key moments: (i) the context of crisis and initial rejection, (ii) the emergence of the non-institutional affective mediator, (iii) the digital circulation of the humorous register, and (iv) the symbolic appropriation of affect by institutional leadership. This sequence provides the empirical foundation for the conceptual definition of the mechanism in the Discussion section.

To enhance methodological transparency,

Table 1. Summary of empirical corpus.

Element	Description
Platform	TikTok
Type of content	Short-form videos (presidential imitation, humorous performance, related political content)
Number of videos analysed	102 videos
Number of comments analysed	1050 user comments
Time frame	June 2025–January 2026
Selection criteria (videos)	High visibility, recurrence of symbolic elements, presence across multiple posts
Selection criteria (comments)	High-engagement posts (likes, replies, visibility)
Data collection method	Manual observation and iterative platform-based navigation
Analytical approach	Qualitative interpretive analysis
Key analytical categories	Identity ambiguity, affective acceptance, symbolic attribution

summarises the main characteristics of the empirical corpus, including its composition, selection criteria, and analytical dimensions.

To provide greater detail on the interpretive coding process,

Table 2. Coding framework and analytical criteria.

Category	Description	Example
Affective code	Recurrent symbolic element generating emotional recognition, often embedded in humour, parody, and performative cues	“Máquina”, expression, gestures
Identity ambiguity	Blurring between imitator and president	“I don’t know if he’s the president”
Symbolic attribution	Transfer of qualities to leadership	“You are the real president”
Affective acceptance	Expressions of tolerance or positive affect	“Because of you we can tolerate the president”

summarises the analytical categories, their operational definitions, and representative examples identified in the dataset.

4. Results: Empirical Case and Process Reconstruction

4.1. Initial Conditions: Institutional Crisis, Succession, and Baseline Rejection

This section reconstructs the initial conditions under which the observed affective transformation becomes analytically meaningful. The case is situated in Peru, within a context of acute institutional instability characterised by citizen distrust, political polarisation, and the cumulative erosion of the political system—dynamics consistent with broader processes of democratic legitimacy erosion identified in comparative research (Leonard 2025; Koliba 2025; Staab and Sorg 2025). This environment generated widespread political fatigue, affecting not only individual leaders but the institutional field as a whole.

Within this context, the Congress of the Republic declared the vacancy of President Dina Boluarte, in a process widely documented by international and regional media (Associated Press 2025; Reuters 2025; France 24 2025). Beyond the legal controversies involved, the episode intensified perceptions of institutional fragility and reinforced public rejection of political leadership.

In the absence of active vice-presidencies, constitutional succession placed José Jerí in the presidency in October 2025, under conditions of fragile legitimacy, citizen disaffection, and pronounced distrust toward the political system (Associated Press 2025; BBC News Mundo 2025). Public opinion data further illustrate the magnitude of prior rejection: the outgoing president recorded disapproval levels exceeding 80 per cent, according to surveys cited by international agencies and media, configuring a scenario of near-generalised rejection preceding the transition (Associated Press 2025; Reuters 2025).

From an analytical perspective, this sequence establishes a critical baseline: leadership emerges not from a neutral or contested context, but from a condition of accumulated delegitimation. Consequently, the initial expectations surrounding the new presidency were predominantly negative. However, towards the end of 2025, an abrupt shift in the climate of opinion was reported by international media following the succession, with media accounts indicating increased approval and reduced rejection (Associated Press 2025; Reuters 2025; BBC News Mundo 2025). Notably, this shift was not preceded by structural reforms, significant improvements in governance, or visible changes in citizens’ material conditions. In this article, these reports are used as contextual indicators of a broader climate of public reception, not as direct causal proof of legitimacy reconstruction.

In parallel, the president engaged in forms of public exposure based on everyday proximity—urban walkabouts, informal interactions, and references to slogans circulating on social media—interpreted by international media as attempts at affective reconnection in a context of legitimacy crisis (BBC News Mundo 2025; El País 2025). These gestures, however, do not constitute the origin of the affective shift analysed here, but rather can be read as a subsequent phase of institutional alignment with an already emerging emotional climate.

This distinction is analytically central. The case is not approached as a transient episode of digital popularity, but as a situation in which, under conditions of acute institutional fragility, a rapid affective displacement occurs. This raises a key question for political communication and legitimacy studies: how can a significant increase in public acceptance emerge in the absence of structural change, when leadership originates in a context of high prior rejection and persistent crisis? Here, “public acceptance” is used in a limited symbolic and reputational sense, rather than as a full demonstration of political legitimacy in a broader political-theoretical sense (Metz 2025; Gianolla et al. 2024; Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

4.2. Emergence of Non-Institutional Affective Mediation

The empirical reconstruction suggests the emergence of a non-institutional actor as a central mediator in the production of political affect. A digital creator performing as a presidential imitator generates a series of short-form videos that circulate widely on TikTok, mobilising resources characteristic of memetic culture—repetition, rhythm, recognisable gestural patterns, and a distinctive catchphrase (“máquina, máquina”) functioning as an affective trigger (AlAfnan 2025; Arrobo-Agila et al. 2025; Barros et al. 2025).

International media coverage explicitly documents the consolidation of this symbolic register, including the association between the imitator and the slogan: “Perú a toda máquina”, connoting acceleration, productivity, and national momentum (BBC News Mundo 2025; El País 2025). In this context, the term “máquina” operates not as a literal descriptor but as an affective shorthand for vitality, efficiency, and forward motion within popular political culture.

From a political marketing perspective, the analytical relevance of these performances lies not in their humorous content per se, but in their function as external producers of affect. The videos combine an aesthetic of authority—formal attire and a composed demeanour—with a playful, high-energy bodily choreography, creating a performative contrast between institutional gravitas and emotional accessibility. This contrast has been identified as a key mechanism for capturing attention, enhancing recall, and generating sympathy in saturated digital environments (Artero Abellán 2025; Domínguez-García et al. 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022).

The imitator functions as an effective affective mediator precisely because he operates outside the symbolic burdens of political power. Detached from governmental responsibility and from the accumulated rejection associated with the political class, his figure circulates as culturally accessible entertainment, increasing his capacity to generate positive affect in contexts of citizen exhaustion. This externalisation of affective production aligns with existing research on political affect, indirect legitimacy, and platform-mediated publics (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Gianolla et al. 2024; Metz 2025).

Audience reception provides further evidence of this mediating role. The analysis of user comments reveals recurring patterns of identity ambiguity, perceived proximity, and symbolic projection of affect onto institutional leadership. Expressions such as “I don’t know if he’s the president or not”, “you’re better than the original”, or “because of you we can tolerate the president” illustrate both a blurring between the imitator and the real political figure and the emergence of an incipient affective transfer. At this stage, the evidence supports an interpretive reading of symbolic association and affective softening, rather than a direct demonstration of broader political legitimation. Similar dynamics have been identified in studies of digital political performance and symbolic re-signification of leadership (Domínguez-García et al. 2025; Montaño Sánchez 2025), as well as in journalistic accounts of the Peruvian case (BBC News Mundo 2025; El País 2025).

At this stage, affect remains primarily anchored in the non-institutional mediator. However, the large-scale circulation of the affective code begins to normalise a positive symbolic association that is not dependent on governmental performance or on traditional persuasive strategies. Rather than proving a direct causal shift in legitimacy, this phase is interpreted as establishing the symbolic and communicative conditions under which affect may later be associated with institutional leadership. This phase is therefore analytically critical: it establishes the empirical conditions under which affect can later be displaced toward institutional leadership, providing the foundation for the mechanism of affective transfer developed in this article (Fernández 2025; Sarasqueta et al. 2025; Metz 2025).

4.3. Algorithmic Circulation and Stabilisation of the Affective Code

The third phase of the process concerns the algorithmically driven circulation and stabilisation of the affective code within the platform environment. Once produced by the non-institutional mediator, affect does not remain confined to individual performances but becomes embedded in dynamics of visibility, repetition, and amplification characteristic of short-form video platforms, where recognisability and replicability are prioritised (AlAfnan 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022).

In this case, the expression “máquina, máquina”—functioning as an affective marker associated with speed, energy, and effortless efficiency—together with its associated bodily register, operates as a highly recognisable and reproducible symbolic unit. Its simplicity and performative clarity enable rapid diffusion, audience appropriation, and consolidation as a high-circulation affective code within the digital public sphere (Wiggins 2025).

Through repeated exposure and user interaction, an initially isolated performative gesture is transformed into a stabilised emotional code. This code becomes reusable, commentable, and open to re-signification by multiple actors without the need for institutional coordination. Audiences do not act merely as recipients but as distributed agents of amplification, incorporating the affective code into comments, remixes, and cross-referential content. This process expands visibility while progressively normalising its symbolic association with the presidential figure.

Patterns of reception provide evidence of this transformation. Part of the audience displays identity ambiguity—blurring the distinction between the imitator and the actual president—while others explicitly recognise the imitation yet attribute positive qualities as transferable to institutional leadership. Expressions such as “you are the real president” or “because of you we can tolerate the president” illustrate how affect generated within a humorous register begins to exceed the boundaries of entertainment and project symbolically onto formal authority, suggesting an interpretive pattern of symbolic association rather than providing direct evidence of broader political legitimation. Similar dynamics have been identified in research on digital political performance and affective mediation, as well as in journalistic accounts of the case (Domínguez-García et al. 2025; BBC News Mundo 2025).

Importantly, the coexistence of favourable and critical reactions does not weaken the phenomenon; rather, it reinforces its circulation. In platform-mediated environments, interaction itself—regardless of valence—drives visibility, allowing controversy to function as a mechanism of amplification (Bruns et al. 2024). As a result, the affective code gains persistence and reach through continuous engagement.

This dynamic is further reinforced by the imitator’s direct interaction with audiences—replying to comments, participating in derivative content, and extending the performance into public spaces. These practices enhance perceived authenticity and consolidate affective trust, which are central to the effectiveness of non-institutional mediators in contexts of political fatigue (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Weinberg 2024).

Taken together, this phase consolidates a parallel layer of affective representation operating outside institutional control, in which the mediator produces affect and the audience sustains and amplifies it through distributed participation. The stabilisation of this affective code establishes the necessary conditions for the subsequent phase: its incorporation into institutional communication without direct prior production by political leadership (Fernández 2025; Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

4.4. Institutional Appropriation and Affective Transfer to Leadership

The final phase of the process marks a critical transition: affect generated externally and stabilised through digital circulation is incorporated into institutional communication. From a political marketing perspective, this moment represents the shift from social production of affect to its strategic appropriation as a symbolic resource, consistent with processes of re-signification observed in platform-mediated political communication (Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

Within this context, the slogan “Perú a toda máquina” becomes systematically integrated into governmental narratives and official communication for 2026, including internal indications of its use in institutional materials. While multiple national and international media outlets have linked this slogan to the previously stabilised memetic code circulating on social media (BBC News Mundo 2025; El País 2025), there is no explicit institutional acknowledgement of such origin. This absence reinforces the indirect and non-declarative character of the affective transfer process.

This appropriation extends beyond discourse. It is accompanied by public gestures of proximity—informal interactions, territorial presence, and reduced protocol—which function as mechanisms of symbolic anchoring. These gestures enable externally generated affect to be rendered compatible with institutional authority, without reproducing the original humorous performance (Weinberg 2024; Koliba 2025).

Additionally, sporadic references by the president to the affective code (“máquina”, in Spanish) are observed in public interventions, invoking the already stabilised symbolic register associated with speed, drive, and collective momentum. International media interpret these references as part of a broader process of image reconstruction in a context of legitimacy crisis (Reuters 2025; France 24 2025). In this analysis, such interpretations are treated as contextual indicators of reputational change rather than as direct empirical evidence of legitimacy reconstruction. Analytically, these references do not constitute imitation of the non-institutional mediator, but rather a selective incorporation of a socially legitimised symbol, adapted to the constraints of presidential authority (Metz 2025).

This phase can be interpreted as completing the mechanism under analysis. Affect initially produced by a non-institutional actor, and subsequently stabilised as a shared social code, is incorporated into institutional communication. It is this incorporation—rather than virality alone—that may enable the displacement of affect from exclusive concentration on the mediator towards partial relocation within formal leadership, thereby constituting an indirect and plausible mechanism of symbolic legitimation (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Fernández 2025).

Overall, the case reveals a form of political legitimation that does not rely on the leader’s original performance or personal charisma, but on the strategic alignment with externally produced affect. In doing so, it extends the analytical scope of political marketing beyond models centred on direct persuasion or leader-driven communication, highlighting the role of distributed affective production and algorithmically mediated circulation in contemporary processes of legitimacy construction (McMahon 2024; Metz 2025).

The convergence between digitally circulated affect and its subsequent institutional appropriation becomes particularly visible when both elements are considered together. On the one hand, the viral content produced by the non-institutional mediator consolidates the affective code through repetition, recognisability, and audience engagement. On the other, institutional communication formally integrates this same symbolic register into official discourse and policy frameworks.

This juxtaposition illustrates the completion of the affective transfer mechanism: a code initially generated outside the political system is stabilised within digital culture and later incorporated into institutional communication without explicit acknowledgement of its origin. Figure 1 visually captures this transition, linking the sphere of platform-mediated affect production with its formal adoption at the level of state communication.

Taken together, these observations do not constitute direct empirical evidence of changes in political legitimacy at the population level but rather support an interpretive reconstruction of a symbolic mechanism through which affect becomes associated with leadership within platform-mediated environments.

5. Discussion

5.1. Affective Transfer as a Mechanism of Political Legitimation in Platform-Mediated Environments

Although the case analysed is situated in Peru, affective transfer should not be interpreted as a local or exceptional phenomenon. Rather, it constitutes a situated manifestation of broader structural transformations that increasingly shape contemporary democracies. Within a global political ecosystem marked by institutional fatigue, affective rejection of elites, and recurrent crises of trust, legitimacy is progressively mediated through cultural and digital processes external to formal power (Koliba 2025; Staab and Sorg 2025). The analytical value of the case lies in its capacity to render visible—within a concentrated empirical setting—a mechanism that is potentially replicable across different democratic contexts, particularly where leadership lacks intrinsic charismatic capital or faces significant pre-existing affective rejection (Leonard 2025; Lind et al. 2025).

On the basis of the empirical analysis, this article advances affective transfer as an emergent mechanism within contemporary political marketing, closely linked to processes of indirect affective capital management in digital environments characterised by distributed emotional circulation. From this perspective, the leader operates as a symbolic brand: a figure to which emotions, meanings, and reputational value become attached, even when these are not produced directly by the leader.

Affective transfer may thus be defined as a process through which positive affect generated by non-institutional external actors—such as content creators, cultural mediators, or figures from digital entertainment—is symbolically associated with, and subsequently incorporated into, the strategic communication of political leadership. In this way, it may contribute to processes of symbolic acceptance and reputational reconfiguration, without the affect itself originating in the leader (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Gianolla et al. 2024; Fernández 2025).

This mechanism is analytically distinguishable from established concepts within the literature on leadership and political communication. Unlike charisma, affective transfer does not presuppose exceptional personal attributes or performative capacities on the part of the leader to generate direct emotional attachment (McMahon 2024; Metz 2025). Nor does it align with the logic of populism, as it does not rely on antagonistic discursive constructions or the explicit mobilisation of collective identities, but operates through indirect, culturally situated affective mediation (Kurylo 2025; Pérez-Díaz and Arroyas Langa 2025). Likewise, it diverges from traditional political persuasion, insofar as it does not function through rational argumentation, programmatic promises, or deliberate strategies of conviction, but through symbolic and emotional processes characterised by low levels of strategic intentionality (Webster and Albertson 2022; Godber and Origgi 2023).

In this respect, affective transfer introduces a form of legitimacy that should be understood as symbolic and interpretive rather than as a direct empirical demonstration of political legitimacy in a broader institutional sense. Instead, it is sustained through symbolic mediation, distributed emotional circulation, and the participatory architectures of digital platforms, which together configure ecosystems of symbolic and reputational competition (Wiggins 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022).

This finding broadens the analytical scope of political marketing and contributes to ongoing debates on legitimacy, affect, and positioning strategies within platform-mediated democracies. It provides a conceptual tool for understanding processes of indirect legitimation in contexts marked by persistent political crisis and democratic fatigue (Navarrete and Eder 2024; Novelli and Sandri 2025).

5.2. Digital Media, Affective Transfer, and the Reconfiguration of Political Legitimacy

First, identifying affective transfer as an emergent mechanism has direct implications for understanding contemporary digital media ecosystems, as it broadens the range of actors involved in shaping political visibility, reputation, and legitimacy. Non-institutional figures—such as comedians, impersonators, or content creators—cease to be merely peripheral agents of digital culture and instead operate as mediators within platform-based environments, capable of indirectly shaping the symbolic positioning of political leadership by configuring the emotional climate surrounding its public perception (AlAfnan 2025; Barros et al. 2025; Zulli and Zulli 2022).

Second, this mechanism highlights a process of externalisation in the production of affect that is deeply embedded in the logics of digital platforms. Unlike traditional models centred on the leader’s direct generation of proximity and empathy, affective transfer relocates affective production to distributed digital spaces governed by platform-mediated visibility, user interaction, and content circulation dynamics beyond institutional control (Papacharissi et al. 2023).

This displacement proves particularly functional in contexts of legitimacy crisis, where explicit strategies of humanisation originating from political actors tend to lose credibility and are often perceived as artificial or strategically contrived (Godber and Origgi 2023; Metz 2025). In contrast, platform-mediated interactions enable more organic forms of affective circulation, in which symbolic acceptance and reputational softening may emerge through repetition, visibility, and engagement metrics.

From this perspective, affective transfer operates as a mechanism of platform-mediated amplification, where improvements in public perception are interpreted as emerging from patterns of circulation and symbolic association, rather than being directly measured as causal outcomes. These registers are activated by third parties and intensified through platform-specific dynamics of recommendation, virality, and symbolic association (Fernández 2025; Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

Within this framework, the emergence of impersonators, parodies, or humorous representations should be interpreted not as anecdotal by-products of platform culture, but as indicators of cultural embeddedness and high levels of visibility and recognisability of political leadership within the digital public sphere (Wiggins 2025; Montaño Sánchez 2025).

These dynamics ultimately require a reconceptualization of political communication as the governance of hybrid digital ecosystems, where affect, popular culture, and platform-mediated infrastructures operate as central mechanisms in the contemporary production of political legitimacy (Novelli and Sandri 2025; Staab and Sorg 2025).

5.3. Affective Transfer Across Digital Media Systems: A Comparative Analysis of North America, Latin America, and Europe

From a digital media perspective, affective leadership management can be understood as the way in which affect towards political figures is produced, circulated, and stabilised within platform-mediated public spheres. While some models rely on the leader as the primary generator of affect, others involve the externalisation of affective production to distributed digital actors, whose outputs are later integrated—intentionally or not—into broader communicative ecosystems.

In North America, affective circulation linked to political leadership appears to predominantly operate through processes of emotional amplification rather than indirect affective transfer. As studies on charismatic leadership and performative communication in presidential contexts suggest, in the cases of Donald Trump (current US head of state) and Barack Obama (former US president), cultural registers—such as humour, music, popular artists, and memetic circulation across digital platforms—reinforce the visibility and affective normalisation of leadership without displacing the origin of affect from the political figure itself (McMahon 2024; Weinberg 2024). Within these platform ecosystems, leadership retains symbolic control over affect, which originates in the institutional actor and is subsequently amplified through platform-mediated circulation dynamics. This configuration can be interpreted as corresponding to a model of intensified affective amplification rather than indirect transfer (Wiggins 2025).

In Latin America, the case of Javier Milei (current President of Argentina) reflects a different logic that nonetheless remains outside a full affective transfer dynamic. Here, affect originates in the leader’s own disruptive digital performance, characterised by exaggerated gestures, confrontational discourse, and the theatricalization of conflict—dynamics widely documented in the literature on digital populism and platform-based political communication (Montaño Sánchez 2025; Pérez-Díaz and Arroyas Langa 2025). In this configuration, imitations and parodies circulating within digital platforms do not displace the origin of affect but extend and intensify an already established emotional register. Consequently, despite the strong role of digital media, affect remains anchored in the leader rather than externalised (Metz 2025).

In Europe, a partially comparable precedent can be identified during Mariano Rajoy’s tenure as President of the Government of Spain (2011–2018). During those years, the political figure became the object of extensive external humour production—through impersonations, media satire, and memetic circulation—which generated familiarity and social recognition independently of institutional communication (Zulli and Zulli 2022). However, this externally generated affect was not strategically integrated into institutional communication nor stabilised as a managed symbolic resource. As a result, although external affective production was present within the digital ecosystem, the transfer circuit remained incomplete, constituting a case of partial and analytically comparable affective transfer.

A contrasting European case is that of Volodymyr Zelensky (current President of Ukraine), which helps delineate the boundaries of the mechanism more precisely. In this case, affect originates directly from the leader’s own performative capacity, shaped by his prior career in entertainment and his ability to mobilise emotional engagement through digital media. Rather than relying on distributed actors, affective legitimacy is embedded in the leader’s personal communicative capital, thereby excluding the need for an indirect transfer mechanism (Kurylo 2025; Nikolaienko et al. 2025).

By contrast, the case of José Jerí (Peru, not in office at the time of analysis) represents a configuration in which the affective transfer mechanism can be interpreted as being more fully articulated: from the external production of affect by non-institutional digital actors, through its stabilisation as a shared cultural and platform-mediated code, to its subsequent communicative appropriation by institutional power. In this sense, the Peruvian case should be understood as an analytically illustrative instance rather than as definitive empirical proof of a generalisable mechanism of indirect legitimisation emerging within digital media systems.

This comparative analysis suggests that affective transfer is not necessarily a universal or context-independent phenomenon, but a potentially reproducible mechanism whose emergence depends on the interaction between digital platforms, cultural actors, and institutional communication strategies. As such, it provides an analytically transferable framework for examining how political legitimacy is constructed, mediated, and transformed across contemporary platform-based democracies (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Fernández 2025; Sarasqueta et al. 2025).

5.4. Scope and Limitations of Affective Transfer in Platform-Mediated Political Communication

While affective transfer provides an alternative pathway for the reconstruction of political legitimacy within digital media systems, its scope is neither universal nor free of structural tensions. The mechanism appears particularly functional in contexts where leadership lacks personal charisma, operates under institutional rigidity, or projects a distant technocratic image weakened by prior legitimacy crises (Koliba 2025; Leonard 2025).

In such scenarios, external affective mediation—enabled by platform-based actors and content circulation—can compensate for the absence of direct emotional connection, contributing to the reconfiguration of public acceptance without requiring immediate transformations in leadership performance. However, legitimacy constructed through affective transfer remains inherently fragile, as it is deeply embedded in the volatile dynamics of digital platforms, including virality cycles, platform prioritisation processes, and rapidly shifting emotional climates (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Cheng and Li 2026).

From a systemic and normative perspective, this mechanism raises critical questions regarding the role of digital media in shaping political legitimacy. The externalisation of affective production may temporarily displace substantive political debate, privileging forms of acceptance driven by visibility, repetition, and engagement metrics rather than by policy performance, accountability, or deliberative processes (Webster and Albertson 2022; Navarrete and Eder 2024). In this sense, affective transfer is not merely a communicative strategy, but a phenomenon embedded in platform-mediated environments that reshape the conditions of public discourse.

Moreover, affective transfer introduces an additional layer of symbolic and technological mediation that complicates the relationship between citizens, representation, and institutional power. The interposition of cultural actors, combined with platform-based infrastructures of visibility and amplification, transforms how legitimacy is constructed, circulated, and stabilised within digital ecosystems (Metz 2025; Staab and Sorg 2025).

It is also important to note that the mechanism identified in this study is situated within democratic and constitutional systems, where legitimacy formally depends on public acceptance and digitally mediated public opinion. The article does not assess its operation in other regime types—such as authoritarian systems, monarchies, or theocracies—where affective production may be more directly instrumentalised as a tool of control rather than as a distributed process of mediated legitimisation (Godber and Origgi 2023).

These scope conditions and limitations indicate that affective transfer does not replace existing forms of political legitimacy but operates as a complementary and context-dependent mechanism. Its analytical value lies in explaining how certain leaderships stabilise public acceptance within platform-mediated environments, particularly in situations where traditional charismatic or persuasive resources are insufficient. In doing so, it contributes to expanding the theoretical framework of digital political communication by foregrounding the role of affect, cultural mediation, and algorithmic infrastructures in contemporary legitimacy formation (Fernández 2025; Sarasqueta et al. 2025; Metz 2025).

Accordingly, the findings should be understood not as a causal demonstration of legitimacy reconstruction, but as the identification of a plausible communicative mechanism grounded in observed patterns of symbolic association and affective circulation.

6. Conclusions

This article has examined the emergence of an indirect mechanism for reconstructing political legitimacy in contexts of institutional crisis, proposing the concept of affective transfer as an analytical tool for understanding contemporary dynamics of digital political communication in platform-mediated democracies. Drawing on a theoretical–interpretive approach and the empirical analysis of a case situated in a Latin American constitutional democracy, the study has suggested how, in scenarios marked by citizen rejection and institutional erosion, affect may cease to originate within leadership itself and instead be produced externally by distributed digital actors, later becoming symbolically associated with political power and operating as an indirect mechanism of legitimisation (Papacharissi et al. 2023; Metz 2025).

The main conceptual contribution of the study lies in the systematisation of affective transfer as a distinct mechanism within the broader transformations of digital media systems. Unlike charisma, it does not presuppose exceptional personal attributes or intrinsic performative capacities on the part of the leader (McMahon 2024); unlike populist mobilisation, it does not depend on antagonistic discursive logics; and unlike traditional models of persuasion, it does not rely on rational argumentation or programmatic communication (Godber and Origgi 2023). Rather, it constitutes an indirect and relational process grounded in symbolic mediation, the distributed circulation of affect across platforms, and its subsequent institutional appropriation within digitally mediated environments (Bozdağ and da Silva 2025).

From a comparative perspective, the case analysed suggests that this mechanism may not be entirely context-specific but potentially reproducible under certain conditions across democratic settings characterised by fragmented trust, political fatigue, and the central role of digital platforms in structuring public visibility and opinion formation (Lind et al. 2025; Sarasqueta et al. 2025). External affect production thus emerges as a platform-dependent pathway through which public acceptance may be stabilised in symbolic and reputational terms, without relying on immediate performance outcomes or on the leader’s direct communicative capacity, but rather through symbolic alignment with culturally resonant and platform-amplified content.

The implications of this finding extend beyond leadership communication by foregrounding the role of non-institutional digital actors—such as content creators, humourists, and impersonators—as key intermediaries in the construction of political meaning within digital ecosystems. In this context, legitimacy reinterpreted as being partially produced through hybrid processes shaped by platform logics, cultural mediation, and platform-based visibility dynamics, rather than exclusively through institutional discourse.

At the same time, the mechanism raises important normative questions regarding the role of digital infrastructures in shaping democratic legitimacy. Processes of affective mediation that are partially detached from deliberation, accountability, and programmatic debate may contribute to the reconfiguration of public discourse in ways that privilege visibility, engagement, and emotional resonance over substantive political evaluation (Koliba 2025).

In this sense, affective transfer should not be understood as an isolated or anecdotal phenomenon, but as an analytically emergent and interpretive feature of contemporary digital media systems that may help explain how political legitimacy is constructed, mediated, and stabilised. More broadly, the findings contribute to ongoing theoretical debates on the intersection between technology, digital media, and politics by demonstrating how affect, cultural production, and platform-mediated infrastructures jointly operate as central mechanisms in the contemporary transformation of democratic communication.