| Sumario: | In today's world and resulting above all from the impact of social media, strategic political communication management must take into account that, thanks to its specifications, the Internet has given rise to a special type of political communication. This paper enquires into the relationship between political communication management and digital communication in a regional context (the autonomous community of Andalusia, in Spain), focusing particularly on the way in which managers and political advisers claim to use social networking sites to convey political strategies and messages, emphasizing interactivity. For this purpose, a mixed approach based on methodological triangulation was used, specifically content analysis as a quantitative technique, and interviews as a qualitative one. Thus, a content analysis was performed on all the messages posted on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram during 2020 by those political parties with seats in the Andalusian parliament following the elections held on 2 December 2018. Pertaining to the in-depth interview as a qualitative data-gathering technique, the directors of communication and/or digital communication of the most relevant Andalusian parties were chosen: PSOE-A, PP-A, Cs-A, Adelante-A, Podemos-A, and IU-A. The results indicate that despite being enthusiastic about the potential of digital tools, practitioners knew that the online communication of regional leaders was not on par with the tools currently available.
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