The Algorithmic Homeland: AI, Streaming, and Affective Mobilization in Colombia’s 2026 Far-Right Presidential Digital Campaign

This essay draws on a delimited corpus of publicly circulating materials associated with Abelardo de la Espriella’s digital campaign in the 2026 Colombian presidential election to examine a form of algorithmic–affective campaigning. Through a qualitative, discursive, and multimodal approach, it examines a core analytical corpus comprising the complete stream with Westcol and six digital posts, supplemented by materials from a broader documentary mapping and journalistic coverage used to contextualize provenance, circulation, and controversies. The central argument holds that the campaign used streaming and generative AI as technological mediations to organize and intensify patriotic and religious language of threat, protection, certainty, belonging, and authenticity. Through the streamed interview with Westcol, a Colombian creator known for gaming content and a large online presence, the campaign staged performative authenticity and proximity through digital codes associated with youth cultures; its use of generative AI contributed to the construction of visual narratives of threat, order, and national salvation. The article develops the notion of the algorithmic homeland and defines it as an imaginary of the nation represented as a threatened, morally ordered community in need of protection, configured through platform infrastructures, media formats, and affective languages. This concept makes it possible to interpret a form of electoral legitimacy construction in which technological mediation and affective languages jointly participate in the production of visibility, proximity, and authority within platform democracy.