#EsteVirusloParamosUnidos: War-like political communication on Twitter. Creating homogeneous communities in the Covid-19 crisis
- Anna Tous-Rovirosa Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4519-3793
- Daria Dergacheva Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8773-7934
Abstract
This article analyses the political communication on Twitter of the Government of Spain at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The #estevirusloparamosunidos campaign on Twitter is monitored during the dates with the worst results in terms of fatalities (March 31th- April, 4th, 2020). The sample included in total 398 523 tweets in four data sets. Through the Social Network Analysis, the main actors and the main interactions between users are identified. The research shows a high coincidence between the typology of the Press Conference Spokespersons and the main actors on the analyzed hashtag, prioritizing the Spanish Administration and the Armed Forces. There was also a high relationship of the main opinion leaders with their “natural spectrum”. We conclude that in this hashtag there was a “war-like” atmosphere. Via the computer-based text analysis we identify that the word ‘government’ was mentioned more than medical words and that there are present some military-like terms.
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Author Biographies
Associate professor at Journalism and Communication Sciences at UAB (Bellaterra, Spain). Doctor from the same University, her PhD was awarded by the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC). She has been a visiting scholar in the universities of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), Bochum (Germany) and East Anglia (Norwich, UK). Her research topics are online journalism, interactivity and TV studies. The results of their research are available at books and international journals such as Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, El profesional de la información and Palabra Clave, amongst others.
Dr. Daria Dergacheva has just defended her PhD dissertation with distinction at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She received a Chevening scholarship and graduated from the School of Media at the University of Westminster in 2013. Before that, she worked in the Russian media for over 10 years. She has published in international journals such as Russian Journal of Communication and Quaestio Rossica, amongst others.
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