Political Communication of Politicians on Social Media: An Analysis of Party Leaders' Tweets in Pakistan

Abstract

Political leaders utilize social media as a new means of communicating with their constituents and supporters. It provides political leaders with a platform to communicate with the general public on a large scale. It is imperative to study this usage of Twitter. For this purpose, three political leaders from leading political parties of Pakistan (PML-N, PPP and PTI) have been selected to investigate figurative language in their tweets using the Vandijk model of Critical Discourse Analysis.According to the study's findings, political leaders in Pakistan used Twitter for covid-related communication with varying frequency. They employed figurative language in their tweets,mostly using an active voice with a politically-motivated lexical choice. Religious connotations are also prominent in the discourse. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Maryam Nawaz are critical of the government's response to Covid-19, mostly aiming at the Pakistani public, whereas Imran Khan highlighted comparatively positive aspects while targeting the global audience.