Social and Institutional Presence of the Presidents of the Americas on social media: An analysis of the Communication on Twitter about COVID-19

Abstract

This article examined, through Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques, the personal profiles of theHeads of Government of countries in South and North America and how they communicated withtheir audiences on institutional measures to contain COVID-19. Analyses were carried out on data collected from Twitter from November 2019 to November 2020. This study includes: i) quantitative analysis, measuring categories and emphases in the communication of tweets, retweets, likes, and comments on matters relevant to the pandemic; ii) qualitative analysis that allowed evaluating speeches to identify political interference and the effectiveness of communication at critical moments of the pandemic. It was possible to infer that each president has his singularities and understanding about Social Media's use as a more direct communication tool with his audience. It was also found that successful communication is not directly proportional to the volume of messages on Twitter, but to socio-political aspects and institutional leadership that can make a difference in Social Media in combating COVID-19. I. INTRODUCTIONThe world is experiencing a challenge of grand proportions, the discovery and a worldwide spread of the Covid-19 virus at the end of 2019 and throughout 2020. This occurrence showed the global fragility of the Health Systems and a communicational difficulty in the face of Disinformation. Social Media has become an open pathway for a flood of fake news propagated mainly on social media. In addition to competing with misinformation on social media, governments deal with an internal difficulty to create disclosure processes consistent with the line of action in fighting the Pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 disease provide an opportunity to investigate the consequences of functional fragmentation in government communication when the issues concern public health and pandemic response (ZEEMERING, 2020).According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2019), finding ways through contemporary information challenges is of utmost importance for society, including governments, Internet companies, educators and NGOs.

(Re)shaping online narratives: when bots promote the message of President Trump during his first impeachment

“…Related studies also include analyses about comments from political figures about Trump ( Milford, 2021 ; Alexandre, Jai-sung Yoo & Murthy, 2021 ) and vice versa ( Brown Crosby, 2022 ), analyses of his letter during the first impeachment ( Reyes & Ross, 2021 ), and detailed examinations about how Trump’s message was perceived by specific groups such as White extremists ( Long, 2022 ). The impeachment and handling of COVID-19 have received particular attention on Twitter ( Dejard et al, 2021 ; Cervi, García & Marín-Lladó, 2021 ), as key moments of his presidency. While the use of bots to create social media content during presidential elections and COVID-19 have received attention ( Xu & Sasahara, 2021 ), there is still a need to examine how bots were used during the first impeachment.…”