Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter
Autor(a) principal: | |
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Data de Publicação: | 2022 |
Tipo de documento: | Artigo |
Idioma: | eng |
Título da fonte: | Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
Texto Completo: | http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-54622022000100199 |
Resumo: | Abstract This paper analyzes the relationship between the Mexican President’s discourse on Covid-19 and the use of Twitter by state officials at the start of the pandemic, through content analysis and supervised machine learning. Analyzing all tweets by state-level agencies during the first 6 months of the pandemic, we found that accounts belonging to the ruling party tweeted consistently less about Covid, compared to the opposition. Furthermore, the social-distancing hashtags endorsed by the Health Department were underused by the party’s own officials. We hypothesized that the president’s skeptical discourse on Covid-19 had a chilling effect on party officials’ use of Twitter during this period. Two random forest machine learning models were trained using the president’s words as predictors not only of the officials’ political alignment, but also of the amount of Covid tweets they posted. The models proved reliable, and the words most significant for prediction are markedly indicative of populist rhetoric. This illustrates how populist discourse from heads of government can undermine communication between institutions and citizens. |
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Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twittercovid-19populismtwittercommunicationsocial mediaAbstract This paper analyzes the relationship between the Mexican President’s discourse on Covid-19 and the use of Twitter by state officials at the start of the pandemic, through content analysis and supervised machine learning. Analyzing all tweets by state-level agencies during the first 6 months of the pandemic, we found that accounts belonging to the ruling party tweeted consistently less about Covid, compared to the opposition. Furthermore, the social-distancing hashtags endorsed by the Health Department were underused by the party’s own officials. We hypothesized that the president’s skeptical discourse on Covid-19 had a chilling effect on party officials’ use of Twitter during this period. Two random forest machine learning models were trained using the president’s words as predictors not only of the officials’ political alignment, but also of the amount of Covid tweets they posted. The models proved reliable, and the words most significant for prediction are markedly indicative of populist rhetoric. This illustrates how populist discourse from heads of government can undermine communication between institutions and citizens.Centro de Investigação Media e JornalismoFaculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas/Universidade Nova de Lisboa2022-06-01info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/articletext/htmlhttp://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-54622022000100199Media & Jornalismo v.22 n.40 2022reponame:Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)instname:Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informaçãoinstacron:RCAAPenghttp://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-54622022000100199Corona,Antonioinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess2024-02-06T17:30:53Zoai:scielo:S2183-54622022000100199Portal AgregadorONGhttps://www.rcaap.pt/oai/openaireopendoar:71602024-03-20T02:34:13.131083Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) - Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informaçãofalse |
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
title |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
spellingShingle |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter Corona,Antonio covid-19 populism communication social media |
title_short |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
title_full |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
title_fullStr |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
title_full_unstemmed |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
title_sort |
Crisis in Mexico: the effect of the president’s discourse on state-level government communication about Covid-19 on Twitter |
author |
Corona,Antonio |
author_facet |
Corona,Antonio |
author_role |
author |
dc.contributor.author.fl_str_mv |
Corona,Antonio |
dc.subject.por.fl_str_mv |
covid-19 populism communication social media |
topic |
covid-19 populism communication social media |
description |
Abstract This paper analyzes the relationship between the Mexican President’s discourse on Covid-19 and the use of Twitter by state officials at the start of the pandemic, through content analysis and supervised machine learning. Analyzing all tweets by state-level agencies during the first 6 months of the pandemic, we found that accounts belonging to the ruling party tweeted consistently less about Covid, compared to the opposition. Furthermore, the social-distancing hashtags endorsed by the Health Department were underused by the party’s own officials. We hypothesized that the president’s skeptical discourse on Covid-19 had a chilling effect on party officials’ use of Twitter during this period. Two random forest machine learning models were trained using the president’s words as predictors not only of the officials’ political alignment, but also of the amount of Covid tweets they posted. The models proved reliable, and the words most significant for prediction are markedly indicative of populist rhetoric. This illustrates how populist discourse from heads of government can undermine communication between institutions and citizens. |
publishDate |
2022 |
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv |
2022-06-01 |
dc.type.status.fl_str_mv |
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
dc.type.driver.fl_str_mv |
info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
format |
article |
status_str |
publishedVersion |
dc.identifier.uri.fl_str_mv |
http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-54622022000100199 |
url |
http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-54622022000100199 |
dc.language.iso.fl_str_mv |
eng |
language |
eng |
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv |
http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-54622022000100199 |
dc.rights.driver.fl_str_mv |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
eu_rights_str_mv |
openAccess |
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv |
text/html |
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv |
Centro de Investigação Media e Jornalismo Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas/Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
publisher.none.fl_str_mv |
Centro de Investigação Media e Jornalismo Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas/Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv |
Media & Jornalismo v.22 n.40 2022 reponame:Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) instname:Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informação instacron:RCAAP |
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Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informação |
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RCAAP |
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RCAAP |
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Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
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Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
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Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) - Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informação |
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1799137398968287232 |