#EsteVirusloParamosUnidos: War-like political communication on Twitter. Creating homogeneous communities in the Covid-19 crisis

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.

Keywords

• SNA
• Twitter
• political communication
• Covid-19
• coronavirus
• #estevirusloparamosunidos