Winners or losers? Using Twitter to evaluate how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the images of political leaders in Italy

IF 2.2 Q2 POLITICAL SCIENCE
Enzo Loner
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引用次数: 4

Abstract

ABSTRACT This work focuses on the consequences of Covid-19 for the public images of political leaders as they emerge from Twitter discourses in Italy. To that end, the research investigates the tweets of Italian citizens about the pandemic in 2020 to understand whether the messages related to the virus can provide helpful information to track support for politicians. These goals are relevant because we know little about how the images of political leaders change in times of crisis, and Italy has been one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. The threat of the virus and the search for protection should increase confidence in the Prime Minister and foster the ‘rally-round-the-flag’ effect. However, as the debate on the virus dominated posts on Twitter, populist leaders opposing the Government could have taken advantage of the emergency to criticize the Government and thus gain support. Further, there are various political parties in the country, including right-wing mainstream and populist parties. Moreover, populists are both in the opposition and in government. We find that the images of politicians are shaped according to their stances relating to the pandemic and the ideas they promote. As expected, right-wing populists tried to use Twitter to criticize the Government but were often criticized for being ‘political looters’. Fear of the pandemic boosted confidence in the Prime Minister and his coalition. To understand these results, both context and the actor’s position are critical elements when studying public opinion through social media communication.
赢家还是输家?利用推特评估COVID-19大流行如何改变意大利政治领导人的形象
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来源期刊
Contemporary Italian Politics
Contemporary Italian Politics Social Sciences-Political Science and International Relations
CiteScore
4.40
自引率
0.00%
发文量
40
期刊介绍: Contemporary Italian Politics, formerly Bulletin of Italian Politics, is a political science journal aimed at academics and policy makers as well as others with a professional or intellectual interest in the politics of Italy. The journal has two main aims: Firstly, to provide rigorous analysis, in the English language, about the politics of what is one of the European Union’s four largest states in terms of population and Gross Domestic Product. We seek to do this aware that too often those in the English-speaking world looking for incisive analysis and insight into the latest trends and developments in Italian politics are likely to be stymied by two contrasting difficulties. On the one hand, they can turn to the daily and weekly print media. Here they will find information on the latest developments, sure enough; but much of it is likely to lack the incisiveness of academic writing and may even be straightforwardly inaccurate. On the other hand, readers can turn either to general political science journals – but here they will have to face the issue of fragmented information – or to specific journals on Italy – in which case they will find that politics is considered only insofar as it is part of the broader field of modern Italian studies[...] The second aim follows from the first insofar as, in seeking to achieve it, we hope thereby to provide analysis that readers will find genuinely useful. With research funding bodies of all kinds giving increasing emphasis to knowledge transfer and increasingly demanding of applicants that they demonstrate the relevance of what they are doing to non-academic ‘end users’, political scientists have a self-interested motive for attempting a closer engagement with outside practitioners.
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