Transmedia Context and Twitter As Conditioning the Ecuadorian Government’s Action. The Case of the “Guayaquil Emergency” During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Communication ecosystems have mul­tiplexed and increased their capacity to act, distort, and fight. COVID-19 pan­demic and the response of the Ecuado­rian Government to it are clear exam­ples of the power of media to erode, to influence, and also to produce fake news. In this context, Twitter has be­come more than just a social plat­form, as it helped spread catastrophic pictures of the country, especially of Guayaquil. This article analyzes the tweets posted by the main domestic and global media and by the Ecuadori­an government accounts since the out­break of the pandemic in Ecuador, as well as the interrelations among them and their polarity score. The aim is to show how the government changed its action plan by focusing on exogenous elements that had been excluded from its (pre)established strategy, which consisted in neglecting and deliberate­ly minimizing a situation that turned out to be more serious than officially deemed and that was exposed by un­official global media. Keywords: Twitter, social network, mass media, impact, COVID-19, Ecuador.