Emergent Twitter publics through political scandal
An example from the Covid-19 Crisis in the UK
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6084649 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chamil Rathnayake (0000-0003-1964-2639), Angela Smith (0000-0003-4150-9439), Michael Higgins (0000-0002-5903-952X) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 458-484 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/jlp.22028.rat |
| OpenAlex | W4375949247 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
This study examines how emergent Twitter publics are organised and engage with political scandal and personalisation during Covid-19 in the UK. The analysis is centred on a series of media events around Chief Adviser to the then-UK Prime Minister, running from May 2020 to May 2021. The samples comprises original tweets that contain key hashtags, amounting to 38,326 items. These are subject to topic model analysis to identify semantic fields, before using critical discourse analysis. We find hashtags help constitute emergent Twitter publics, and that tweets follow conversational patterns and conspire in tactics of intertextuality. Dissention to government conduct engages resourcefully with the affordances of Twitter: constituting publics, shaping discourse, and articulating with parallel discussions on political performance. Further, a computational approach can systematise the identification of domains of discourse and relevant lexical sets, providing an evidence-based understanding of even novel and emergent political discourses in online discussion
Affordance · Government (linguistics · Identification (biology · Intertextuality · Linguistics · Media studies · Personalization · Political science · Politics · Publics · Sociology · Subject (documents · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Media Studies and Communication · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Social Media and Politics · Law
The image, or, What happened to the American dream
Probabilistic topic models
Discourse and social change
Covid-19 and public responsibility
The Donald
Twitter, Trump, and the Base
Is post-truth another word for political spin or a radical departure from it? Evidence from behind the scenes in UK government communications
Believing and sharing misinformation, fact-checks, and accurate information on social media
Right-wing populism, social media and echo chambers in Western democracies
Tough guys and little rocket men
Conversations about the elections on Twitter
Social media in/and the politics of the European Union
Media Events in a Global Age
Telling the Story of the Superhero and the Anti-Politician as President
The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication
Critical Questions for Big Data
Feeling Asian Together
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |