New year, COVID-19, and political public relations
A mixed methods frame analysis of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s crisis communication on Twitter
Keywords:
COVID-19, Twitter, US, governor, polittical public relationsAbstract
This study adopts a mixed methods approach to analyze the crisis communication frames in the COVID-19 tweets (n=459) of Gov Andrew Cuomo. Findings indicate a prevalence of leadership tweets (29%), action (25%) tweets, severity (17.8%) reassurance (15%), and collaboration (7.6%) tweets. To explain these tweets, we conducted a qualitative frame analysis and observed that the governor’s tweets portrayed him as a leader on top of issues and committed towards equality by espousing three frames namely: Vaccination efforts, pandemic impact, and relief, as well as hands-on leadership. He displayed authenticity by his dominant use of statistics, bilingual tweets, and rhetorical questions to display authenticity. Findings contribute to literature on using social media in crisis communication by extending a mixed-methods approach to study a popular phenomenon in the field.
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