The Presidential Pandemic Discourse on Twitter

Abstract

The novel Coronavirus is the most serious pandemic the world has faced in the last century. The political leaders have been forced to adapt their public discourse to this new situation and many have ended up communicating on social media on this subject on a daily basis. Twitter has become the social media platform the most frequently utilized for spreading information and keeping updates on the current worldwide issues and phenomena. This research focuses on the main topics of the French presidential online discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a multidisciplinary approach grounded in critical discourse analysis, it attempts to decipher the promoted social and political values behind the discourse. A total of 52 tweets of Macron’s tweets were collected from February 2021 to July 2021, and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis was applied to decoding the political strategies concerning the pandemic crisis, and their constructed meanings on social media.