Debate Structures Around COVID-19 on Twitter (A)

Many politicians use Twitter as a tool for active and direct communication. The combination of Twitter's simplicity and popularity make it an effective tool for politicians to communicate their ideas to the general public, with the added possibility of direct feedback. Especially during a public crisis, politicians are the center of attention. Insights into the communication of German politicians on Twitter regarding COVID-19 can provide meaningful knowledge. Also differences between the political parties become clear. Therefore, we analyse the behaviour of German politicians on Twitter through quantitative and qualitative content-based methods such as sentiment analysis and topic detection, as well as social network analysis methods. All these tools are used with the distinct features and characteristics of Twitter in mind. This combination of approaches helps us to create a more holistic picture of the way politicians use Twitter. We show how to identify tweets regarding COVID-19, how to analyse their content, compare them to non-COVID-tweets, and how to contextualise these findings through real world data.

Finding differences and similarities in sentiments, emotions, contents and network structures between German politicians in COVID-19 related discussions on Twitter. Also differences between the political parties become clear. These findings may help inform politicians on how to effectively use Twitter, and the general public on how to better understand government communication on social media, especially in combination with real world data.