Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Communicating Mobility Restrictions During the COVID‐19 Crisis on Twitter: The Legitimacy Challenge

Published inSchweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, vol. 27, no. 4, p. 822-839
Publication date2021-11-26
First online date2021-11-26
Abstract

In response to Covid-19, governments have imposed sub-stantial restrictions on people's mobility. To encourage compliance, political actors have deployed direct com-munication strategies on social media. In this paper, we evaluate the legitimacy of the Swiss government's crisis communication on Twitter during the first wave of the pandemic. We examine and compare tweets regarding international and domestic travel, as well as social dis-tancing. Using content and network analysis, we analyze the legitimacy of crisis communication by measuring its timeliness, consistency and congruence. We find that communication on domestic mobility restrictions has en-joyed a higher level of consistency and congruence, but has suffered from a disengagement of political parties, while the communication of international travel restric-tions has become increasingly politicized.

Keywords
  • Content analysis
  • COVID-19
  • Crisis communication
  • Mobility
  • Network analysis
  • Twitter
Citation (ISO format)
BÉLANGER, Marie‐Eve, LAVENEX, Sandra. Communicating Mobility Restrictions During the COVID‐19 Crisis on Twitter: The Legitimacy Challenge. In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 2021, vol. 27, n° 4, p. 822–839. doi: 10.1111/spsr.12494
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Article (Published version)
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
Journal ISSN1424-7755
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