Global pandemic and mediatized politics. Argentina's presidential communication and its impact on Twitter in the first half of 2020

SLIMOVICH, ANA

Comunicación y Hombre

Universidad Francisco de Vitoria

Lugar: Madrid; Año: 2021 p. 85 - 102

1885-9542

The aim of this article is to explore the Argentine president’s Twitter feeds in relation to his own press conference on the COVID-19 pandemic —produced in May 2020— as well as the discourses of internet users during the conference. Those that took place after the presidential announcement of the extension of the quarantine will also be taken into account, in reaction to the Intractable programme whose themes referred to the conference. The analysis takes into account the particular historical moment of the mediatization of politics, as well as the particular moment of the mediatized pandemic in which inaccurate information, figures without sources, fake news, trolls, bots, etc. proliferate on social networks. Socio- Semiotic tools were used to carry out the comparative analysis. It was concluded that there are interface operations in the presidential social network that combine a «choral enunciation», and it was also determined that there are two political- media collectives on Twitter: one that supports the president and is constituted as «militant Internet users of the quarantine» in Argentina, and constructs «logical micro-argumentations»; and another that opposes the quarantine but does not support any political force but emerges as an opponent of the president and postulates «passionate micro-argumentations».