Dialogic analysis of government social media communication: How commanding and thanking elicit blame

Ruth Page*, Sten Hansson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

48 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

During major crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, government officeholders issue commands to change people’s behaviour (e.g., ‘Stay at home!’) and express thanks to acknowledge the efforts of others and build solidarity. We use specialised datasets of replies to social media posts by government ministers in the United Kingdom during Covid-19 lockdowns to explore how people react to their messages that contain directive speech acts and thanking. Empirically, our corpus-assisted analysis of evaluative language and blaming shows that far from promoting team spirit, thanking may elicit at least as much, if not more blaming language than commands. Methodologically, we demonstrate how to analyse government social media communication dialogically to gain more nuanced insights about online feedback from citizens.
Original languageEnglish
Article number100757
Number of pages11
JournalDiscourse, Context and Media
Volume57
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Feb 2024

Keywords

  • Blame
  • Crisis communication
  • Government communication
  • Directives
  • Expressives
  • Blame avoidance

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Dialogic analysis of government social media communication: How commanding and thanking elicit blame'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this