New Year, COVID-19, and Political Public Relations

Abstract

This study adopts a mixed methods approach to analyze the crisis communication frames in the COVID-19 tweets (n=459) of Gov Andrew Cuomo. Findings indicate a prevalence of leadership tweets (29%), action (25%) tweets, severity (17.8%) reassurance (15%), and collaboration (7.6%) tweets. To explain these tweets, we conducted a qualitative frame analysis and observed that the governor’s tweets portrayed him as a leader on top of issues and committed towards equality by espousing three frames namely: Vaccination efforts, pandemic impact, and relief, as well as hands-on leadership. He displayed authenticity by his dominant use of statistics, bilingual tweets, and rhetorical questions to display authenticity. Findings contribute to literature on using social media in crisis communication by extending a mixed-methods approach to study a popular phenomenon in the field.