Political Framing: US COVID19 Blame Game

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how Twitter users employed framing strategies, such as blame and support, to influence political opinions during the 2020 US presidential campaign, revealing partisan divergences and reinforcement mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a reproducible pipeline for identifying political frames on Twitter and highlights the dominance of blame and support frames in COVID-19 discourse.

Findings

Blame frames target Trump, China, or conspiracies.

Support frames endorse political candidates.

Framing reinforces partisan perspectives.

Abstract

Through the use of Twitter, framing has become a prominent presidential campaign tool for politically active users. Framing is used to influence thoughts by evoking a particular perspective on an event. In this paper, we show that the COVID19 pandemic rather than being viewed as a public health issue, political rhetoric surrounding it is mostly shaped through a blame frame (blame Trump, China, or conspiracies) and a support frame (support candidates) backing the agenda of Republican and Democratic users in the lead up to the 2020 presidential campaign. We elucidate the divergences between supporters of both parties on Twitter via the use of frames. Additionally, we show how framing is used to positively or negatively reinforce users' thoughts. We look at how Twitter can efficiently be used to identify frames for topics through a reproducible pipeline.