A Crisis Within the Crisis: Corona Crisis Communication by Mayors in Germany

Abstract

The German political system is currently challenged by a twofold crisis: On the one hand, the threat caused by the pandemic and its social consequences have to be managed through practical and communicative measures, while the constitutional state and government action in various policy areas (health, education, economy, etc.) are approaching their limits. On the other hand, in recent years political actors who claim to advocate for »the people« and are referred to as »populists« have been questioning whether sufficient representation of citizens respectively a collective conceptualized in racist terms is guaranteed in established representative democracy. This twofold crisis, which culminates in the protests against governmental measures, also affects mayors, who – ideally – act communicatively in various fields of the democratic constitutional state. This article provides initial insights into a research project devoted to a systematic analysis of communication by, with and about mayors. First, the article examines how mayors can act linguistically in the context of the double crisis in social media and what kind of communication with and among citizens subsequently develops in the comment lists. Second, it asks how the abstract image of mayors in press coverage is shaped and developed in the course of the pandemic. For the purpose of comparison and with regard to interconnections between the two subject areas, methods of linguistic praxeology, analysis of written interaction and text communication as well as corpus and image linguistics are combined.