Multilevel government crisis communication on social media: A comparative and longitudinal approach

Abstract

Agenda-setting is an important way for the government to capture public attention. Different government branches, with their specific target audiences, may have different agenda prioritization strategies. In the current study, we compared the agenda-setting process across seven countries and three levels of government branches during the COVID-19 pandemic. We employed a multilingual topic model to extract the agendas from social media data. Our results showed that countries with similar media and political systems are consistent in terms of their agenda patterns. Executive actors prioritized health issues more than legislative actors. Over time, there has been a noticeable increase in the attention given to health information, whereas interest in political issues has declined across all levels of government in most countries. Our findings illustrate an overarching landscape of government agenda-setting during a prolonged crisis, highlighting the importance of incorporating crisis research and a longitudinal perspective into comparative political communication frameworks.