Do Actions Speak Louder than Words? Exploring the Influence of Informal Political Discourse on Twitter During Crisis

In this dissertation I explore how informal rhetoric on Twitter may alter public opinion and political behavior during moments of crisis. I theorize that rhetoric on social media, despite being less premeditated than other speech, has the capacity to alter the responses of both individual citizens and politicians alike by inconspicuously shaping societal realities. To explore this phenomenon, I use Twitter API to scrape 25,169 tweets from politicians and healthcare authorities in 2020. I code all tweets by hand to explore how various rhetorical choices influenced gubernatorial policy decisions and the public’s responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research adds to the literature on political communication, public opinion, and political behavior by demonstrating the nuanced ways by which individuals may be persuaded to act. Understanding the nature of the influence of informal political discourse online has important implications for the future of social media strategy, particularly during crisis situations.