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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
Thematic dossier: International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21
Editorial - Bruno Carriço Reis, Javier Sierra Sanchez – pp 1-3
ARTICLES
The role of social networks in cyber-diplomacy in the context of 5G – Daniel Muñoz-Sastre, Isabel
Rodrigo-Martín, Luis Rodrigo-Martín – pp 4-18
Study of the use of social media by the Royal Houses of Spain and the United Kingdom for diplomatic
purposes – Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
– pp 19-31
Disinformation propagation in social networks as a diplomacy strategy: analysis from system
dynamics – Alfredo Guzmán Rincón, Belén Rodríguez-Cánovas – pp 32-43
Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial
equality. A study of the corporate campaign "common thread", published by the sports brand NIKE
on Instagram – Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda – pp 44-60
Social media as a tool for communicating human rights. Case study: Amnesty International – Javier
Bernabé Fraguas – pp 61-77
The EU against the disinformation of China and Russia during the COVID-19. The need for greater
European narrative proactivity at the international level – Miguel Ángel Benedicto Solsona – pp 78-
92
Fundamental rights of people with disabilities reflected in the social discourse of the main disability
organisations in Spain – Ismael López-Cepeda, Luis Mañas-Viniegra, Hipólito Vivar-Zurita – pp 93-111
Donald Trump's political communication on facebook - an analysis of the pre-election period (2020)
– Bruno Ferreira Costa – pp 112-129
Qatar's communication strategy and the resolution of the diplomatic conflict in the Gulf – Ana Isabel
González Santamaría – pp 130-142
Information verification during COVID-19. Comparative analysis in Southern European Countries –
Raúl Magallón-Rosa, José Manuel Sánchez-Duarte – pp 143-156
The COVID-19 vaccination agenda. European and portuguese official sources’ performance in
facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin – Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina
Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo – pp 157-179
Leadership and communication in Spain and Portugal: the catholic case – Alba Sabaté Gauxachs,
Adriana Chiva Polvillo – pp 180-190
Social networks and international relations in the tourism sector – David Caldevilla-Domínguez,
Almudena Barrientos-Báez, Juan Enrique Gonzálvez-Vallés, Manuel Blanco-Pérez – pp 191-203
OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
1
EDITORIAL
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
1
BRUNO REIS
breis@autonoma.pt
PhD in Social Sciences from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo and PhD in
Communication Sciences from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid. Associate Professor at
the Department of Communication Sciences at the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Portugal),
where he coordinates the PhD in Media e Sociedade no Contexto da Comunidade dos Países de
Língua Portuguesa and co-ordinates the Research Centre on Núcleo de Investigação em Práticas
e Competências Mediáticas (NIP-C@M). He is a guest lecturer in the master’s in Comunicación y
Cultura Digital (UAQ/Mexico) and in the Department of Sociology of the Universidade da Beira
Interior (UBI). He is an integrated researcher in OBSERVARE (UAL), NEAMP (PUC-SP/Brazil) and
Citizenship, Culture & Communication group (Vilnius Tech/Lithuania).
JAVIER SIERRA SANCHEZ
sierrasanchez@gmail.com
Doctorate in Information Sciences from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and a
degree in Audiovisual Communication and Journalism from the same university. Master's in
Marketing and Corporate Communication from the Universidad San Jorge. Specialist in
International RRPP from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). Specialist in State and
International Protocol and Ceremonial from the Universidad de Oviedo and the Escuela
Diplomática de Madrid. He is currently Associate Professor at the Universidad Complutense de
Madrid.
This thematic dossier systematizes the main lines of reflection presented in the
International Relations panel of the II International Congress on Communication and
Social Media in the Information Society, which took place at Universidade Autónoma de
Lisboa between 31 March and 1 April 2021.
The common denominator that guided the debate highlighted the role of information and
communication technologies as a vehicle for action on a large scale. The construction of
this globalizing web cemented strong interdependence of the economic, political and
communicative powers among countries and blocs.
Zygmunt Bauman
2
, with the acumen that characterizes him, considers this process to be
one of the irreversible features of our time, when we all depend on everyone. Decisions
1
Editorial translated by Carolina Peralta.
2
See the interview given by the sociologist to the project fronteiras do pensamento;
https://www.fronteiras.com/artigos/zygmunt-bauman-especial
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Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 1-3
Editorial
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2
and events that take place in the “world culture”
3
can produce multiple direct, indirect,
immediate, distant effects (even if certain societies may appear to be impervious to a set
of phenomena).
This situation underlies an intensive digitalization of our lives, exposed to a continuous
flow of information and frequent sharing. The rapid circulation of networked information
shapes incessant opinions, in a public debate increasingly marked by issues of a
globalizing nature. Aware of this situation, public agents (governments, political agents,
interest groups and corporations) give primacy to the communicative phenomenon as a
strategic “arsenal” for negotiation and domination.
We glimpse an relinquishment of the perception of communication as a soft power
4
instrument, having increasingly become a hard power instrument. The Cambridge
Analytica
5
phenomenon, of common knowledge and which would be difficult to
summarize here, would be the illustrative paradigm of the use of communication as a
definition of power relations in the international scene. This is the starting point for this
thematic issue. The articles that comprise this dossier address this issue in several
significant aspects.
A first group discusses the importance of digital tools at the service of what is advocated
as “cyber-diplomacy”. A first consideration addresses the scenario of technological
migration to the 5G reality, which opens up fierce disputes between States, taking into
account the security and defence issues that it raises (Text 1; Muñoz-Satre, Rodrigo-
Martín and Rodrigo-Martín). A second text assesses Qatar's communication strategy to
rehabilitate its international credibility. The procedures operated from a crisis
management situation are discussed, after this country of the Arabian Peninsula was
accused by its neighbours of supporting terrorist causes, becoming the target of
international sanctions (text 9; González).
A second set discusses misinformation issues. Text 3 (Guzmán and Rodríguez-Cánovas)
comprehensively analyses the strategies used by States to spread false information with
the clear intention of gaining political dividends. This issue materializes in a more
concrete way in the reflection that proposes a look at the existing tension between the
European Union and the misinformation attacks conducted by the Chinese and Russian
agendas (text 6; Benedicto).
Text 10 by Magallón-Rosa and Sánchez-Duarte relates misinformation issues in the
context of the pandemic, comparing southern European countries. It bridges the gap
between the topic of misinformation and the current pandemic context we are
experiencing. This is the third guiding axis of this issue of Janus.net, e-journal of
international relations, which includes two more texts to complement the reflection on
the epidemic. An article addresses the communication mechanisms used by European
and Portuguese entities that oversee the management of vaccines, to communicate the
vaccination plan (text 11; Santos et al). A second article looks at the phenomenon of
3
Lipovetsky, G., & Serroy, J. (2010). A Cultura-Mundo. Resposta a uma sociedade desorientada. Lisbon:
Edições 70.
4
Wendzel, R. (1985). Relaçes Internacionais: o enfoque do formulador de polticas. Braslia: Universidade
de Braslia.
5
https://www.netflix.com/pt/title/80117542
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 1-3
Editorial
Bruno Carriço Reis; Javier Sierra Sanchez
3
tourism, marked by a strong scenario of fluctuating information and global uncertainty
(text 13; Caldevilla-Domínguez et al).
A fourth group of articles discusses the role of social media as a political communication
instrument; by the Spanish and British royal houses (text 2; Rodríguez, Vázquez
Jorquera), by the Trump administration (text 8; Costa), and as a communication
instrument of the Portuguese and Spanish Catholic Church in the relationship as power
interlocutors (text 12; Sabaté and Chiva).
A fifth group pf papers closes this debate, proposing three perspectives on the use of
digital resources as enhancers of human rights awareness. The first scrutinizes public
discourses about disability in the Spanish context, seen through the viewpoint of
international guidelines that propose more inclusive societies (text 7; López-Cepeda,
Maña-Viniegra and Vivar-Zurita). A second (text 5; Bernabé) studies the communicative
strategies adopted by an organization such as Amnesty International, in its recurrent
stance on issues of a humanitarian nature. The third perspective examines how
commercial corporations incorporate civil rights issues into their advertising approaches.
In text 4, Díaz-Bajo and Martínez-Borda analyse an advertising campaign for a world-
brand, which proposes a modelling strategy for a commercial identity based on gender
and racial equality issues.
These are the five guiding axes of this thematic dossier, which contain texts that reveal
a better understanding of a hyper-communicated world
6
, marked by corporate
possibilities that simultaneously dispute each other in relations of permanent competition
and tension.
Happy readings!
How to cite this editorial
Reis, Bruno Carriço; Sanchez, Javier Sierra. Editorial: International relations and social media.
Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Thematic dossier International relations and
social media, July 2021. Consulted [online] in date of last visit,
https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.ED
6
Constantinou, C., Richmond, O., & Watson, A. (2008). International Relations and the challenges of global
communication. Review of International Studies, 34, 5-19.
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
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July 2021
4
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS IN CYBER-DIPLOMACY
IN THE CONTEXT OF 5G
DANIEL MUÑOZ-SASTRE
daniel.munoz.sastre@uva.es
PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising. Lecturer at the University of Valladolid where
he teaches the subjects of Culture and Corporate Identity and Brand Management. Member of
the Research Group on Trends in Advertising and Consumption of the Icono 14 Association. He
has been editor-in-chief at the two main Spanish radio stations, SER and COPE, advisor to
various companies and institutions on corporate identity issues and contributor to the candidacy
of Segovia (Spain) for European Capital of Culture in 2016.
ISABEL RODRIGO-MARTÍN
isabel.rodrigo@uva.es
PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising and Master’s in communication with Social
Purges: Strategies and Campaigns from the University of Valladolid. Senior Lecturer at the
University of Valladolid. He has won the Caja España 2007 research prize and the IV Research
Scholarship of the Institute of Traditional Segovian Culture of the Provincial Council of Segovia.
She is a researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) in the Chair of Digital
Communication in Childhood and Adolescence and in the SocMedia Research Group.
LUIS RODRIGO-MARTÍN
luis.rodrigo@uva.es
PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising and Bachelor of Law. Senior Lecturer at the
University of Valladolid (Spain). He has been recognized with the Caja España and Caja Segovia
research prizes for two projects related to communication and consumption. Researcher of the
Complutense Chair of Communication and Marketing in Childhood and Adolescence. He is the
author of several books and about thirty articles in scientific journals. He was Director of
Communication of the Segovia Campus of the University of Valladolid.
Abstract
The implementation of the 5G network has led to one of the most serious diplomatic clashes
in recent years. The commercial war between the United States and China to lead the
development of the fifth generation of mobile Internet is being fought, among other
battlefields, on social networks. Our research analyzes the role of these communication tools
in the framework of this international conflict. It examines the use of social networks and their
value in the development of what is known as cyber-diplomacy. At the same time, we look
into the decisions taken by both states aimed at banning the activity of certain social networks
in their respective territories. The study shows the importance of social networks in the
transmission of messages between the contending parties and how they use them to attack
and defend their respective interests.
Keywords
Cyber-diplomacy; social networks; 5G; United States; China
How to cite this article
Muñoz-Sastre, Daniel; Rodrigo-Martín, Isabel; Rodrigo-Martín, Luís. The role of social
networks in cyber-diplomacy in the context of 5G. Janus.net, e-journal of international
relations. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks, July 2021.
Consulted[online] in date of the last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.1
Article received on em January 4, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 22, 2021
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Media (July 2021), pp. 4-18
The role of social networks in cyber-diplomacy in the context of 5G
Daniel Muñoz-Sastre, Isabel Rodrigo-Martín, Luis Rodrigo-Martín
5
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS IN CYBER-DIPLOMACY
IN THE CONTEXT OF 5G
1
DANIEL MUÑOZ-SASTRE
ISABEL RODRIGO-MARTÍN
LUIS RODRIGO-MARTÍN
Introduction
The unstoppable digital transformation underway since the beginning of the 21
st
century
is not limited to the incorporation of technological tools and processes in all areas of life—
from the industrial to the domestic sector, including everything related to governance.
This process is shaping a new world order, with new balances and imbalances. It is a
race full of opportunities for states that have hitherto played a secondary role on the
international scene, while posing new threats to the traditionally dominant countries. The
battle to drive this change began with the imposition of trade restrictions through heavy
tariffs, thus aggravating tensions and escalating the risk of confrontation between those
states aspiring to lead the international order.
The World Economic Forum already warned about the role of new technologies in this
reconfiguration of the world scene in its Global Risks Report 2018 (World Economic
Forum, 2018: 7). It pointed to the cybernetic sphere as a source of tensions leading to
potential conflicts in a context of new alliances and market configurations. Three years
later, the Global Risks Report 2021 lists digital power concentration and digital inequality
among the seven main global risks for this year (World Economic Forum, 2021: 14). The
World Economic Forum also warns that political confrontation between states may affect
the activity of some companies (World Economic Forum, 2021: 65).
The importance of technology in international relations is best illustrated by the
escalating confrontation between the United States and China over technological
leadership, and in particular the development of the fifth generation mobile Internet (5G).
China’s growing economic, military and technological power has led to a rebalance of
power in a world order hitherto dominated by the United States. That is why some
authors focus on their bilateral relation as the most relevant for the 21
st
century (Sutter,
2011: 1). Their ongoing struggle has prompted other governments to implement
measures such as tariffs on technological products (Natixis, 2018). The development and
deployment of 5G networks goes beyond the realm of technology and enters into
geopolitics (Morozov, 2020).
1
Article translated by Frutos Miranda Traductores.
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The ill feeling between the United States and China is not new, nor did it originate with
the arrival of 5G. Disagreements have been going on for a long time and in recent
decades tensions between the two countries have been constant. The Clinton
administration already threatened the Asian giant. However, the intervention of some of
the most prominent American companies with interests in China helped to defuse the
tension—which again escalated during Trump’s presidency. Some analysts consider that
this confrontation goes beyond a specific moment or context, and that it will underpin all
future relations between both countries, since “anti-China sentiment runs deep in both
parties in Congress. Tariffs have become normalized weapons. That will continue to push
Washington and Beijing on a collision course, no matter who occupies the White House”
(Chon, 2020).
The novelty of the current contention lies in the increasing role and use of social networks
in institutional relations, leading to so-called digital diplomacy or cyber-diplomacy,
analyzed among others by Maccarthy (2015) and Manfredi Sánchez, according to whom,
“digital diplomacy provides an opportunity for political participation, activism and agenda
setting” (Manfredi Sánchez, 2014: 352). The presence of social networks in the
diplomatic sphere has become commonplace, whether through accounts belonging to
public agencies or to political leaders: “Social networks are part of the communicative
reality of today’s international society and are undoubtedly becoming the battlefield of
the 21
st
century” (Rodríguez Cela, Parras-Parras and Romero-Vara 2019: 723).
The study of how social networks affect international politics becomes even more
interesting due to the intense activity of President Trump during his term in office.
Trump’s regular use of Twitter to make public announcements of all kinds through his
personal account @realDonaldTrump (including the dismissal of staff, threats to other
countries’ leaders, and his opinions on different current issues) made this social network
one of the most important references to know the intentions of the American president.
Furthermore, these publications made by Trump throughout all these years provide a
historical document for the assessment of his administration.
The use of social networks raises the following issues:
- Analyzing the use of social networks in cyber-diplomacy regarding the implementation
of 5G.
- Understanding the intent of the messages published on official government accounts.
- Determining the main concepts included in these messages.
- Studying the decisions of both governments regarding the activity of different social
networks in their respective territories.
This study is part of a broader project on the deployment of 5G networks, which began
in 2018 to assess the impact of this new technology on different environments—including
digital social platforms (Muñoz-Sastre at al., 2019). This paper focuses on the role of
social networks, and specifically Twitter, in the confrontation between the United States
and China over the global implementation of the fifth generation of mobile Internet. All
the above leads to the following initial hypothesis:
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7
H1. The agreements and disagreements between the US and China aired through social
networks in recent years regarding the implementation of 5G bring a new scenario for
international relations—that of cyber-diplomacy—with social networks as a key player.
Methodology
The time frame of the study covers Trump’s presidency, between 20 January 2017 and
20 January 2021, which includes the moments of greatest tension between the US and
China. This period coincides with the beginning of the works for the implementation and
commercial exploitation of 5G networks. We focus on Twitter because it registered the
highest activity concerning 5G from official accounts linked to the US and China, or some
of their main leaders (see Table 1).
Table 1. List of Twitter accounts analyzed
ACCOUNT
COUNTRY
LINK
@WhiteHouse
US
@realDonaldTrump
US
@StateDept
US
@SecPompeo
US
@USA_China_Talk
US
@zlj517
China
@MFA_China
China
@ChineseEmbinUS
China
@chinascio
China
Source: own compilation.
For the selection of the study sample, we reviewed all messages published by these
accounts directly linked the subject matter, obtaining a sample of 275 messages (133
from Chinese accounts and 142 from US accounts). Subsequently, we carried out a
quantitative and qualitative analysis of the messages. This retrospective study is
observational, analytic, and explanatory, without any manipulation of the variables. We
analyzed the publications in depth to identify their effects on the relations between these
two world powers. The research consists of three stages as shown in Table 2:
Table 2. Research stages
STAGE
SCOPE
OBJECTIVES
1
Theoretical framework
Approach to the object of study
Contextualization and conceptualization
2
Message analysis
Study sample selection
Sample analysis
3
Discussion
Search for answers
Findings
Source: own compilation.
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8
Taking into account the objectives and hypothesis of this study, the variables considered
are:
- The number of messages published on the different accounts.
- The tone used in those posts.
- The decision-making by both governments.
New forms of diplomacy
From traditional diplomacy to cyber-diplomacy
Diplomacy, defined by Kissinger (1955: 8) as “the art of relating states to each other by
agreement rather than by the exercise of force”, is a practice that dates back to antiquity.
It has undergone major transformations throughout history. Initially, it had an itinerant
nature, linked to a specific contact or negotiation between states. It then became
permanent in the 15
th
century through the diplomatic practices implemented by the Holy
See and later developed by the Italian states—mainly Venice, considered the forerunner
of modern diplomacy (Calduch Cervera, 1993).
However, until World War I, relations and agreements between states remained secret.
It was not until January 1918, ten months before the end of the conflict, that US President
Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech to the Congress outlining his proposals to ensure
peace, begin the reconstruction of Europe, and establish a new international order. In his
fourteen points, Wilson advocated “open agreements and no secret diplomacy in the
future” (Cátedra de Derecho Internacional Público de la Universidad Católica de la Plata,
2010).
This statement marks the beginning of what is known as public diplomacy, an approach
to international relations that involves citizens in the agreements and disagreements
between countries. Professor Gilboa (2008) addresses the study of public diplomacy from
a multidisciplinary perspective, ranging from the field of diplomacy to that of
communication, including international and public relations. In one of his works, Gilboa
(2000) incisively reflects on the relationship between current diplomacy and the media,
presenting six conceptual models to study this connection.
Technologies such as the radio, the television or the Internet have played a major role
in opening diplomacy to the public. In particular, the Internet is essential in the ongoing
transformation of international relations. Indeed, cyber-diplomacy is defined as the
digitalization of this field of politics. In the words of Prof. Rafael Rubio, we face “an
extension of public diplomacy allowing states to participate in distributed information
networks” (Rubio, 2011: 44).
The role of social networks in cyber-diplomacy
For some time now, social networks have become increasingly relevant in the field of
diplomacy. As pointed out by Rodríguez Gómez (2015: 926), “This 2.0 universe of social
networks provides the ministries of foreign affairs with tools that should be used for their
socializing and globalizing potential, as well as for their bidirectionality and, therefore,
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their feedback capacity.” Manfredi Sánchez (2013) also refers to the centrality of social
networks in diplomacy: “Social networks provide new opportunities for the participation
of non-state actors, paving the way for public diplomacy and the achievement of political
objectives.” In a similar vein, Grossman (2006) considers that social networks offer an
opportunity to advance international relations beyond the meeting of politicians or
leaders to an understanding between people.
The presence of governments and leaders in social networks has gradually increased in
recent years. Since 2018 Twitter is considered the social network of choice for
governments and world leaders (Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Ltd, 2018). According to the
Twiplomacy study 2020, 98% of UN member states are present on social networks. Only
four countries (Laos, North Korea, Sao Tome and Principe, and Turkmenistan) lack
accounts on that social network (Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Ltd, 2020). As far as leaders are
concerned, Donald Trump heads the list of world leaders with the largest number of
followers on Twitter, over 88 million according to the last figure registered in his personal
account on the day it was suspended (Brown, 2021).
Aware of the potential impact of messages posted on social networks, several
governments and supranational institutions have developed regulations for their use in
the field of cyber-diplomacy. See, for instance, the Council Conclusions on Cyber
Diplomacy, adopted by the Council of the European Union (2015), or the digital diplomacy
plans drawn up by countries such as France (Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires
étrangères, 2017) and Spain (Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y
Cooperación. Gobierno de España, 2015). All of them provide guidelines on the use of
these new technologies, including social networks, in the field of diplomacy.
The US-China conflict via Twitter
As already mentioned, US-China relations are among the most relevant elements from
the point of view of diplomacy in the first decades of the 21
st
century, with moments of
greater and lesser tension in these last years. During this time, the US has regarded
China as a strategic partner on some occasions and as a strategic competitor on others.
Despite these differences, many experts agree that these two countries are doomed to
understand each other (Bustelo and Soto, 2003).
However, the development of the fifth generation of mobile Internet has heightened the
tension between both powers over the control of a technology with infinite capabilities
that has become key in shaping the new world order. Both the US and China acknowledge
the importance of 5G, although with some differences in their respective positions. As
pointed out by Jinghua (2020), this is a race that America must win, while for China it
represents a major leap in the field of information and communication technologies.
The governments and some leaders of both countries have taken this rivalry to social
networks, particularly Twitter. Nine official accounts, two personal accounts and seven
institutional accounts directly linked to these administrations show an important activity
in terms of messages about 5G.
A total of 275 publications on the fifth generation of mobile Internet were published by
the most prominent official accounts of both countries. Most of these messages are
written in English (83%), and only those published by the US Embassy in China are
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10
written in the language of the Asian giant. It is worth noting that most publications post
original content created by the account owners (84%), while the rest (16%) are retweets
from other accounts. US profiles show the highest number of retweeted messages. Also
relevant is the message impact analysis, which shows a significant difference between
posts from US and Chinese profiles (Chart 1).
When it comes to the intent of those publications, most of them seek to extol the
capacity, technological power and influence of each country, or to present their
achievements, whether technical or diplomatic. See for instance the Clean Network, a
US-led initiative that brought together an alliance of countries opposed to the
implementation of Chinese-backed 5G technology. The analysis of the sample messages
showed a third objective: to attack the opponent (Chart 2). When analyzed by country,
it can be seen that US messages mainly seek to warn about the risks associated with
Chinese technology and to undermine its interests. On the other hand, messages from
accounts linked to the Chinese government essentially aim at defending against such
attacks and praising the technological capacity of the Asian giant (Chart 3).
Chart 1. Message impact by country (absolute data).
Source: own compilation.
Chart 2. Message intent (%)
Source: own compilation.
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Chart 3. Message intent by country (%)
Source: own compilation.
Security and privacy issues are among the most mentioned in the analyzed posts, only
after direct references to China and the US—almost ubiquitous. Behind them are other
topics such as the alleged threats posed by the implementation of 5G networks,
references to communism or the Chinese Communist Party, and to human rights. Notions
such as trust, democracy or human rights only appear in messages from US accounts—
as opposed to references to China, the US, and freedom, that prevail in Chinese posts
(Chart 4).
Chart 4. Concept relevance by country (%)
Source: own compilation.
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Daniel Muñoz-Sastre, Isabel Rodrigo-Martín, Luis Rodrigo-Martín
12
Also remarkable is the evolution of publications related to 5G over the reference period.
According to our study, it was not until the spring of 2019 that the messages on the fifth
generation of mobile Internet increased exponentially. In April and May of that year, both
countries intensified their activity on Twitter with different purposes: extolling their own
technological capacity, questioning their opponent’s technology, and accusing each other
of bad practices. The online confrontation subsequently escalated in November and
December 2019, as well as in May and July 2020 (Chart 5). Another spike was recorded
at the end of 2020 and in the first weeks of 2021, coinciding with the final days of Trump’s
presidency—prompting the researchers to extend the study to include that period.
Chart 5. Evolution of publications (absolute data)
Source: own compilation.
The messages posted during those three periods of particular intensity have similar
purposes and refer to the same concepts. However, the second spike shows several
publications regarding the arrest in Canada of Huawei’s deputy chair and CFO—Huawei
being the leading Chinese technology company and 5G champion. In that period there
are also messages about the possible banning of Chinese apps such as TikTok in the US.
In the third period of maximum intensity there are constant messages from the US about
the Clean Network international alliance. Figure 1 shows some messages to illustrate this
tension between both countries.
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13
Figure 1. Example of diplomatic confrontation between the US and China.
Source: Zhao (2020) and the US Department of State (2020).
Finally, the study provides a detailed analysis of each profile by number of publications
on this technology:
− @chinascio is the official account of the State Council Information Office of China,
active since September 2015, with around 44,500 followers. During the analyzed
period, it published a total of 67 messages regarding 5G technology—65 of which with
own content and 2 retweets, receiving 488 “likes” and 206 retweets. Most of its
messages are expository and praise China’s technological potential.
− @zlj517 is the official personal account of the spokesman and deputy director general
of the Information Department of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He joined Twitter
in May 2010 and has over 879,900 followers. This account has published 49 messages
related to the fifth generation of mobile Internet, 47 of which are own content and 2
are shared from other accounts. It is the Chinese profile with the most followers and
responses to its publications, most of which defend Chinese interests and attack US
comments and measures, once even launching a warning. He insistently repeats the
names of both countries.
− @USA_China_Talk is the account of the US Embassy in China. Active since 2009, it
has approximately 1,147,000 followers. It is the only account analyzed that posts its
messages in Chinese. Of its 46 publications on the subject matter, most are retweets
from accounts linked to the US administration. The tone of its messages is mostly
aggressive and warning, and after the name of both countries the concepts most
mentioned are security and privacy.
− @SecPompeo is the profile of the US Secretary of State during Donald Trump’s
presidency. This account was opened in April 2018, it has just over three million
followers and it has remained inactive since the end of Trump’s term in office. With 41
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messages on 5G, all of them his own, it is arguably the most active US profile on this
social network and, after President Trump’s, the one that generates the greatest
response from Internet users with more than 315,600 "likes" and 89,500 retweets of
its publications about that technology. These messages are mostly of an expository
nature, extolling US capabilities and attacking the Asian giant. Security is among the
most mentioned issues in Pompeo’s posts.
− @StateDept is the official account of the US State Department and has been active
since 2007. It has more than 6 million followers and during the period analyzed it
published 37 messages related to 5G, all of them its own. However, in terms of impact,
these posts did not reach the response elicited by the messages published by the head
of the department on his personal account. Most of the messages are attacks against
the Asian rival and warnings both to China and third countries. References to security,
communism and privacy are common.
− @realDonaldTrump is President Donald Trump’s personal profile. It is among the most
followed accounts, with 88.7 million followers, and one of the most controversial, to
the point that Twitter decided to suspend it in January 2021, twelve years after its
creation. Although it is not the account with the highest number of posts related to 5G
(only 13), they get the most reactions of the entire study, with about 682,000 "likes"
and 188,000 retweets. In these publications, Trump mainly warns China and other
countries to follow Washington’s indications and exposes US technological potential.
Among the most frequently used terms are those related to security, the very name
of the United States and communism.
− @MFA_China is the official account of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Created in
October 2019, it has just over 247,500 followers. During the analyzed period, it
published a dozen messages linked to 5G, all of them its own. They have little impact,
with just over 3,300 "likes" and 744 retweets. Most of these messages are intended
to defend against accusations or attacks from the United States or to warn against
attacks on China’s interests. Words such as China, United States or security are the
most repeated.
− @ChineseEmbinUS is the profile of the Chinese Embassy in the United States, created
in 2019 and with about 83,000 followers. It published seven messages about 5G, four
of which are retweeted content from other sources. It elicited fewer responses than
the rest of the accounts studied, with 313 "likes" and 89 retweets. Its posts on the
fifth generation of mobile Internet seek to extol China’s technological development
potential.
− @WhiteHouse: is the official White House account. It was opened in 2016 but, like the
President’s official one (@POTUS), it is archived every time the tenant of the US
presidential residence changes. During Trump’s four years in office, five messages
related to 5G were published from this account, all of them its own and fundamentally
aimed at praising the capacity of the US. Unsurprisingly, the name of the country is
the most repeated.
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Discussion
In light of the analysis carried out, social networks are not mere communication tools
within the field of diplomacy. Rather, they are key instruments for the development of
international relations. By enabling citizen involvement in these relations, social
platforms are a perfect embodiment of open diplomacy and cyber-diplomacy.
In the case of 5G, this openness is illustrated by the type of messages published by the
Chinese and US administrations or by some of their most prominent leaders. The initial
hypothesis is fully confirmed, as can be seen in the message exchange between both
powers through different Twitter accounts.
From the gathered data, there is a noteworthy difference in the nature of the messages
published by accounts from each country. While Chinese posts are more defensive or
aimed at praising the country or advancing its interests, those from the US are mostly in
a warning and threatening tone. This is also the case with the most repeated terms.
While US accounts insist on concepts such as democracy, trust or human rights, the
terms most often mentioned in Chinese publications are China, the US, and freedom. All
this closely reflects the policy approach of each government.
Conclusions
This study shows how the diplomatic use of social networks makes it possible to analyze
the political agenda in the context of the relations between two or more countries. Hence,
issues such as US actions against Huawei or the restrictions that the Trump
administration intended to impose on networks such as TikTok burst into the digital scene
and become not only political issues but also matters of public debate.
On the other hand, one of the essential purposes of cyber-diplomacy is to influence
international public opinion, as shown in this case by the intent and content of the
messages. This study shows that social networks, and specifically Twitter, are used to
attack the opponent, to defend against his accusations, for self-congratulation, as well
as to warn of possible consequences or alleged risks. Issues such as security, defense,
privacy, freedom or human rights are raised in a large number of the messages analyzed.
None of these terms and concepts go unnoticed by citizens and they have a great
mobilization capacity around certain causes.
Finally, the message impact analysis leads to another conclusion: the personal nature of
Trump’s presidency. Even if he is not the one who tweeted the most about 5G during
these years, the messages from his personal account are the ones that get the most
“likes” or retweets. This fact highlights the personification of diplomacy, until now not so
visible to society, but nonetheless a reality within the currently developing model of
cyber-diplomacy—thus paving a new way for conducting international relations in the
21
st
century.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
19
STUDY OF THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SPAIN AND
THE UNITED KINGDOM FOR DIPLOMATIC PURPOSES
MARINA RODRÍGUEZ HERNÁNDEZ
marina.rodriguez@ufv.es
PhD student in Communication at King Juan Carlos University of Madrid (Spain). Degree in
Advertising and Public Relations. Specialist in Protocol and Institutional Relations. Master in
Fashion Communication and Marketing. Since 2009, she has combined teaching at the Faculty of
Communication Sciences of the Francisco de Vitoria University with his professional career in the
areas of retail marketing and digital communication.
ISABEL ADRIANA VÁZQUEZ SACRISTÁN
isabel.vazquez@ufv.es
PhD student in Communication at Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), specialized in virtual
reality and new technologies. Degree in Advertising and Public Relations. Master in Protocol and
Institutional Relations. She teaches creativity in the Advertising Degree at the Francisco de
Vitoria University (Spain). She has worked as Account Supervisor and Head of New Business in
several advertising agencies -Tapsa, Young & Rubicam, Kitchen, ATREVIA-.
AIXA JORQUERA TRASCASTRO
aixa.jorquera@ufv.es
PhD in Audiovisual Communication, Advertising and Public Relations from the Complutense
University of Madrid (Spain), she has combined her work as professor in Ecuador and Spain with
professional performance in the area of production and editing / post-production in television,
advertising and corporate content.
Abstract
As means of communication and citizen participation, social networks are undoubtedly also
today a way for the exercise of diplomacy. Therefore, we undertake this research with the
aim of verifying how the highest diplomatic institutions in Spain and the United Kingdom are
integrating the use of new technologies and, specifically, social platforms to connect with
society, transmit transparency and proximity, manage their reputation, and exercise their role
as national and international representatives of these States. Specifically, we compare the
Spanish case with the British Royal Family, because it is the most popular reigning European
monarchy among netizens. To do so, we analyse the adoption and use of social media by both
royal houses. We identify the official profiles linked to them. We catalogue and study the
content published by each institution. And we compare the practices carried out by them,
finding that, although both institutions release institutional messages and leave a record of
their diplomatic actions, the British Royal Family has been able to give a more personal,
affable, and relaxed tone, acquiring a style more in tune with the participants of the networks.
Keywords
Diplomacy, Royal House, Spain, social media, United Kingdom.
How to cite this article
Hernandéz, Marina Rodriguez; Sacristán, Isabel Adriana Vázquez; Trascastro, Aixa Jorquera.
Study of the use of social media by the Royal Houses of Spain and the United Kingdom for
diplomatic purposes. Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last
visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.2
Article received on February 18, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 7, 2021
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
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Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 19-31
Study of the use of social media by the Royal Houses of Spain and the United Kingdom
for diplomatic purposes
Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
20
STUDY OF THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY THE ROYAL HOUSES OF
SPAIN AND THE UNITED KINGDOM FOR DIPLOMATIC PURPOSES
1
MARINA RODRÍGUEZ HERNÁNDEZ
ISABEL ADRIANA VÁZQUEZ SACRISTÁN
AIXA JORQUERA TRASCASTRO
1. Introduction
1.1. Diplomacy today: public, digital and social
There are many definitions of the concept of diplomacy by renowned authors such as
Cahier, Martens, Pradier-Fodéré, Rivier, Satow and Vilariño, among others. Although
each of them expresses differentiating nuances, by keeping their similarities in mind and
framing them in today's reality, we can define diplomacy as the activity of representation
and negotiation between subjects of international law who look after their interests, while
establishing and maintaining prosperous relations among themselves, through peaceful
negotiations.
We speak of subjects of international law because, as Professor Rubio (2014) explains at
length, we find ourselves in a context in which power is no longer the exclusive preserve
of states - to whom diplomatic practice was traditionally confined. On the contrary, new
actors have appeared, both groups and individuals, with authority and political influence,
both national and supranational.
In sum, states are not the only players on the chessboard. They lead foreign
policy actions, but they are not the most important ones. Other actors have
begun to participate in the international arena by developing an intense
foreign policy, whether or not this is the usual term. Regional governments,
multinationals, NGOs, lobbies, cities and individuals participate in and
influence decisions affecting international policy. They make moves to defend
their own interests in the international arena. (Rubio, 2014: 13).
Diplomacy has existed for as long as there have been relations between organised human
groups. However, we have been talking about modern diplomacy since the Treaty of
Westphalia was signed in 1648. Nevertheless, diplomacy is undergoing a real revolution
1
Article translated by Cristina López García.
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
21
due to the progress of ICTs, which requires the practice of public and digital diplomacy.
Hocking and Melissen (2015) reflect on this issue, explaining how the DNA of diplomatic
practice has changed, in terms of both its processes and its structures. In the current
hybrid environment - marked by the blurring of the boundaries between the digital and
physical ecosystems - diplomacy is exercised in a network, involving many more
stakeholders who maintain horizontal relations with each other. In this regard, Casado
(2017) notes that "this is the most important transformation of diplomacy since the
Second World War". Communication being an indispensable tool for the exercise of
foreign policy, as the author points out, the current context demands higher levels of
dialogue, interaction, and reciprocity, as well as transparency, flexibility, and immediacy.
The web has increased the dissemination of all kinds of messages, including those that
concern us in this research. Contact between the official source and the citizen is now
possible and convenient. However, the content must be relevant.
In order for the public to follow our websites and social networks, we must
provide them with added value: quality, clear, rigorous, careful and
interesting information. It is not enough to communicate corporate content:
most current government information is limited to conveying official positions
or points of view. We need to get out of the "bureaucratic bubble" and interact
intelligently on current issues. Our obligation is to be aware of society's
concerns, as an antidote to irrelevance. We must strive to listen, converse
and engage people in the business of governing the public, which is their
business. We have to design an attractive, fast, close, flexible and visual
communication. Informing, but also exciting. A digital communication that is
"popular", but not "populist". (Casado, 2017: 3).
Social networks are an excellent two-way communication tool through which to combat
citizens' disaffection with the institutions. However, this demands the implementation of
a truly integrated communication policy adapted to social uses. In other words, it is not
enough to use them as a simple means of dissemination. On the contrary, it is imperative
to adapt the narrative to their tone, codes, forms, and formats, in order not only to
transmit information, but also to engage in reciprocal, enriching and strategically oriented
conversations.
The digital and diplomatic reality requires a qualitative leap, a true digital
transformation. “Diplomacy 3.0" requires more than just informing. It is
necessary to interact and converse with citizens. It is necessary to weave
alliances and complicities with governments and civil societies through the
Web. This requires accommodating structures under a basic premise:
integrating digital diplomacy into the diplomat's work. Countries that better
train their diplomats in the subtle art of digital diplomacy will more easily
achieve their foreign policy objectives. (Casado, 2017: 5).
Indeed, today, e-diplomacy must be part of the daily work of all diplomatic agents. All of
them and their cabinets must master the use of social networks and integrate them into
their communication to achieve their objectives.
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Study of the use of social media by the Royal Houses of Spain and the United Kingdom
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
22
1.2. The language of networks: eminently visual.
"Social networks have become referents for access to audiovisual content" (Ramos and
Ortega-Mohedano, 2017: 707). And, in this sense, as the evidence shows, the language
used in them is eminently visual, perhaps due to its implicit quality of immediacy. “In
human behaviour it is not difficult to detect a propensity for visual information. We seek
visual support for our knowledge for many reasons, but above all because of the
directness of the information and its proximity to actual experience” (Dondis, 1976: 14).
We must be aware that the audiovisual messages published by the institutions we are
going to analyse on their networks are intentionally composed. They are not casual. On
the contrary, they are completely planned, from the styling of the protagonists to the
symbols that appear in the image, the lighting, the framing, the type of shot, etc. And
all of this is repeated in the transmission of meaning. “Content is fundamentally what is
being expressed, directly or indirectly; it is the character of the information, the message.
But in visual communication, content is never separated from form” (Dondis, 1976: 123).
This makes it absolutely relevant to study not only the textual content of social
publications, but also the composition and realisation of the accompanying still and
moving images.
1.3. Heads of State in Spain and the United Kingdom
The highest diplomatic institutions in Spain and the United Kingdom are the Heads of
State of both countries. Although, we are aware that the Head of State is normally a
unipersonal body exercised, in this case, by King Felipe VI in Spain and Queen Elizabeth
II in the United Kingdom, we have analysed the diplomatic work of all the members of
both royal families present in their official social communication, due to the functions
they exercise as representatives of their respective States and the impact and influence
they can have on the generation of engagement and the management of the reputation
of both nations.
Thus, as indicated on the royal.uk website, the members of the British Royal Family, in
addition to Queen Elizabeth II, are the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the
Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Duke and Duchess of
Sussex, the Duke of York, the Duke and Duchess of Wessex, the Princess Royal, the Duke
and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra.
According to information published by Ibbetson (2020) based on YouGov
2
data, the five
most popular members of the British Royal Family are: Prince William or Duke of
Cambridge (75%), Queen Elizabeth II (73%), the Duchess of Cambridge (67%), Princess
Anne (50%) and Prince Philip or Duke of Edinburgh (49%). These popularity ratings are
also evident in the question posed by the same platform, in October 2020, about the
continuity of the monarchy. Two thirds of Britons are in favour of it. And 68% of those
2
International company dedicated to market research and data analysis of the Internet, to extract
information about the habits and opinions of Internet users.
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
23
polled consider that the couple formed by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be
the most influential in the coming years.
For its part, the Spanish royal family is currently made up of King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia,
the Princess of Asturias, the Infanta Sofía and the emeritus kings Don Juan Carlos and
Doña Sofía.
As for the opinion of citizens, even though no questions have been asked about the
monarchy in CIS surveys since 2015, according to information gathered by the social
research and market research institute IMOP Insights in 2019, only half of those
interviewed would support this model of State. And among all the members of the Royal
Family, Doña Sofía would be the highest rated (6.7), followed by Don Felipe (6.3), Don
Juan Carlos (4.9) and Doña Letizia (4.8). However, due to recent events, these ratings
may have undergone changes in the present day.
Beyond popular acceptance, it should be noted that, although both are constitutional
monarchies with parliamentary governments, the British monarchy is much older than
the Spanish one. Moreover, Elizabeth II has been in office since February 1952, making
her the longest-reigning queen in Europe, while Felipe VI was proclaimed king 62 years
later, on 19 June 2014. And, in general terms, the British royal house has always been
more inclined to incorporate new media and technologies into its communication, as was
evidenced by George V's first radio Christmas speech (1932), the speech made by a
young Princess Elizabeth during the Second World War (1940) or the first televised
Christmas message in which she starred as Queen in 1957.
2. Design and Method
Retrospective, exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory research, based on the analysis
of the publications issued on the official social profiles linked from the websites of the
Spanish (www.casareal.es) and British (www.royal.uk) royal houses.
Objectives:
O1. To verify the degree of digital socialisation achieved by the royal houses studied, by
comparing the social networks in which they are present.
O2. To verify whether they publish content related to diplomatic actions on their social
profiles.
O3. Carry out a comparative analysis of the use that both royal houses make of social
platforms to communicate their diplomatic actions.
To achieve the aforementioned objectives, we resorted to a qualitative research method
commonly used in the social sciences, specifically, content analysis. In this way, we
collected, studied, and interpreted the communicative messages constructed and issued
by the entities under study. Subsequently, we proceed to compare the data obtained
from the two royal houses, considering three aspects: (1) construction of their social
profiles, (2) use and performance of these for diplomatic purposes, (3) typology of still
and dynamic images disseminated through these social accounts.
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
24
3. Fieldwork and data analysis
To undertake this study, we first reviewed the social accounts linked from the websites
www.casareal.es and www.royal.uk., checking which social profiles were linked from the
websites of both institutions. In this way, we saw that the Spanish royal house centralises
all its activity in a single profile and two social networks (YouTube and Twitter), while the
British royal house has three groups of agents with representative functions of the State
- The Royal Family, Clarence House and Kensington Royal - active on four digital
platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram).
Table 1. Social profiles of the Spanish and British royal houses
Casa Real
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/casarealtv
Twitter
https://twitter.com/casareal
The Royal Family
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TheBritishMonarchy
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalChannel
Twitter
https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/theroyalfamily/
Clarence House
Twitter
https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ClarenceHouse/
Kensington Royal
Twitter
https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/kensingtonroyal/
Source: Own elaboration.
Below, we compile all the publications disseminated on the profiles between the first of
October and the 31st of December 2020, totalling 1,418 publications.
Table 2. Quantification of publications issued by the official social profiles linked from the websites
of the Spanish Royal Family and the British Royal Family
Network
Casa Real
The Royal
Family
Clarence
House
Kensington
Royal
Total
Facebook
-
78
-
-
78
YouTube
120
22
-
-
142
Twitter
277
299
263
144
983
Instagram
-
66
81
68
215
Totals
397
465
344
212
1.418
Source: Own elaboration.
As can be seen in the table above, all the subjects studied have a Twitter profile and
make intensive use of the network, with Kensington Royal being the account with the
lowest number of accumulated tweets during the period analysed. Regarding Instagram,
the only entity that is not present on this network is the Casa Real. However, it does
have a YouTube channel, with many videos (120). The Royal Family is also on the
platform, but with a much smaller amount of content (22). Finally, it should be noted
that only The Royal Family has a Facebook profile.
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
25
Among all these contents, we selected those related to diplomatic issues, verifying that,
of the 397 total publications of the Spanish royal house, 26% deal with diplomatic issues.
Meanwhile, of the 1,021 social profiles associated with the British Royal Family, only 10%
deal with this type of issues. To conclude, we studied this selection from the point of view
of the use given to each social platform by both heads of state, as well as the performance
achieved on each of them, and the syntax of the image, both still and moving, that they
disseminate on these profiles.
4. Results
4.1. General information on the social profiles of the Spanish and
British royal houses. Analysis of their profile and cover images
The starting point for this analysis is the websites of both institutions. Although we are
not going to analyse them in detail, we must say that both sites are adapted to the size
of the screens of the devices from which they are viewed. In terms of design, royal.uk is
a more modern and dynamic site, thanks to the proportion of images-text, as well as the
quality, size, and colour of the images. Moreover, in terms of the subject that concerns
us, the British site shows the links to the social profiles in a preferential place: they are
anchored to the left margin of the page, so that, even when scrolling, they are always
present on the screen, increasing their accessibility. On the other hand, to find the links
to Casa Real social profiles, it is necessary to navigate to the middle-bottom area of the
website. The texts on casareal.es are abundant and are written in reduced font sizes. On
the other hand, the photographs offered on this site are entirely institutional, while on
the British royal website the more formal images are intermingled with more endearing
and apparently more spontaneous ones.
As for the profile and cover images of their social networks, those related to the British
Royal Family have been sharing the same cover image since 12 November 2019. This
features hundreds of citizens with state flags, celebrating an event, such as
Remembrance Day. The profile pictures also share similarities. In all of them, the
members of each family are dressed in shades of blue, a colour traditionally associated
with royalty because of its meaning related to honour and nobility. However, the cover
image of the Spanish royal family's Twitter account is a photograph of the Zarzuela
Palace. And that of the YouTube channel is the computer graphic composition shown
below:
Image 1. Header of Casa Real YouTube channel
Source: https://www.youtube.com/user/casarealtv
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
26
Moreover, the profile picture on both networks only shows the coat of arms of King Felipe
VI on his usual crimson red background.
Finally, before analysing the use of social networks for diplomatic purposes, it seems
important to point out the main data concerning these profiles. According to the date of
creation of each network, we summarise below the most important information about the
accounts of both royal houses on them:
The Facebook page @TheBritishMonarchy was created on 10 September 2010, and
currently has a community of over five million followers. As we have seen in the tables
above, Casa Real has no presence on this network.
Continuing with YouTube, the @casarealtv channel was created on 26 October 2011 and
today has 109,000 subscribers and more than 55 million views. The
@TheRoyalFamilyChannel, which dates to 5 October 2007, has 704,000 subscribers and
more than 177 million views.
As for Twitter, the only platform on which we found profiles of all the royal
representatives analysed, @RoyalFamily has been present since April 2009 and has more
than four million followers. The next highest number of followers is @KensingtonRoyal,
with two million. However, the account was not created until five years later, in
September 2014. @KensingtonRoyal has one million fans. It also joined the network in
2014, during the month of May. And, finally, we find @ClarenceHouse with its almost
nine hundred and forty thousand followers. Although it is true that it was the last profile
by date of creation (November 2014).
We end this first part with Instagram, a network on which the Spanish royal family does
not have an account. But @theroyalfamily has been publishing content on it since March
2014, accumulating 8.6 million followers. Although the first account related to the
Windsor Household was @ClarenceHouse (October 2012), which today has 1.3 million
followers. However, the most popular is @KensingtonRoyal, with 12.3 million like-minded
internet users, who have been following the profile since its creation in January 2015.
4.2. Analysis of the use and performance of social platforms by the
Spanish and British royal houses for diplomatic purposes
Comparing the percentage of content related to diplomatic issues indicated in section 3,
the Casa Real uses its social profiles more frequently to disseminate its actions in this
regard. On YouTube, during the period analysed, more than 40 videos have been
published that bear witness to the King and Queen's international trips, the King's
speeches at various summits, the presentation of credentials by various ambassadors
and bilateral meetings with presidents of other nations, among others. The average
length of the videos is four minutes and ten seconds, although there are some really long
videos (up to 18 minutes) in which Don Felipe's complete speeches are reproduced.
Practically all of them are accompanied by long descriptions explaining each of the acts
they include and highlighting some of the King's or Queen's words.
On Twitter, they also publish many messages on these issues. All of them include some
kind of audiovisual content, with the most popular option being the publication of several
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
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images (80%), compared to 15% of videos and 5% of single images. They do not use
emoticons or hashtags, but they do mention other accounts. The average number of likes
obtained is around 1,100. And the language of publication is always Spanish.
When we analyse the social presence of the accounts associated with the British Head of
State, we see that they publish less diplomatic content. On Facebook, we find messages
of condolences, videos, and images of virtual audiences of the Queen with multiple
ambassadors, remembrance of historic days and dissemination of activities carried out
by other members of the Royal Family, especially by the Prince of Wales. They use
hashtags and incorporate links to other websites and YouTube videos, a platform they do
not emphasise, but on which they achieve a good number of average views (around
20,000). Twitter, however, is a preferred network for all the families linked to the British
royal family. In this case, it should be noted that they use emoticons to reinforce their
messages. Regarding the subject matter in question, the incorporation of the miniature
of the flags of the countries to which they refer stands out. On the other hand, they also
use other emoticons such as cameras or video cameras to indicate the authorship of the
images published or arrows to highlight links. They also use hashtags and, on specific
occasions, mention other accounts.
On Instagram, @theroyalfamily account often posts carousels of images beginning with
a snapshot of the Queen. Clarence House uses the network to highlight the Prince of
Wales, who is often shown in a relaxed and friendly manner. Although condolences and
formal acts are also published. In addition to using English, this profile does include
messages in other languages such as German and nods to other cultures, for example,
by congratulating him when the Hindu festival known as Diwali. Carousels of images
predominate, followed by videos.
The Kensington Royal profiles are the ones with the fewest publications on diplomatic
issues, but they also issue some messages of this type, following the style of the other
accounts associated with the British head of state.
Finally, it should be noted that the accounts of The Royal Family disseminate content
from both Clarence House and Kensington Royal, although more emphasis is placed on
Clarence House. And, in general terms, the accounts that achieve the greatest number
of positive reactions are those of The Royal Family and Kensington Royal.
4.3. Analysis of the still and moving images disseminated by the
Spanish and British royal houses on their social media profiles for
diplomatic purposes
After studying the audiovisual production of the selected social publications, we must say
that, in general terms, the profiles with the best production are those of Kensington Royal
and Clarence House. These are followed by those of The Royal Family. And, finally, we
find those of the Casa Real.
When analysing the treatment of the image, two totally different styles are evident:
Casa Real is dominated by a journalistic language, typical of reportage, a consequence
of the recording of videos with a shoulder-mounted camera without a stabiliser or post-
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
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production stabilisation, as well as the capture of images typical of photojournalism. On
the other hand, cut or fade-in editing is used. They often use a type of video edition to
make spatial or temporal ellipses. But it is sometimes misapplied because it does not
change space or time. The lighting is of a naturalistic type, as no artificial light source is
added for reinforcement, resulting in overexposed or underexposed shots and photos,
for example, excessively bright or dark images. And the lenses used are wide-angle or
normal lenses. Moreover, in many shots, the focus is imperfect, and, in others, the
framing could be improved. On several occasions, only the foreshortening of the queen
is visible, while another person is framed. Or there is an overuse of the slightly
overlapping shot, the result of the use of the shoulder camera by operators who do not
bend down to take the frontal shots that would be appropriate. As for the type of shot,
most of them are open shots. The medium shot is rarely used, but there are American
shots, as well as long general shots, some of them slightly aberrated, which is unusual
and even inappropriate because this causes a sensation of instability in the scene.
Occasionally, the king is given medium shots with more neutral lighting, but the framing
is not correct because he is not in the centre but is displaced to the left of the viewer.
As for the UK, the photographs and videos are more careful, both in terms of lighting and
framing. In fact, most of them respect the law of thirds and are very well composed.
They use a wider variety of lenses (normal, wide angle and telephoto) and play with
depth of field, achieving more striking and attractive images. Also, they use cameras with
more dynamic range, on tripod and/or with stabiliser. Although some videos are more
journalistic and testimonial (recorded with a hand-held camera), in these cases, they try
not to move the device and only use one or two shots. The lighting is always equalised,
so we infer that in photographs they use flashes and post-production. And in the
recording of the videos, they have screens that do the filling. The lights are soft and
diffuse. Short shots predominate, especially medium-short shots, with frontal or
contrapposto angles. In terms of composition, it should be noted that in all their
photographs and videos they make it clear that the protagonist is the member of the
Royal Family who appears; this is achieved through the choice of the frame. In contrast,
in the images of the Spanish royal family, the framing conveys a lack of planning. Thus,
on many occasions, we see Queen Letizia foreshortened, and it is even difficult to
recognise her. On other occasions, she appears in a large general shot, where her figure
is seen in very small dimensions, surrounded by other people, among whom she is
somewhat lost, and she even appears at the edges of the image, not in the centre, and
out of focus.
On the other hand, in the videos in which they make a video call, in the case of the Queen
of England the multi-screen is shown, allowing all the participants to be seen, while in
the cases in which this occurs in Spain, only the King is seen. Continuing with the
differences, the Casa Real videos never contain subtitles, even if they are spoken in
another language. However, many of the videos of the British Royal Family do include
subtitles, even though they are in English.
With regard to the length and editing of the videos, those of the Spanish royal family are
considerably longer, while those of the British royal family are much shorter. Although
the transitions used are the same in both cases, the use they make of them is notably
different. In Spain, the ellipsis through the chained fade-out is often misused, because,
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
29
as we have said before, they remain at the same time or space. In the United Kingdom,
on the other hand, although they also resort to cutting or chain fade, they do it to move
to blocks of images (which are usually made up of photographs in which a slight zoom
in, zoom out or sweep movement is used) in order to avoid the jump cut
3
. Although not
entirely orthodox, the result is much more aesthetically pleasing than in the case of the
Spanish royal house videos.
Table 3. Comparative table of the use of audiovisual resources in social media publications related
to diplomatic actions of the Spanish and British royal houses
Spain
UK
Value of the
plane
Generale plane.
Medium shot.
Angulation
Lightly chopped.
Frontal or counter-dive.
Lighting
Naturalist
(without artificial lighting).
Indirect, diffuse and equalised.
Lens
Angular and normal.
Wide, normal and telephoto.
Camera
To the shoulder (of reportage).
Wide dynamic range with
stabiliser.
Mounting
Cut and fade chained (to make
temporal or spatial ellipses).
A chained cut and fade (to move
to resource blocks and avoid jump
cuts).
Duration
Medium and long.
Briefs and media.
Subtitles
Never.
Occasionally.
Source: Own elaboration.
5. Conclusions and Discussion
As we have seen, in the United Kingdom, in addition to the official social accounts
associated with the head of state and the publications featuring Queen Elizabeth II, there
are also those of the families of her direct heirs: Clarence House, headed by the Prince
of Wales, and Kensington Royal, headed by Prince William. In contrast, in Spain, there is
only one social profile through which the Head of State and the other members of the
Royal Family communicate. Therefore, the Spanish Royal Family has far fewer diplomatic
representatives than the British Royal Family and the Spanish Head of State before the
abdication of King Juan Carlos I in 2014. This decline, due to the events related to
different members of the Royal Family, has undoubtedly affected its general
communication and also its diplomatic action. Although, in the case of the British
Household, we have seen how this work is carried out by three family groups (Royal
Family -comprising Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh-, Clarence House -with
the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall-, and Kensington Royal -comprising the
Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their children-), in Spain, only King Felipe VI, Queen
Letizia, Princess Leonor and the Infanta Sofía have an official presence on the social
networks, under the same profile of a markedly institutional nature, which is evident from
the choice of profile and cover images on the different networks. While the British
networks contain personal images, Casa Real accounts feature State symbols such as the
3
Film editing technique that consists of eliminating a part of the footage, generating a time jump effect.
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Marina Rodríguez Hernández, Isabel Adriana Vázquez Sacristán, Aixa Jorquera Trascastro
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Coat of Arms or the Zarzuela Palace. This aspect results in a more distant communication,
which makes it difficult to generate empathy among Internet users.
If we look at the usernames, we see that those of the accounts belonging to The Royal
Family are the most different from each other, especially the Facebook page
("TheBritishMonarchy"). This can be explained by the dates of creation of the different
profiles. However, despite these discrepancies, the name used in all the accounts is The
Royal Family. Casa Real incorporates the abbreviation for television (tv) into the name
of its YouTube channel: "casarealtv". Clarence House and Kensington Royal show no
disparity.
On the other hand, we find it significant that the Casa Real has only a Twitter account
and a YouTube channel. We believe that its incorporation into a more visual network
frequented by young audiences, such as Instagram, could be beneficial for its
communication. We also believe that it would be favourable for them to adapt to the
codes of the networks, in terms of the use of emoticons, hashtags and concise messages,
to be more attractive, dynamic and generate higher levels of engagement.
As for the use of their social profiles for diplomatic purposes, we conclude that the
publications of both institutions have an eminently testimonial character. They serve as
a reflection of the ceremonies undertaken, like an album of memories or an audiovisual
diary that testifies to the daily activity of their members. However, they do not delve into
the underlying diplomatic issue, nor are they used as tools for effective negotiation. They
are used as platforms to record the tasks undertaken by the members of the royal
houses, from a more aesthetic, protocol and ceremonial point of view.
From the point of view of the semantics of the image, we consider the Windsors' use of
the shots to be much more coherent, since, as opposed to the slightly sharply angled
shots, common in images of Casa Real, which transmit inferiority or weakness, the close-
ups typical of the British Royal Household exalt the figure and power; and to these are
added the frontal shots to communicate closeness to the spectator. Continuing with these
issues, we can affirm that the technical deployment made with the British royal house is
greater. This can be seen in the cameras, the choice of lenses, the use of stabilisers, etc.
It is evident that the staging is more careful, but this is counterbalanced by a correct
angulation and correct shot values, which transmit closeness. In this way, they achieve
aesthetically beautiful, carefully planned images, but with a correct shot meaning.
Whereas, in the Spanish case, we could consider that they seek to transmit naturalism,
verisimilitude and the absence of manipulation of the content, but the shot values and
framing go against their message.
For all these reasons, and taking into account the objectives of the research, we conclude
that both royal houses have a presence in social media. Although, the British one stands
out above the Spanish one, both for the number and variety of networks in which it is
present (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram), and for the profiles associated with
the representation of the monarchy (three groups of representatives -The Royal Family,
Clarence House and Kensington Royal- as opposed to one -Casa Real-). Meanwhile the
Spanish royal house uses its networks more assiduously for diplomatic purposes, its
communications are not adapted to the language of social platforms. In addition, their
messages are too institutional and tend to generate coldness.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
32
DISINFORMATION PROPAGATION IN SOCIAL NETWORKS AS A DIPLOMACY
STRATEGY: ANALYSIS FROM SYSTEM DYNAMICS
ALFREDO GUZMÁN RINCÓN
alfredo.guzman@asturias.edu.co
PhD candidate in Policy and Public Management Modelling from the Universidad Jorge Tadeo
Lozano (Colombia). Master in Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios
Superiores de Monterrey and Commercial Engineer from the Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas y
Ambientales U.D.C.A. Director of Research at the Corporación Universitaria de Asturias and
Editorial Coordinator of Ediciones SUMMA.
BELÉN RODRÍGUEZ-CÁNOVAS
brcanovas@ucm.es
PhD in Economics and Business Administration from ICADE. Degree in Statistics from the
Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) and Bachelor's Degree in Economics and Business
Administration, ICADE together with a Master's Degree in Data Mining and Business Intelligence
from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is a reviewer member of the European Journal of
Marketing.
Abstract
Disinformation on social media has positioned itself as a strategy of diplomacy to intervene in
the decisions of sovereign states through the use of fake news, misleading content, hate
speech and deliberate falsehoods, information errors, among others, in order to mobilise their
citizens, and thus change both public and state policies and rulers, generate social pressure
on socio-economic systems, etc. Having said that, the analysis of this strategy in terms of the
process of disinformation propagation has been characterised as biased as it involves multiple
actors with different levels of decision-making; hence the aim of this paper is to analyse the
propagation of disinformation as a diplomatic strategy in social networks through a systemic
approach. The results show a generalist model of causal loops, which provides evidence of
how disinformation is disseminated, based on the various elements documented in the
literature on this diplomatic strategy. Concluding on the potential nature of disinformation and
the role that the state and the social networks themselves should play in preventing and
mitigating this phenomenon, which is currently affecting nations across the board and which
has become popular through the use of diplomatic agents.
Keywords
Disinformation, diplomacy, model, system dynamics.
How to cite this article
Rincón. Alfredo Guzmán; Rodríguez-Cánovas, Belén. Disinformation propagation in social
networks as a diplomacy strategy: analysis from system dynamics. Janus.net, e-journal of
international relations. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks, July
2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.3
Article received on December 22, 2020 and accepted for publication on March 23, 2021
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 32-43
Disinformation propagation in social networks as a diplomacy strategy: analysis from system dynamics
Alfredo Guzmán Rincón, Belén Rodríguez-Cánovas
33
DISINFORMATION PROPAGATION IN SOCIAL NETWORKS AS A
DIPLOMACY STRATEGY: ANALYSIS FROM SYSTEM DYNAMICS
1
ALFREDO GUZMÁN RINCÓN
BELÉN RODRÍGUEZ-CÁNOVAS
Introduction
Social networks have been conceptualised as the spaces which allow interaction between
online users, and whose main purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information and to
encourage collective discussion among a group of interconnected contacts (Forteza,
2012). That said, in recent years this means has become the most direct mediator of
relations between governments and citizens (Jahng, 2021; Lazer et al., 2018), because
it allows the circulation of information of a massive nature, as well as debate about it
(Carlo Bertot et al., 2012). Consequently, this has resulted in a new scenario of two-way
communication that significantly affects the way in which the communication process
between states and their stakeholders has been conducted (Guzmán et al., 2020).
In this scenario, diplomacy has not been an exception to the changes generated by the
implementation of this communication channel, which has led to closer contact between
the international agent and the local recipient of the information. (Cull, 2019; Graffy,
2009), and, which has resulted in a wide variety of benefits among which stand out,
firstly, the creation of loyal communities due to the approach with foreign citizens (Graffy,
2009); secondly, the decrease in communication costs, since they are usually lower than
other traditional means such as the press or television (Rashica, 2018); thirdly, the
development of more effective communications with citizens due to the variety of content
that can be generated in such a network such as videos, 3D photos, images, web
publications, etc. (Gebhard, 2017); among others.
However, despite the benefits of the use of these networks in the context of diplomacy,
some states have made use of this communication channel to propagate disinformation,
understood as any deviant or untruthful information intended to mislead a target
audience (Innes, 2020), with the aim of meddling in the decisions of sovereign
governments by influencing the opinion of citizens, in order to fulfil some of their
international policy purposes (Lazer et al, 2018; Cull, 2016).
Thus, in recent years the use of disinformation as a strategy of diplomacy in this area
has become more common. An example of this was the Lisa Affair case, documented by
1
Translation by Cecilia Carabaja
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La Cour (2020), in which a group of Middle Eastern migrants were accused of raping a
woman of German-Russian origin through a video on social networks. This situation led
to anger and internal debate among German citizens about the state policy on
immigration and refugees, provoking mass demonstrations against Muslim populations
in that country. However, this turned out to be false and directed by the Russian
government, with the aim of causing riots and reducing the German government's
support for migrants and refugees from the Middle East.
Another example was the Russian interference in the US elections in 2016, where
systematic disinformation campaigns were used to influence the opinion of the US
electorate, allowing Donald Trump to win the presidency. (Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, 2017). More recently, and stemming from COVID-19, the Russian
and Chinese governments have been accused of systematic misinformation about the
pandemic. As Milosevich-Juaristi (2020) identified in the way the Russian media RT and
Sputnik reported the origin of the virus, claiming that it had been created in NATO
laboratories, or that the United States had created it to destabilise the Chinese economy,
such disinformation sought to create panic and confusion in order to prevent people from
accessing accurate information about the virus and public health provisions. Such
disinformation sought to generate panic and confusion in order to prevent people from
accessing accurate information about the virus and public health provisions, which may
have led to some extent to the high levels of disease in Europe and the US.
Taking these examples as a reference, and others documented by multiple authors (e.g.
Fjällhed, 2020; Lanoszka, 2019), the use of this strategy has regained importance today,
more than for the channel or the message itself, it has done so because of its capacity
for mass propagation and the impact it can have on citizens, which is why disinformation
as a strategy of diplomacy has become one of the main problems in the defence of states
(Pamment et al., 2017). Hence the importance of studying this strategy and its effects.
However, previous research has focused on understanding the use of this strategy and
its consequences, rather than its propagation (Fjällhed, 2020). This is largely due to the
difficulty of tracing the origin of this type of information, as well as the complexity of the
relationships between the actors involved in its dissemination.
Taking into consideration what was previously explained, this article aimed to analyse
the spread of disinformation as a diplomatic strategy on social media through a systemic
approach. It is structured in four sections. The first presents the theoretical framework
and the background to the problem under study; the second, the methodology used; the
third, the results of the research; and the fourth, the conclusions.
Diplomacy
The meanings of diplomacy have been characterised by being broad and having diverse
epistemological and methodological frameworks (Hart and Siniver, 2020), which is why
it is considered a dynamic field of study, in which a single, multifunctional definition is
useless, especially in the current disruptive scenario in which international relations have
gone from being a private act between governments to a public act, involving the general
public.
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That said, this article frames diplomacy as a systematised process in which international
actors seek to achieve foreign policy objectives (Cull, 2019; Cull, 2016), through
mechanisms not related to warfare, but rather through a series of actors charged with
managing the international approach (Cull, 2008). These actors can be a state, a
multinational, a non-profit organisation, or any actor on the global stage.
In this context, diplomacy takes on two connotations, as Cull (2008) argues. The first
refers to traditional diplomacy in which actors try to manage the international
environment by means of a specific commitment or pact with their counterparts, usually
of a private nature; and the second, which corresponds to public diplomacy in which the
state and international actors manage their environment through the commitment of
foreign citizens. Thus, the use of social networks is part of the latter type of diplomacy.
Public diplomacy has thus been characterised by its methods of operation, which seek to
influence public opinion by communicating with the other. Thus, multiple authors argue
that in this respect, states strive to promote their interests to the citizens of another
nation in order to achieve their foreign policy objectives. (Pratkanis, 2009; Potter, 2002).
It is in this promotion of interests that this type of diplomacy makes use of the mass
media to influence a much wider public and in which the use of social networks has a
place. (Pajtinka, 2019).
In this context, and as a result of the evolution of public diplomacy in the 21st century,
this has presented a series of twists and turns, which have allowed the consolidation of
disinformation in social networks as a strategy of diplomacy. These changes include: the
democratisation of diplomatic agents; the new communication mechanisms used in the
framework of diplomacy, especially the web and social networks; the consolidation of
globalised information; among others. (Fjällhed, 2020; Cull, 2019; Cull, 2008; Melissen,
2005).
Disinformation as a strategy of diplomacy
Before referring to disinformation as a strategy, it is necessary to clarify the concept of
strategy. Thus, nowadays it is often referred to in multiple fields, including business,
religion, culture, politics, among others (Contreras, 2013), so diplomacy is no exception.
That said, in the context of this article, strategy is understood as a series of actions
carried out by an agent of diplomacy to fulfil a state's foreign policy objectives. This
definition is based on Cull (2019, 2008) and Fjällhed (2020).
In this context, disinformation as a strategy of diplomacy aims at the deliberate
dissemination of false information with the objective of unbalancing foreign governments
by confusing and deceiving their citizens (Gerrits, 2018; Lazer et al., 2018), whereby the
sender of the message seeks to benefit from the social disagreement generated, change
state policies, as well as increase its international presence and fulfil its foreign policy
objectives (Cull, 2016).
Although one might think that disinformation has only recently been used by states as a
strategy of diplomacy, it dates back to the end of the First World War, when it was used
to influence the positioning of the political and economic system of capitalism and
socialism in many nations. (Gerrits, 2018). This first stage of disinformation, which could
be called "before the internet", was characterised using traditional channels such as
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television, radio, newspapers, flyers, etc. However, because of the evolution of the
strategy, it has been incorporated into the internet and social media, which has meant
an increase in its potential, giving rise to the era of the "digitalisation" of disinformation.
This change of means derives from the mechanisms that social networks possess, which
allow the message to be amplified, such as bots, trolls, echo chambers, organic and paid
reach, etc., resulting in a greater exposure of citizens to disinformation. (Bjola, 2018).
In this context, the study of disinformation as a strategy of social media diplomacy has
gained interest in recent years, both by governments and the academic community.
Thus, studies have concentrated on case studies seeking to understand the use of such
a strategy and its consequences, especially the strategies implemented by Russia and
China. (ex.: La Cour, 2020; Lupion, 2018; Kania and Costello 2018), due to the difficult
relations with Western countries. Such studies have highlighted the ability to interfere in
democratic processes such as elections and state powers (La Cour, 2020; Bayer et al.,
2019); the polarisation of citizens' opinion through the exacerbation of radical and
supremacist thinking (Faris et al., 2017); and the loss of credibility of the media (Bennett
and Livingston, 2018).
Despite the progress made, the difficulty in analysing this strategy of diplomacy is
acknowledged and has limited the scope of action of researchers to the identification of
case studies, due to the challenge of tracing the origin of disinformation, which makes it
impossible to attribute and study from the origin of the message (Gerrits, 2018). It is
therefore necessary to explore other aspects of this strategy, such as the propagation of
disinformation, building on existing theory and thus clarifying other aspects that have
not been addressed.
Methodology
Aims of the study
To achieve the objective of this study, which is to analyse the propagation of
disinformation as a diplomatic strategy in social networks, the following specific
objectives were set out:
1. To identify the actors and mechanisms involved in this social media diplomacy
strategy.
2. To establish how these actors and mechanisms relate to each other in the propagation
of disinformation on social media as a strategy of diplomacy.
3. To provide a model of causal loops that explains how this strategy of diplomacy
operates.
Methods and approaches
With the purpose of fulfilling the proposed objective and specific objectives, a
multidisciplinary approach was chosen, which encompassed diplomatic studies and
strategy theory. Thus, on the diplomatic studies side, the main references were Der
Derian (1987), Murray (2008) and Sharp (2009), while in the case of strategic theory
Chamberlain (2010). These theoretical references have diplomacy, politics, and conflict
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as their intercepts, so the approach to disinformation in social networks was in line with
both theoretical currents. However, to unify the perspectives of the aforementioned
approaches, systems thinking was used, given the potential of this type of modelling to
establish the causes and feedback of phenomena based on the elements that make up a
system (Richmond, 2001), which allows for a complete understanding of its behaviour
based on the conceptual delimitation and approximations made by the modeller. Thus,
the causal loop diagram (CLD) was used as a modelling method.
In this context, the study followed a qualitative approach, starting with a review of the
literature, which sought to identify the elements and relationships between the elements
of the system that make up the strategy of disinformation in social networks from
diplomacy, so previous research in the field of international relations was traced, which
allowed us to understand how disinformation spreads, this being the basis for the
development of the model. In this sense, an integrative approach was used for this review
in order to synthesise the literature on the subject under study (Torraco, 2005).
The decision to use this type of review arose because of the emerging research topic
itself, which breaks with traditional approaches to the study of diplomacy and social
networks. Thus, Snyder (2019) highlights the role of this type of literature review in the
development of initial or preliminary theoretical models, rather than revising old models,
and where the aim is not an exhaustive review of previous studies, but the combination
of perspectives for the construction of a new one. Although it does not require a specific
process like the systematised reviews (Torraco, 2005), the following phases were
followed for its execution:
1. The articles were searched for in SCOPUS and WOS, as well as in Google Scholar,
using keywords such as disinformation, social networks, diplomacy, international
relations, fake news, case studies, among others; this phase was carried out in both
Spanish and English.
2. With the documents found, we proceeded to identify the elements involved in
misinformation and the relationship between them.
3. With the findings, a synthesis of the information found was made, making use of the
inductive method and reference tables in which information such as the objective, the
methodology used, the main findings, the actors of diplomacy, etc. was located.
However, regarding the development of the CLD, the findings of the literature review
were used to establish the feedback loops and balance of the disinformation system as a
strategy of diplomacy. For this, the procedure established by Richardson and Pugh (1981)
as well as Kim (1992) was executed as showed in the summary below.
1. The assignment of variable names (elements), the possible relationships between
them and their directionality was carried out.
2. The potential adverse effects related to the construction on the CLD were identified.
3. Causal loops were classified according to their nature as either feedback (R) or balance
(B).
4. The loops created were revised to be as specific as possible.
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Finally, the computational work on the model was developed in Stella Architect Software
version 1.9.5.
Results
Considering the advances from previous studies, models of disinformation propagation
have focused on other areas of knowledge not directly related to diplomacy, so the
construction of these models lacks some elements that are incorporated in the use of this
strategy by governments, which causes the overall behaviour of the propagation system
to vary, as represented in Figure 1, in the feedback and balance loops defined.
Said that, it is necessary to remember that disinformation is intentional in nature (Gerrits,
2018), so its use in diplomacy is planned, which leads to the development of a strategy
to maximise the effects of the message (Vosoughi et al., 2018). Thus, social media
accounts created by government agencies seek to attract the largest possible target
population (Hollenbaugh and Ferris, 2014) and therefore use organic, paid and invitation-
only outreach to attract the largest possible audience and turn them into the
disinformation susceptible population (SP) (B1) (Buchanan and Benson, 2019), who are
the people who will view the disinformation and interact with it. In this sense, it is
recognised that the organic reach of disinformation accounts will decrease as the
susceptible population increases (B2).
By linking the SP to the social media accounts of the disinformation agent, disinformation
is propagated using organic reach (Buchanan and Benson, 2019), paid reach (Helmus et
al., 2018), bots (Helmus et al., 2018; Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2017)
and trolls (Starbird, 2019), with the aim of systematically exposing the SP to the
message, and thus consolidating the disinformed population (DP) (B3). This is
synthesised in the visualisations of the message, to ultimately decrease the population
susceptible to misinformation. Taking the latter into consideration, the incorporation of
organic and paid reach is derived from the dynamics of the social network, especially the
algorithm, since through these elements the message can be displayed under the
conditions of use of the communication channel, however, as the number of uninformed
people grows, the effect of organic reach will be less (B4). Whereas bots and trolls are
used to amplify the message outside the conditions of the platform. These two elements
were incorporated in the Russian interference in the US elections, where they were used
to amplify the disinformation message (Helmus et al., 2018). in concordance with what
previously stated, and from a more holistic view of the case of the US elections, it was
detected how the IRA group (belonging to a Russian agency) had African-American
populations as its disinformation audience, in which after consolidating the SP it
proceeded to pay for disinformation content (representing 66% of the activity), as well
as bots and trolls, resulting in disinformation on the Facebook social network alone of
11,200,000 people (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2017).
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Figure 1. Diagram of causal loops of disinformation as a strategy of diplomacy.
Source: Own preparation
However, the PD is involved in a systematic exposure to misinformation, so that by
interacting with the various misinforming messages, the echo chamber effect is
generated in which the ideas and beliefs resulting from the exposure to misinformation
are amplified due to the repetition of the same or similar content, which reinforces the
misinforming message (Bessi et al., 2015; Garrett, 2009). This leads to the existence of
a higher level of engagement on false information, representing for the DP the difficulty
of accessing truthful information, which means that the informed population (IP) is low
(R1) (Quattrociocchi et al., 2016), consolidating one of the ultimate aims of
disinformation as a strategy of diplomacy. Finally, the individual's ability to seek
additional information, usually from media such as television, radio, and the press, is
recognised as a final element, leading to a correction rate that results in a decrease in
PD (Chiang and Knight, 2011; Entman, 2007). Hence, the IP must make the decision not
to engage with the disinforming agent, by ceasing to follow the disinforming account, or
to continue its relationship and remain part of the SP (B5).
Conclusions
Several conclusions have been reached in this study. The first is the fulfilment of the
general objective, which was to analyse the spread of disinformation as a diplomatic
strategy in social networks, through a systemic approach. Thus, it must be recognised
that disinformation because of diplomacy strategy is a complex phenomenon in which
various elements interact, which are arranged by both the disinforming agent and the
social networks. Considering the latter, the proposed model allows us to recognise
through the establishment of dynamic hypotheses (causal loops) the way in which
disinformation spreads in this communication channel. In this scenario, the study
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constitutes a first precedent for the systemic analysis of disinformation as a strategy of
diplomacy, given that the advances developed have concentrated on case studies and on
the effect of its use on citizens, so that both the model proposed, and the review carried
out provide researchers with new tools for understanding this phenomenon.
With respect to the model proposed, it was possible to define the mechanisms that the
disinforming agent must contact the PO, which are not necessarily the same as those
used to disinform. An example of this are the bots and trolls that, given the cost they
represent, are used to propagate the message in the SP and thus disinform.
Subsequently, the way in which the message is propagated through its visualisation was
identified. In turn, it is the citizen or user of the network who decides whether to interact
with the publication to reaffirm their ideals and beliefs. It is in this aspect where the
algorithm of the social network begins to create an echo chamber that prevents the
visualisation of truthful information, making it difficult to create an IP and counteract
disinformation.
This model reaffirms the potential of social networks to misinform, in this case through
diplomacy, so that both states and the managers of these networks should focus their
efforts on defining effective mechanisms for the prevention and mitigation of this
phenomenon, based on an understanding of the elements involved in this strategy, as
well as the systemic approach presented in this paper. Finally, for future research, it is
suggested that dynamic models be developed to configure patterns of how it propagates,
as well as to evaluate the role of the elements and their impacts.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
44
SPORTS CELEBRITY AS AN INTERMEDIARY AND CULTURAL INSTRUMENT OF
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND ETHNIC-RACIAL EQUALITY.
A STUDY OF THE CORPORATE CAMPAIGN "COMMON THREAD", PUBLISHED BY
THE SPORTS BRAND NIKE ON INSTAGRAM
JAVIER DÍAZ-BAJO RODRIGUEZ
javier.diazb@edu.uah.es
Ph.D. candidate and Assistant Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Researcher at the
University of Alcalá (Spain). Member of the research group Images, Words and Ideas. His
research focuses on discursive and narrative practices conducted by corporate brands through
digital media.
RUT MARTÍNEZ-BORDA
rut.martinez@uah.es
Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Research Fellow at the University of Alcalá (Spain).
Dr Martínez-Borda is a member of the research group Images, Words and Ideas. Her research
focuses on human practices supported by digital technologies, audiovisual narratives,
videogames and fandom. Her current projects are supported by the Spanish Ministry of Culture
and Education. She has been a visiting scholar at the Institute of Education (University of
London); University of Westminster in London; University of Delaware in Philadelphia.
Abstract
Corporate brands play a social role through the discourses they broadcast on their social
media. The sports celebrity acts as a cultural intermediary and communicating instrument in
the value system that the brand brings together in defence of social, cultural and ethnic
diversity (Turner, 2004; Erdogan, 1999; Marshall, 1997).
From this perspective, the aim of this proposal is to detect the socio-cultural elements that
articulate the discourse constructed by the Nike sports brand in defence of racial and ethnic
equality in sport.
Methodologically, the content analysis approach is adopted (Krippendorff, 2013).
The data consists of 3 short films that make up a campaign created by the sports brand Nike
called "Common Thread". The criterion for their selection was the discursive projection that
the brand emits in favour of socio-cultural equality on Instagram.
In order to define the model of analysis, the classical studies of Greimas (1976) and
McCracken (1989) is taken as a starting point.
The results show that the brand manifests itself on social media as a social agent that
promotes equality and racial-ethnic rights for the black sports community through sport and
culture.
Keywords
Brand; values; celebrity; discourse; social media.
How to cite this article
Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Javier; Martínez-Borda, Rut. Sports celebrity as an intermediary and
cultural instrument of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality. A study of the corporate
campaign "common thread", published by the sports brand NIKE on Instagram. Janus.net, e-
journal of international relations. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social
Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-
7251.DT21.4
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 21, 2021
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 44-60
Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
45
SPORTS CELEBRITY AS AN INTERMEDIARY AND CULTURAL
INSTRUMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND ETHNIC-RACIAL
EQUALITY. A STUDY OF THE CORPORATE CAMPAIGN "COMMON
THREAD", PUBLISHED BY THE SPORTS BRAND NIKE ON
INSTAGRAM
1
JAVIER DÍAZ-BAJO RODRIGUEZ
RUT MARTÍNEZ-BORDA
1. Introduction
The most classical sociological contributions have, over the last few decades, delved
deeper into the symbolic character and the cultural meaning that underlies consumption
practices and the communicative interactions that revolve around this phenomenon
(López de Ayala, 2004; Semprini, 1995).
The Nike corporate brand acquires a social function in its own Instagram account, through
the discursive broadcasting of values with a social and cultural character. The sports
celebrity acts as a mediator and communicating instrument of a symbolic field that has
been constructed and distributed by the brand (Turner, 2004; Erdogan, 1999; Marshall,
1997).
From this perspective, the research questions are as follows:
- What are the socio-cultural values underlying the symbolic field constructed by the
brand?
- What narrative patterns articulate the discursive instrumentalisation produced by
celebrities and athletes?
In order to answer the questions posed by this research, we take as a starting point the
classical studies by Greimas (1976) and McCracken (1989). We have initially relied on
these two theoretical models to design a methodological strategy that allows us to
identify the narratological elements that articulate the discursive emission of socio-
cultural values.
1
Article translated by the autor and reviewed by Carolina Peralta.
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Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
46
Finally, we will show, through the results, that the brand manifests itself in social media
as a social agent that promotes equality and fundamental rights of black sports
communities through sport and culture.
1.1. The social function in consumption processes
The most classic line of sociological research has focused on the symbolic character that
underlies the consumption process, from which the structured character of this
phenomenon in modern societies can be explained. It has been the more contemporary
sociological approach that has accentuated the impact that the cultural meaning of
consumption practices generates in the processes of social and individual identity
construction of audiences (López de Ayala, 2004). This assertion implies two different
perspectives: first, the concept of consumption transcends the utilitarian function
expressed by classical economics. And second, the discursive and symbolic exchange
that takes place between different social subjects is recognised in this context.
In relation to a symbolic interaction between corporations and the public, Holbrook
(2001) postulates that social subjects interact under ideas, images and symbols to
reconfigure individual or social identity projects. They use this social interaction to
disseminate specific socio-cultural contexts. Thus, postmodern consumption and its
communication processes become an activity that transcends the exchange of
commercial value. This symbolic meaning that is transferred through the interaction
between social agents acquires a new social function that goes in two directions:
outwards, constructing a particular cultural world. And inwards, contributing to the
construction of the individual concept of self-identity (Elliott, 1998).
In order to delve deeper into this symbolic perspective that characterises the
communicative interaction between subjects, we rely on the structuralist approach that
defends the analysis of the hidden structures that sustain social action and
manifestations. This is why the use of semiology becomes essential in order to highlight
these structures that govern the systems of signs and communication.
Based on these approaches, structuralists conceive the communication process as a
social practice through which social subjects express themselves and communicate under
symbolic parameters. For Baudillard (1976), the leading exponent of this intellectual
approach, the consumption of signs, has replaced necessity in modern societies. The
practical utility of consumer objects and interaction with corporations has evolved into
an immaterial and discursive exchange that acquires a social and cultural character.
This approach is essential to understand the role played by symbolic fields in the
communication processes between corporations and publics. If we rely on the perspective
offered by López de Ayala (2004), we could postulate the use of a system of signs
endowed with social significance by brands and corporations. In this line, advertising or
corporate communication is detached from use value, and the consumption process is
conceived as a world of representations and cultural signs. From this moment on,
consumption and the communication that are produced around this phenomenon have a
social function that transcends the economic objectives of companies. The author Bocock
puts it in the following terms: "in the postmodern world, consumption serves to establish
the sense of identity of who we are", "Consumer goods have become a crucial element
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Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
47
in the establishment of meanings, identities and gender roles in postmodern capitalism"
(Bocock, 1995: 141).
This is why corporations play a decisive role in the creation and discursive projection of
values, beliefs and ideas associated with a given socio-cultural context.
1.2. The symbolic discourse of branding
In relation to this context, corporate brands construct and project cultural symbolic fields.
This approach responds, as Semprini points out, to the following convergence: "The
modern brand does not belong to the world of commerce but to the world of
communication" (Semprini, 1995: 19).
Establishing a global definition that encompasses in depth the object and functions of the
brand phenomenon is a truly complex task. In our argument, we are inclined to propose
the nature of the brand phenomenon as an instance and semiotic engine that confers
meaning and attribution in an ordered, structured and voluntary manner.
In this communicational transition, the corporate brand comes to generate greater
freedom of discursive action. Organisations implement a new symbolic and discursive
weight to their communication processes. This fact gives the brand a leading role in this
mission, as it acquires a social function in the creation and distribution of social and
cultural meanings. Therefore, the brand generates a specific universe of meaning that it
creates and disseminates discursively.
Consistent with this postulate, it is important for the development of our research to
highlight the role of social values as motivational constructs that relate people's beliefs
about desirable goals to be achieved over time and according to different contexts. There
are deterministic developments that shed light on the relationship between values and
individual behaviour, especially when it comes to core values that influence a person's
conception of social identity and self-concept (Verplanken & Holland, 2002).
1.3. The sports celebrity as a mediator of discourse
From the above context, we identify the use of sports celebrities as a mediating
instrument of a given universe of social and cultural significance.
One area where it is essential to recognise the differentiation of discourse and meanings
is through the use of celebrities in sport. David Marshall (1997) argues that in those
industries that are associated with celebrities, communicative particularities originate
according to the typology of the industry, and, therefore, different types of meanings are
also generated. Furthermore, the author also argues that semiotic and discursive rules
are generated around the celebrities, produced through diverse systems that privilege
different groups of discourses.
The construction of meanings in sports occurs under the influence of certain social values
that are considered exemplary. The sports celebrity is a particularly interesting case,
because as David Giles (2004) points out, sport is one of the few areas of public and
social life that is truly meritocratic. Sports celebrities can prove that they are the best,
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Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
48
so their cultural prominence can be seen as deserved. Celebrities represent subjective
positions that audiences can adopt or adapt in their formation of social identities. A
celebrity, then, is an embodiment of a discursive field about norms of individuality and
personhood within a culture.
In the same vein, the sports celebrity is a moderator especially articulated by
achievement, excellence and transcendence, often explicitly linked to socio-cultural
definitions of nationality and ethnicity.
It is precisely in that process whereby a celebrity is mediatised that the most productive
social and cultural functions that the celebrity, and his culture, seem to perform today
are generated. The fact that the celebrity extends his identity to the public image means
that he conducts some kind of social function in relation to audiences. This social function
exercised by the brand, and the staging of the celebrity, reveal new aspects of how
brands now generate meaning and significance through the media and advertising
industries.
2. Design and method
2.1. Methodological approach
We adopted the content analysis methodology (Krippendorff, 2013) through discourse
(Gee, 2014). This technique has allowed us to analyse, structure and objectify the object
of study in the different contents (Neuendorf, 2002).
In relation to the methodology provided by Gee (2014), we have used the discourse
analysis of the celebrity in certain contents of the Nike brand on Instagram. The most
relevant element we have relied on, based on this theoretical approach, is how the
discourse has been instrumentalised by the celebrity for the construction and projection
of a particular field of socio-cultural significance.
2.2. Type of analysis
In order to define the model of analysis, the classical studies of Greimas (Greimas, 1976)
and McCracken (McCracken, 1989) are taken as a starting point. In a first phase, we
have approached some variables specific to both authors (table 1). In a second phase,
we have designed a model of analysis with certain categories that allow us to respond to
the objectives of this research (table 2).
Table 1: Analysis model with authors' variables.
Greimas model variables (1976)
McCracken (1989) variables
Subject: actant who desires an object
Culturally constituted world
Object: what you wish
Media / advertising
Helper: guides the subject
Consumer goods
Opponent: oppressive force
Sender: set of facts and motivating forces
Receiver: people who benefit
Source: own compilation.
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Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
49
To further our objectives, we have synthesised both approaches and defined a model
(table 2) that helps us to associate the categories of analysis with the most important
thematic units in our object of study:
Table 2. Methodological model design
Culturally constituted world
Subject: Actant desires an object
Celebrity and black athletes
Object: What you want
Goals and achievements in defence of cultural
equality and diversity
Helper: Guides the subject
The Nike brand
Opponent: Oppressive force
Sociocultural barriers and difficulties
Sender: A set of desired facts or motivating
forces
Achieving fundamental rights and equal
opportunities
Receiver: Who benefits
Black athletes
Media / Advertising
Brand content on its Instagram account. Analysis of the "Common Thread" campaign
Source: Prepared by the authors. Created from the approaches of Greimas (1976) and McCracken
(1989).
This system allows us to delve deeper into the main narratological elements that
articulate the discursive projection in defence of equality and cultural diversity. On the
other hand, this system enables us to identify the social meaning transfer process that
occurs in the creation of a cultural world determined and discursively articulated by the
sports celebrity.
We consider that the transfer of social meaning arises from a culturally constructed
world, through six narratological categories and through the Instagram social media.
In relation to these variables, this proposal aims to identify, describe and compare the
fields of symbolic signification and socio-cultural values that the brand seeks to project
discursively through the staging of celebrities and young black sportsmen and
sportswomen.
3. Data analysis
Nike’s Instagram account has 774 publications created by the brand itself in the last
phase of our analysis (December 2020). It is relevant to highlight that the Nike sports
brand publishes corporate or advertising content through the section called
"Publications". Of all the content created by the brand on its own account since 2011, we
have focused on analysing 3 videos that belong to the campaign called "Common
Thread". These contents were published by the brand from 17/02/20 to 29/02/20. The
main criterion for choosing the sample was the staging of sportsmen or sports celebrities
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Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 44-60
Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
50
who act as cultural intermediaries and communication tools for the audiovisual content
created and published by the brand.
The brand has created a corporate communications campaign to celebrate Black History
Month 2019, which is celebrated in some Anglo-Saxon countries such as England and the
USA. The athletes featured in the "Common Thread" campaign are celebrities and young
black athletes. The athletes come from different sporting areas and diverse socio-cultural
backgrounds. The celebrities narrate part of their own life experience to describe those
socio-cultural aspects that have an impact on their lives and the communities to which
they belong. In the same way, celebrities and athletes tell the way they experience their
sport’s practice in a given sociocultural context. In all three videos, we can detect the
use of recurrent discursive elements that articulate the projection of values to empower
equality and ethno-racial diversity. To carry out the analysis, we need to understand the
discursive elements involved in the construction of the symbolic field as a system that
articulates the message.
The data collection period ran from 1 September 2020 to 31 December 2020. Below, we
show the name of the content, the format, the duration, the date of publication on
Instagram and the URL where the content is located:
Table 3. Main content data
Title Content
Content
format
Playback time
Date of
publication
URL
Common Thread |
Episode 1: Ingrid
& Alex, Narrated
by Serena
Williams
Video 1
3:35
17 FEBRUARY
2020
https://www.instagram.com
/p/B8rO4zgg0Zw/
Common Thread |
Episode 2:
Crystal, Debra &
Kairaba
Video 2
3:44
21 FEBRUARY
2020
https://www.instagram.com
/p/B81iLqrA1-b/
Common Thread |
Episode 3: Vashti,
RunGrl & Asra
Video 3
3:58
29 FEBRUARY
2020
https://www.instagram.com
/p/B9KI0D2HHe7/
Source: https://www.instagram.com/nike/?hl=es
For this particular project, we have decided to use the QuickTime Player application for
the IOS operating system as an analysis tool. This tool allows us to work with text,
photographs and video at the same time, and to analyse texts, images and audio
simultaneously, without the need to create descriptions. We transcribed the speeches
and dialogues that we considered most representative for use in the research results. In
this way, we were able to triangulate the extracted data in order to interpret the results
in a narrative and conceptual way (Lacasa, Martínez-Borda, & Méndez, 2013).
Once again, we insist that the approaches to the data, as well as the models of analysis,
are interwoven in an integrated way in our interpretation. This is because our aim is to
explain the keys that articulate, generate and enable the reproduction of a given socio-
cultural symbolic field through discourse.
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of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
51
4. Results
Two questions guide the research presented in this article and the results allow us to
answer them. Firstly, we analyse the presence of digital content created and published
by the Nike brand on its own Instagram account. Our object of study focuses on the
analysis of the three videos belonging to the "Common Thread" campaign. These
contents are analysed with the aim of describing and identifying the socio-cultural values
that the brand projects in defence of equality during the commemoration of Black History
Month 2019, in countries such as England and the U.S. Secondly, the narrative
instrumentalisation that projects the sports celebrity as a cultural intermediary is shown.
A first observation of the data shows how the narratives of the short films respond to
narratives starring black sportsmen and sportswomen who practice different sports in
different socio-cultural environments. We find in the contents a thematic unit that is
transversal in the three short films: the practice of sport by black men and women in
specific socio-cultural contexts. All the concepts and references used discursively are
oriented towards strengthening the equality and unity of black sports communities as a
motivational object.
Following our methodological strategy, we contextualise our analysis in the narratological
categories: subject, object, helper, opponent, sender and receiver. We find it relevant in
relation to our object of study to prioritise the categories that in our opinion have a
greater impact on the projected socio-cultural symbolic field: object, sender and receiver.
In this way, we hope to comprehensively reconstruct the narrative patterns that structure
the projection of values recurrently in the three contents.
4.1. Category 1. Object or desire to be achieved: to build a legacy for future
generations.
The need to contextualise the object of achievement projected by the brand through the
celebrity makes it necessary to devote a complementary analysis to other communication
channels belonging to the brand. In order to understand the social objective to be
achieved, there is nothing better than relying on a communication channel that belongs
to the corporation at the time of the analysis, in which the specific purpose of the
campaign is expressed:
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 44-60
Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
52
Figure 1: Nike Campaign - United by a common thread
Source: https://purpose.nike.com/common-thread:
For Black History Month 2019,
Nike launched the Watch Us Rise... Until We All Win campaign alongside
Common Thread, a series of short films showcasing how our stories and
experiences are woven together. Celebrating a new vanguard of Black
athletes and leaders around the world who define a collective legacy through
the power of sport & culture, the series highlights how the connection between
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 44-60
Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
53
Black athletes across the world is uniting communities and building a
foundation for the next generation to lead.
Narrated by Serena Williams, the first film in the series features athletes
Ingrid Silva and Alex Thomas speaking about their respective experiences and
showing the next generation what is possible to achieve when we believe our
passions cannot be limited, and no barriers can hold us back. Watch us rise.
Until we all win.
In this transcription, the specific context in which the corporate campaign is framed
becomes clear. Undoubtedly, the social objective that the brand intends to promote
through the instrumentalisation of black sportsmen and women can be seen.
Despite the fact that the object of achievement of all the narratives is oriented towards
building and sharing a legacy for the black athletes of the future, it is relevant to analyse
the way in which each protagonist expresses it discursively from different disciplines or
sporting practices. Taking figure 2 as a reference, we exemplify through three frames
with the inserted transcript, the projection of the social object that is intended to be
achieved in the community of black sportsmen and sportswomen. In all three examples,
the sportswomen express their desire to inspire future generations. The images help us
to interpret how the black sportswomen contribute through sport to the strengthening of
the individual and social identity of their community.
Crystal Dunn tells part of her life experience to become a professional player and
expresses some of the barriers she has faced as a person of colour. She also says how
important it is for the black sports community to jointly protect a legacy for the future.
In the case of Ashlee Lawson Green, co-founder of the RunGrl Sports Club, we see the
athlete practising her sporting discipline alongside peers from similar backgrounds and
diverse socio-cultural origins. She states that one of the purposes of her own club is to
empower and inspire the next generation.
Figure 2. Nike Instagram campaign I
Source: Nike Instagram account (Video 2: (https://www.instagram.com/p/B81iLqrA1-b/;
Video 3: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9KI0D2HHe7/ )
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Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument
of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality.
Javier Díaz-Bajo Rodriguez, Rut Martínez-Borda
54
To demonstrate that the social objective of the brand is recurrent in all the campaign
videos, we show a transcript of video 2, in which the narrator says the following:
Whether the story begins in South London, where a young woman uses the
power of football to bridge the gap between a new generation and the old
guard.
You know, I can honestly like take a page out of you all's books.
For me, my parents moved me out to where soccer was more visible, and I
just started playing.
But for you guys, you really took an initiative.
A lot of people don't do it.
And this is why we're trying to empower the next generation to take that
initiative and you guys have already done that.
To go fast, we have to go together.
To lead the way, we have to lead together.
Making a future we can believe in,
and a legacy to protect.
Category 2. Target or set of desired facts or motivating forces: to use
sport to enhance racial and ethnic equality among the present and future
generations.
The next step in our paper is to delve deeper into the motivational aspects that lead the
protagonists to use sport as a driving force for social values. In the narration of Serena
Williams (video 1), we identify the desire of two young dancers to make their way in the
artistic discipline:
This story begins with a prodigy from Brazil, who goes from her local dance
center to become the face of modern ballet. And it continues with the rising
young dancer from Florida inspired by those who paved the way to uplift
anyone who sees him move.
Together, they channel the beauty of motion, making space for others just
like them
In the same video, dancer Ingrid calls for equal opportunities in the recruitment of
dancers of colour. She also shows how motivated she is to have overcome socio-cultural
barriers in her experience:
Directors have to take the first step in hiring dancers of color, so the stage
looks like what the rest of the world looks like, so people can feel represented
on stage. I think the greatest lesson ballet has taught me is that there is no
limit to be who you want to be.
I think also as a dancer, we hear so many "no's" or "you're not good enough"
or "you can't do enough", but just to be on the stage with so many people
and represent something larger than ourselves, that's so fulfilling.
Similarly, the following transcript of video 2 exemplifies how professional football player
Crystal relates the desired set of facts and the motivating force that mobilises two young
black sportswomen located in different geographical locations. Their names are Debra
Nelson and Kairaba Ali-Danbukar, and they are two young female football players. We
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can identify the importance for these sportswomen of an equal context in which to play
football:
Whether the story begins in South London, where a young woman uses the
power of football to bridge the gap between a new generation and the old
guard.
Or in the Bronx, where a teenager can't find her team for girls her age in her
borough, so she finds one on her own, traveling wherever it takes to join her
pride.
Or on Long Island, with a young woman who comes back stronger than ever,
representing her country and all girls who sees themselves in her when they
turn on the TV.
This is a dialogue of their shared experience.
This is their common thread.
In video 3 (figure 3), audiovisual sequences are interspersed to describe the athletes'
shared experience of what drives their individual and social identity:
Figure 3. Nike Instagram campaign II
Source: Nike Instagram account. (Video 3: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9KI0D2HHe7/ )
Similarly, in video 2, Debra describes the power of football to overcome socio-cultural
difficulties and to impact positively on the development of individuals and society:
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Trying to get girls to play football in like the inner city of London it's quite
hard because of like my cultural stereotypes or like just safety issues, and I
think providing them with a safe place to play football is the biggest thing.
Soccer is so powerful. It's fun, you're learning how to communicate, you're
learning how to manage your emotions, you're learning how to build positive
relationships and, I think if we want to carry on building a positive Society
you have to start with the next generation, and I think football is the easiest
thing to use to encourage positivity in society.
Category 3: Recipient or beneficiary strengthen the black sportswomen's
union.
In this last category, we have identified a cross-cutting theme that runs through the
entire narrative of the campaign: building a legacy of equality and unity for the black
sports community. We felt it was important to show how the protagonists seek to spread
a cultural legacy for the benefit of future generations of black athletes.
In Figure 4, female athletes (professional athlete Vashti Cunningham is the narrator of
this video) show their support and desire for current black athletes to inspire each other.
In these examples, we can identify how the social purpose of the campaign is directed
for the direct benefit of black sports communities. In all of the narratives, there is a call
for equal opportunities for black athletes from all geographic backgrounds.
In these examples, the founders of the women's athletics teams RunGrl and Asra relate
the importance of encouraging the practice of their sporting disciplines together with
other sportswomen from the same socio-cultural backgrounds in order to strengthen the
unity of black sports communities around the world.
Figure 4. Nike Instagram campaign III
Source: Nike Instagram account. (Video 3: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9KI0D2HHe7/ )
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We rely again on the transcript of video 2 to show how sportswomen are committed to
achieving their goals if they stick together and unite.
You know, I can honestly like take a page out of you all's books.
For me, my parents moved me out to where soccer was more visible, and I
just started playing.
But for you guys, you really took an initiative.
A lot of people don't do it.
And this is why we're trying to empower the next generation to take that
initiative and you guys have already done that.
To go fast, we have to go together.
To lead the way, we have to lead together.
Making a future we can believe in,
and a legacy to protect.
5. Conclusions and discussion.
The results allow us to compare this study with the previous findings mentioned in the
introduction. Conclusions will be shown in relation to the questions that are at the origin
of the study.
The data corroborate that the Nike brand acquires a social function in the discursive and
symbolic projection of socio-cultural values through the creation and distribution of the
corporate campaign "Common Thread", published on its Instagram account. In relation
to what has been shown in the analysed data of the three contents, it can be evidenced
that the brand adopts a leading role in the construction of a specific socio-cultural
symbolic field. The social objective that the brand aims to project is discursively
instrumentalised through the experience of different sportsmen and celebrities. As seen
in the data through the discourse analysis, the athletes promote narratives aimed at
strengthening the individual and social identity of the community of black athletes from
different places and geographical locations. In all cases, the data reveal motivational
aspects that lead the protagonists to use sport as a promoter of fundamental rights and
socio-cultural values. Moreover, underlying all three contents is a cross-cutting narrative
that seeks to promote equal opportunities for young athletes, as well as to strengthen
communities of athletes from different geographical, ethnic and racial backgrounds.
From this perspective, we rely on the second question to identify narrative patterns that
recurrently articulate the discourse in the campaign analysed. The discursive proposal of
the contents is structured through actantial elements that modulate a common narrative
in the projection of specific socio-cultural values. This transversal structure helps to
clearly channel the social and cultural values that the brand intends to evoke. As the
audiovisual data analysed shows, all subjects (celebrities and athletes) manifest the
pursuit of a common object and desire: to build and strengthen a legacy for future
generations of black athletes. This object of social achievement is pursued through the
forces and motivational constructs that proliferate from the practice of sport. With this
perspective in mind, sport would function as a driving force for racial and ethnic equality
that enables these communities to achieve a common goal for the benefit of present and
future generations of sportsmen and sportswomen.
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In summary, the results of this work have shown that branding plays a determining role
in using socio-cultural values in defence of equality and fundamental rights. The symbolic
projection that is emitted is discursively instrumentalised through the live narratives of
black athletes and celebrities who belong to different sporting disciplines and come from
diverse ethnic and racial contexts.
Far from conceiving the brand phenomenon as a result in itself, the aim of this study is
to delve deeper into the concept of the brand as an issuing entity and producer of
discourses of a social and cultural nature. We have based our research on various
theoretical approaches that have studied the communicative function of corporate brands
from different disciplines of the social sciences: psychology, sociology, anthropology and
linguistics. However, in this case, we have been mainly approached our object of study
from the semiotic nature of the discourse of the brand. This fact has helped us to
elucidate the abstract conception of the brand phenomenon as a concrete and defined
discursive utterance.
The main strategy of this research has been based on revealing the social function played
by the discourses created and distributed by a given corporate brand. From this
perspective, our questions have focused especially on identifying and describing the role
that a corporate brand plays as a discursive emitter of values of a social and cultural
nature. In this context, we hope that this contribution will allow us to develop this line of
research from other perspectives and academic disciplines. Similarly, we hope that this
study will serve to raise new questions aimed at identifying the impact on audiences of
the creation of digital content that projects specific symbolic fields.
In relation to this context, we propose to discuss and delve deeper into the function that
sports celebrities exercise in these contexts. In our view, it is relevant how sports
celebrities become "signs", embedded semiotic systems with axiological meanings to be
read and actively interpreted by their audiences. In this vein, we argue that celebrities
are interpreted as texts that are discursively constructed. The meanings they generate
are the product of a "structured polysemy". This refers to the multiplicity of meanings
and affects they embody, as well as the intention to structure them in such a way that
some meanings are foregrounded, while others are masked or displaced.
Therefore, through the analysis of the "Common Thread" campaign, we propose to
highlight the productive social function of sports celebrities through the social
instrumentalisation of values that enhance equality and fundamental rights, which, in
turn, act in the social construction of the communities within which many of us live. This
approach responds to what various authors think of as "real emotional attachments" to
figures we only know through their media representations.
In this line, the results have allowed us to interpret the socio-cultural context where the
athletes' narratives are developed. In relation to this context, sports celebrities become
a "place" for the elaboration and construction of individual and social identity in the
community of black athletes. At first, a celebrity is perceived as a legitimate source of
information, as an important social process, through which relationships, identity and
social and cultural norms are shared. Its expansion through media content has embedded
celebrities in processes of social and personal identity formation.
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Therefore, it is suggested that the mediatised sports celebrity operates at the very heart
of culture, as it resonates with conceptions of individuality, which are the ideological
foundation of Western culture. If we support our argument on the postulate proposed by
Marshall (1997) in relation to celebrity, then sports celebrities could play a crucial
ideological function in the instrumentalisation of the discourses created and distributed
by a corporate brand.
This perspective helps us to discuss how corporate communication processes are shaped
in the construction of certain symbolic fields. The types of messages that the celebrity
passes on to the public are semiotic elements that shape individual identification, social
identity and the universality of values through a given universe of signification.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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International Relations and Social Networks
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SOCIAL MEDIA AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNICATING HUMAN RIGHTS. CASE
STUDY: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
JAVIER BERNABÉ FRAGUAS
j.bernabe@ucm.es
PhD in International Relations, degree in Information Sciences, both from the Complutense
University of Madrid (UCM); lecturer in the Department of International Relations and Global
History at the UCM (Spain). Specialises thematically in international information and
communication, and geographically in Latin America. Director of the international information and
analysis media Dossier 48. Member of the research groups: "Relaciones Internacionales Siglo
XXI" of the UCM in Spain; and "Comunicación, Periodismo y Sociedad" of the Fundación
Universitaria para el Desarrollo Humano UNINPAHU in Colombia.
Abstract
This text analyses the importance of social networks for one of the most important non-
governmental organisations in the world in terms of the defence of human rights at a global
level, Amnesty International, through its Spanish section.
To do so, it moves from the general to the specific, starting by addressing the importance of
communication as a fundamental element for development cooperation, the defence of human
rights and the environment. It moves on to a general analysis of the social networks used by
Amnesty International, arriving at a specific analysis of their use during the first 15 days of
January 2021 by the organisation. It ends with the drawing of conclusions with the intention
of opening a space for debate, which can increase the growth of knowledge about the
usefulness of social networks and new technologies as key tools for the defence of human
rights.
Keywords
Human Rights, Social Networks, Amnesty International, International Communication.
How to cite this article
Fraguas, Javier Bernabé. Social media as a tool for communicating human rights. Case study:
Amnesty International. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks, July
2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.5
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 17, 2021
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Javier Bernabé Fraguas
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SOCIAL MEDIA AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNICATING HUMAN
RIGHTS. CASE STUDY: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
1
2
JAVIER BERNABÉ FRAGUAS
1. Introduction
The purpose of this research is to analyse the use of social media as a tool for
communicating human rights, through the case study of Amnesty International
3
.
The first objective is to determine the definition of communication for development,
communication for human rights and communication for the environment
(COMDEDEHUMA), as an integrated communication space, in which communication for
human rights is inserted as a protagonist at a global level. The second objective is to find
out how Amnesty International, through its Spanish Section, uses social networks as a
tool for communicating human rights and achieving its objectives. The third objective is
to make visible how this organisation uses these social networks in a concrete way, in a
period of time that covers the first 15 days of January 2021. The fourth objective is to
generate a space for debate and reflection based on conclusions that set out the present
and some future scenarios of the link between social networks and human rights on a
global scale.
This work is part of a qualitative research project and will be undertaken in three phases.
The first of these will establish the background to human rights communication,
explaining a newly created term by the author (COMDEDEHUMA) as a dynamic of
international communication and a line of communication applied to the Sustainable
Development Goals. In the second phase, the use of social networks by Amnesty
International will be analysed, through the work of its Spanish Section; this will be done
in two ways: a) by collecting information directly through interviews with its media
officer; b) through the collection of data on its social network activity during the first 15
days of January.
Methodologically, this research is approached using descriptive and analytical methods,
as their combination provides the necessary explanatory elements to reach the most
pertinent conclusions. The bibliographical review of primary and secondary sources, such
1
Article translated by Javier Bernabé Fraguas with the supervision of Nina Wormer Nixdorf.
2
This text is one of the results of the project "La información internacional como herramienta de inserción
laboral para el alumnado de Relaciones Internacionales", approved in the Innova-Docencia 20-21 call for
proposals; project leader: Javier Bernabé Fraguas; funding entity: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
3
https://www.es.amnesty.org/
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as reports, documents or research papers published by academic journals and think tanks
has been used, especially for the first part. The interview and data collection have proved
to be instruments that have been presented as great tools for deepening the object of
study. The information obtained has made it possible to capture those aspects which are
most significant and to provide, after their systematisation, an approach to Amnesty
International's work, which will give meaning to the study and will be very relevant for
the analysis and conclusions.
The main premise of this work is based on the following statement: social networks are
an extremely important tool for human rights communication, both in terms of
disseminating messages, interacting with interested people and raising funds for non-
governmental organisations specialising in human rights.
2. Communication by non-governmental organisations at the
international level
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that work in the international arena usually do
so in one of four thematic areas: international development cooperation, humanitarian
action, defence of human rights, and defence of the environment. These four areas form
an area of work within international relations that is led by some very particular actors,
which emerge from organised civil society, and express their concern to improve the
living conditions of the most disadvantaged populations in the international arena. These
manifestations take the form of various types of action on the ground, including
awareness-raising, denunciation, research and applied research, most of the time. The
17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are the roadmap to follow, and their
169 goals are the roads on the map to reach the right destination. Communication is
central to all of this, and NGOs understand that without it they cannot achieve what they
set out to do.
Communication, therefore, stands out as something essential, in all its complexity, from
the relationship with traditional media, to interaction in social networks and the use of
new technologies to communicate, as well as internal communication with partners and
members of the organisations.
Not all the work of these NGOs is carried out in what we might call the countries of the
South, but a very large percentage of it is. And the information that NGOs offer to
international audiences about these countries would constitute a counterweight to the
disinformation that the media provides about the South. Therefore, they are shaped as
sources of information or producers of information, given their knowledge on the ground,
their specialisation and the body of experts that generally support their work. However,
this is not yet the case, because there is often a misperception in development, human
rights and environmental NGOs. On the one hand, forgetting or ignoring what the media
are, wanting them to adapt to the needs of these organisations; and on the other hand,
limiting their communication activity to fundraising.
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2.1. Approaching communication for development, human rights and
the environment
The academic literature on communication for development, communication for human
rights and communication for the environment (COMDEDEHUMA, from now on) is
extensive when it considers the three strands separately, but scarce when it must
consider the common elements of what this author considers COMDEDEHUMA.
The three spaces mentioned above, separately, are identified with the Millennium Goals,
in a way that is equivalent to what this COMDEDEHUMA identifies with the SDGs.
It would therefore be the communication that is developed to denounce, investigate and
report on the problems, and to promote communicative solutions to the challenges posed
by the 17 SDGs and their 169 targets, from non-governmental organisations,
international bodies and the media.
One of the key elements of this discipline, though not the only one, is to find out how
journalism is linked to development, human rights and the environment. To know what
it does not yet contribute, what it can realistically contribute, and whether it is possible
that the current negative balance, in which misinformation wins, can change at some
point.
Non-governmental organisations, international organisations (especially those belonging
to the United Nations) and the media complete the triangle of entities that lead
COMDEDEHUMA's work on a global scale.
We can affirm that this communication work is premeditated when the final objective is
to make a contribution through communication and information to improve the living
conditions of humanity. NGOs, international organisations and some media (small and
specialised in these issues) are generally the protagonists of this premeditated
contribution. Such a contribution is unpremeditated when, despite reporting on the three
issues in question, it has other objectives as its main purpose, generally economic and
corporate profit. Most of the major generalist media are at the forefront of these
contributions.
Since Sean MacBride in the 1970s spearheaded the Theories of Information Dependency,
especially between 1977 and 1980 at the International Commission for the Study of
Communication Problems, many years have passed, but little real change has come about
in the North-South communication imbalance through the mainstream media (MacBride,
1980).
The introduction of social media into the equation changes the final result in two ways:
a) the first is that there are many, many more sources of information thanks to social
media; b) the second is that young audiences use social media on a massive scale, not
using the general media for information. The Mac Bride Report is still valid today in terms
of the description of the problem caused by these generalist media, as there is still a
clear inequality of information flows and an image promoted by these media from the
North, which do not provide sufficient elements to have complete information, neither
from the North nor from the South.
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The general media expose realities that are too partial, marked by spectacle and by the
supposed interest of the audience, which the media themselves decide, where
explanations and analysis are difficult to find.
UNESCO set a goal in the field of communication for development, which the author of
this research believes can be extrapolated to COMDEDEHUMA, making this goal broader,
more realistic and more ambitious:
To encourage the free flow of information at the national and international
levels; to promote the widest and most balanced dissemination of information
without hindrance to freedom of expression; and to develop all appropriate
means to strengthen communication capacities in developing countries in
order to increase their participation in the communication process (UNESCO,
1989).
However, communication applied to development, the environment and human rights
has been gaining ground in Spain since the 1990s, above all through the work carried
out by NGOs and some media professionals. Even so, this discipline can be considered
the "poor sister" within development studies in our country, if we take into account the
economic, human and material resources dedicated to it in comparison with other
disciplines, both at governmental and non-governmental level.
The paradox is that the positive results obtained by international organisations based in
Spain, non-governmental organisations or Spanish governmental entities dedicated to
development, are presented with interest by those in charge, through their
communications departments, in order to obtain maximum economic and image benefits.
In the field of the environment and human rights, the issue has been dealt with in a
different way, with NGOs dedicated to these issues giving high importance to their
communication areas, as from the beginning they saw that their presence in the media
through journalistic materials was fundamental, as well as raising awareness in society
through campaigns, currently with social networks as the main protagonists. Some
examples are Greenpeace and Amnesty International, organisations that are already a
point of reference for the media, which give them important spaces both when they
present reports and specific investigations, as well as on a day-to-day basis.
The definitions of communication for development put forward by authors such as Javier
Erro and Begoña Ballesteros should be noted at this point. Erro starts from the idea of a
communicational perspective in which communication, education and culture converge,
understanding communication itself 'as development', where NGOs should not only
inform about the problems of the South, but also educate in order to promote citizen
decision-making. In Erro's vision, it is necessary to evolve to a concept of communication
that transcends information - the transmission of data - to recover the essence of
communicating, "The communicative is associated with teaching, sharing, living,
recognising, meeting and learning with the other. It is a matter of accompanying learning,
of assuming that the other is not only a destination point, but above all a meeting point"
(Erro, 2002: 28).
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The author of this research agrees with Erro on the need for communication to transcend
information, but not only in the field of development, but also in the field of human rights
and the environment, thus being in line with the SDGs.
This idea is complemented by the definition of Ballesteros, for whom communication for
development refers to "recourse to a horizontal and participative communicative
conception that permeates and cross-cuts a development process regardless of whether
or not communication tools, technologies and media are used during it" (Ballesteros,
2005).
Once again, the author of this research dares to affirm that this conception can be
extrapolated to the field of human rights and the environment. He concludes at this point
that the communication to which he refers must try to produce a democratic and
participatory relationship, being itself a democratic and participatory process, making
these two values not only the final goal but also the path to be followed in order to reach
it.
3. Amnesty international and social media as tools for communicating
human rights
4
In its own words, "Amnesty International is a global, independent organisation of more
than 10 million people who take action against injustice by defending human rights
around the world" (Amnesty International, 2021).
In order to carry out this task, the use of social networks has become essential in this
organisation. In this section we are going to analyse which social networks are most used
by the Spanish Section of Amnesty International in its global work, what they are looking
for, what results they are getting, and how all this affects the general work of
communicating human rights that the organisation carries out.
It should be specified that there is careful verification of the information Amnesty
International transmits on social networks, for the organisation it is essential to be
credible and trustworthy.
To enhance these good practices, the organisation has implemented tools and spaces
such as the Citizen Evidence Lab, which "...was originally created as a space to keep
abreast of the best innovations by sharing advice, tools and good practices on disciplines
such as video verification, remote sensing and weapons analysis" (Amnesty
International, 2019).
We can consider "citizen evidence" to be materials that show, in any format, human
rights violations in the world, collected by people who are not engaged in professional
research in this field. These materials, which usually provide many details of the human
rights violations they document, are disseminated through social networks, which is
precisely why it is important to ensure that they are not sources of disinformation.
4
The content of this section arises from the analysis of the information obtained in the interviews conducted
by the author with Ángel Gonzalo, media officer of Amnesty International, Spanish Section, on 9 and 12
February 2021; and from the verification of the data obtained on the website of the organisation:
https://www.es.amnesty.org/
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This Citizen Evidence Lab helps to maintain verification of what it disseminates on
networks:
The site includes guides to tools and techniques for verifying publicly available
video and images, and highlights Amnesty International case studies that
show how methodologies such as remote image sensing and weapons analysis
can reveal human rights abuses. It also details and builds on innovative
projects involving thousands of volunteers to sift through data on a massive
scale. There are tutorials on techniques such as reverse image searching,
preserving data from social media to avoid losing it, and using other data
sources - such as satellite imagery - to verify when and where events took
place (Amnesty International, 2019).
Building on this initiative, Amnesty International launched the Digital Verification Corps
(DVC) in 2016, one of whose objectives is to "collate and verify the overwhelming amount
of digital content that exists in the world today, some of which depicts human rights
abuses" (Dubberley, 2019).
The DVC is made up of six universities: University of California, Berkeley; Cambridge;
Essex; Hong Kong; Pretoria; and Toronto. They train student volunteers to verify videos
and photos of possible human rights violations around the world. The results support
Amnesty International's research teams to do rigorous and verified work on social media
(Dubberley, 2019).
Indeed, in the words of DVC director Sam Dubberley:
When uncomfortable truths lead public authorities to cry 'fake news', or when
content posted on social media claims to show something it does not, we are
prepared to respond based on rigorous and methodical methods of
investigation and verification (Amnesty International, 2018).
It is this verification work that gives exceptional value to the materials disseminated on
the social networks by this NGO, a work that is not normally known, not seen, and which
adds great value to the organisation's image, to its credibility as a reliable source.
3.1. Social networking teams
The social media area is made up of a full-time community manager and a group of 12
support staff, who are volunteers. It is integrated into communication technology, which
is managed by a webmaster, who is hierarchically higher up the hierarchy and is also the
person responsible for the website. Therefore, the person responsible for social media is
accountable to the webmaster; and the webmaster is accountable to the head of the
Communication Department.
Social Networking also has a marketing support person, due to the large number of cyber
actions that the organisation carries out on the Internet, for example, collecting
signatures or requests for donations; this person is specialised in this type of action, and
has a part-time contract.
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Another person is added to the team, also on a part-time basis, who liaises with the
campaigns area, giving it the activist focus that is necessary in all the organisation's
activity according to its objectives.
The person responsible for social networks is a journalist and develops content for all the
social networks in which the organisation is present. He or she writes threads for Twitter,
makes Stories for Instagram, makes videos for Tik Tok, or develops general ideas that
can be applied to all the networks by adapting the language. She then shares them with
the person who is the liaison with campaigns, to give them the right tone if they intend
to mobilise or carry out activist actions. In the case of a donation request, linked to one
of these actions, it is coordinated with the marketing liaison person.
We can see how the strength of the organisation's social media area is really the team
made up of its three members, who combine the generation of ideas, their translation
into a type of material or language appropriate to the specific network they use, and the
achievement of the objective set. Practically all their actions coordinate the three areas.
A concrete example of this type of work is that carried out for the release of Loujain al
Hathloul, a Saudi Arabian activist who had been imprisoned for three years for defending
women's rights. Amnesty International campaigned for 3 years, developing several
phases: a) the first was to call for her release as soon as they learned of her
imprisonment, in traditional or general media; b) the same work is done on social
networks, taking advantage of the latter to mobilise the population; c) the marketing
team enters into the equation. All this is done in a coordinated way: traditional or
generalist press, social networks and marketing; all at the same time, at different times,
with the work teams coordinated. Social media becomes a spearhead.
3.2. Workload of the social media area
The organisation can run at least one campaign per week per year, with some weeks
having two. They manage an average of 70 campaigns per year. They do not conceive
of any campaign that is not supported by the social media area. And there is no social
network in which they do not have a presence. Adding all the social networks together,
they have more than one million followers.
They make use of the data of people who have already expressed interest in the
organisation's content and given their permission to do so. In addition to this, they use
the database of people who have signed a cyber action, which means they have more
than 10 million people in Spain alone.
When someone signs up in support of a campaign, their details are stored and as soon
as there is a human rights violation similar to the one that a person has signed up for
before, that person or group is approached. That work is done by email, or by social
media. For example, if they are journalists, they use Twitter, which is the network that
gives them the best results with that professional group; if they target the general public,
they use Facebook; if the segment is a younger audience, they use Instagram or Tik Tok.
They work according to the population group, the professional group and the objective
they have set.
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3.3. Interaction with users
The interaction of social media users with the organisation reaches high volumes. The
job of the person responsible for networks is not only to inform or create content; 50%
of their time is dedicated to responding to comments, requests, mentions, etc. According
to the organisation's code of conduct, they do not respond to insults or disqualifications.
They do respond to negative opinions, because they consider that constructive criticism
is useful for the organisation. On some occasions they have encountered 40,000 opinions
against them, many of which were trolls or haters. The campaign by the Spanish section
of Amnesty International for the release of "the Jordis" in Catalonia is a clear example of
this. When they consider that there is a "popular outcry" against one of their campaigns,
they have to respond.
Among other things, this is why the social media person works full time, with his two
part-time support staff, because he spends much of his time responding to and
interacting with network users and distributing the work.
Sometimes there are media appeals to Amnesty International that come through social
media, especially Twitter, as it is a common tool for the journalistic profession. Journalists
often seem to find it more difficult to phone the media officer, and find it easier to send
a tweet, or a DM (direct message) on Instagram, or contact in any other way using a
social network, depending on the day-to-day experience at Amnesty International.
3.4. Usefulness of networks
The organisation is finding the greatest use of the networks to carry out mobilisation
actions and achieve great results. The latest example is the campaign for the non-
imprisonment of Pablo Hasel, in which in one day they collected 40,000 signatures, the
vast majority through social networks, and they only launched a Twitter thread. Users
can sign in support of any campaign using any network, that's what the Webmaster is
there for, the person who has the complete technological structure, and has done the
relevant programming so that these signatures can be collected from any social network,
and so that the data is interconnected.
Everything is done through Amnesty International's own software, specifically designed
by a company to meet the organisation's needs. It is also used, by crossing the relevant
data, to send press releases by the media officer, automating the change of format by
the aforementioned software, for any social network. If when they upload a news item
to the organisation's website, they want to share it on Twitter, Instagram or WhatsApp,
there is an automatic conversion for these networks. The economic investment made by
the organisation in this software allows them to have the capacity to collect, for example,
those 40,000 signatures in one day, with the localisation of the relevant data.
They also use it in what they call "urgent actions", through which they mobilise a large
number of people in a very short time. They could generate a WhatsApp message to
gather 40,000 people at a specific point. And the computer system could support many,
many more.
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The record number of signatures collected by the Spanish Section of Amnesty
International is 9,600,000 in the case of Amina Lawal in 2003, when this tool did not
exist. Its development has been progressive, it is 6 years old, and has permanent
updates; the tool is the Spanish Section's own. But there is a system that allows them
to share technical knowledge which is also permanent, both with the International
Secretariat of Amnesty International (based in London) and with other national sections
in different countries.
It is impossible for Amnesty International to run a campaign without social media, and
some are even only activated through social media. The reason is that it works best for
them. Nigerian singer-songwriter Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, 22, wrote a song in February
2020 and shared it via WhatsApp; after being arrested and tried, he was sentenced to
hang for blasphemy because, according to Islamic law, it contained derogatory comments
about the Prophet Muhammad. Fear of Boko Haram was in the background. On 21
January, an Appeals Commission ordered the case to be reheard before a different judge
because of a lack of legal representation throughout the previous trial. This was a triumph
for Amnesty International, although it continues to fight for his final release. A triumph
that was achieved exclusively using social networks, where the campaigns of people with
names and surnames, specific cases (and general thematic causes), have a lot of impact,
for this case they have 200,000 signatures. It was a case in which the organisation was
not successful in the media, where Amnesty International's reports are more popular.
The first death sentence handed down through Zoom occurred during the COVID-19
pandemic in Singapore. On 20 May 2020, a spokesperson for the Singapore High Court
confirmed that a Malaysian man had been sentenced to death after being convicted of
drug trafficking charges. The decision was delivered "by video conference" on Friday 15
May 2020. The convicted man's lawyer confirmed that this sentencing hearing was held
via the Zoom platform. The difficulty for the media to cover the situation was enormous,
but in networks it was the opposite for this NGO. They used Twitter to tell the story and
connected with people who, for the needs of their work, used Zoom on a daily basis,
making them realise that the death sentence could also be carried out on that platform.
This was another campaign they launched solely on social media.
Amnesty International also uses clickbait, which according to Ana Isabel Sordo is "... a
writing technique that consists of creating sensational headlines and descriptions in a
link. Its purpose is to attract visitors and incite them to click to open that content" (Sordo,
2021).
An interview can be done by the media relations team and passed on to the person
responsible for social media to adapt it to this tool. This ensures that the interview is
disseminated in a different way, adapted to a different format (for example, to the web,
WhatsApp and Telegram), and that it has a great impact on a user public that either only
or mostly uses social networks, to the detriment of traditional media.
3.5. Distribution of user public
Facebook is where they have the most users. But for mobilisation actions, the most
important for them is Twitter, although Instagram is gaining ground every month. All this
forces them to change their formats.
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The Youtube channel is the one that is working the least for the organisation. When they
do make live connections, each public event is streamed via Facebook Live, which is what
gives them the most followers. This reconfirms that: a) to access a more general
audience, Facebook is their main tool; b) Twitter for journalists, opinion leaders and
authorities; c) younger users through Instagram and Tik Tok.
The support volunteers are constantly coordinated and are located in many parts of
Spain. Each territorial group has its own network leader, who coordinates with the leader
of the Spanish Section.
Amnesty International's key messages come from the International Secretariat, from its
headquarters in London, and each national section adapts it to its audience. The same
happens from the Spanish section to the country's territories, if necessary. Key
international messages work perfectly for them once they have been adapted, the case
of the Saudi activist Loujain al Hathloul is a clear example of this. When she was released,
the Spanish section found out about it because an investigator in charge of the case
reported the event, and from that moment on, each national section worldwide tells the
story as it will be best received by its national audience.
3.6. Economic impact
The traditional way of recruiting members has disappeared in times of pandemic,
everything has been done through social networks and new technologies. And Amnesty
International has fared much better than expected in a disastrous economic moment, in
which the first thing people do without is non-essential expenses, and being a member
of an NGO, for many people, can be considered a dispensable expense. They currently
have 90,000 members compared to 17,000 in 2003, which shows the growth in
membership driven by the networks. The indicators of the objectives to be achieved
through social networks can be swept up in one day with 40,000 signatures, and those
of media impact also through Twitter with 400 in the same 24 hours.
Their marketing experts assure them that social media works better than membership
and street donations did: in terms of impact and results, membership growth and one-
off donations.
4. Analysis of the use of twitter, facebook and instagram by amnesty
international's spanish section
Within the framework of the project "International information as a tool for job placement
for students of International Relations", approved in the Innova-Docencia 20-21 call for
proposals, for which the author of this research is responsible, and whose funding entity
is the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), an analysis exercise was carried out on
three of the social networks used by the Spanish Section of Amnesty International as
part of its communication strategy.
The exercise was designed by the author, and the students of group 4.8. of the subject
"International Information and Communication" of the Degree in International Relations
of the UCM participated, especially in the collection of information. Its objective was to
find out how this organisation dedicated to Human Rights uses social networks to achieve
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its objectives as an entity. The criteria used for the analysis were oriented towards the
general metrics of the profile to know its reach (number of followers, number of
publications and frequency of publication), the type of information published (complaints,
campaigns, life stories, etc.) and the positive interactions (support) and/or negative
interactions (criticism or insults, for example) generated in these forums based on the
information published. The period analysed was from 1 to 15 January 2021.
The three social networks were: Twitter (@amnistiaespana), Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/amnistia.internacional.espana) and Instragram
(@amnistiaespana).
4.1. Facebook
Amnesty International's Facebook profile was created on 22 May 2009, has more than
430,000 followers (specifically, as of 20 January 2021 at 13:47, 436,818 people like the
page and 430,669 followers). They publish content on a daily basis, with two posts per
day in the period analysed. The Facebook page provides direct access links to their other
platforms: website, Twitter and Instagram, as well as to their telephone number and
email, offering an immediate point of contact from this social network to attract potential
members and/or people interested in the activity they carry out. This, added to the fact
that donations can be made to the organisation from the Facebook profile itself,
demonstrates how important it is for Amnesty International to generate a channel for the
'call to action', with the aim of taking advantage of the opportunity of a single click in the
"moments of truth" with the public interested in Human Rights and thus reducing the risk
of abandonment of possible donations.
Despite the high number of followers (even more so if we compare it with other related
organisations such as Human Rights Watch Spain or Transparency International Spain),
the interaction received by its publications is low, very few reach 1,000 reactions, with
the most interaction being those aimed at more "controversial" issues such as the death
penalty, abortion, gender or the LGBTIQ community. Most publications consist of an
image or video and an explanatory text. In other cases, only an image and a strong
sentence appear, as in their latest post, in which they announce that the 'tampon tax'
has been eliminated in the UK with an image and add: "Access to tampons is a right. Full
stop. In addition, almost all of them are accompanied by a hyperlink to their official
website where more information can be accessed, in other cases they also use direct
links to signature campaigns.
The denunciation of human rights violations, through information relating to specific
situations or more structural problems, is the aim of a significant number of the
publications analysed on Facebook. For example, there is a post denouncing the
sentencing to death of a Nigerian musician for blasphemy and inviting people to collect
signatures to prevent his death. Beyond the denunciation, a trend identified is the use of
current events to raise awareness, launch campaigns and generate debate on structural
issues relevant to the SDGs and the defence of human rights. As an example, a
publication on 15 January consists of a video of a doctor who walked 17 km to get to the
hospital where he works, thus linking the specific case to the importance of public health.
It thus takes advantage of the opportunity offered by current events by being used to
ask for support/donations to "armour public health" and also to reinforce public pressure
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on the Spanish authorities to invest more in the public health system. Another example
is the case of a publication in the form of a denunciation and pronouncement calling for
the release of Aleksei Navalny (Russian opposition leader), linking his detention to the
violation of the right to freedom of expression.
This type of publication is combined with others related to major human rights issues,
even if they are not newsworthy, and which articulate Amnesty International's permanent
action; For example campaigns "For a 2021 free of gender violence in all its forms"
through which Amnesty International reiterates its commitment to the eradication of
gender violence, recalling that in 2020 the number of women who died at the hands of
their partners has decreased; or also the collection of signatures to ask for protection for
victims of human trafficking, the defence of the rights of immigrants, campaigns against
the death penalty and executions. There are also campaigns with a strong social
character such as the petition for freedom for women who fight for their social rights in
countries such as Saudi Arabia, for families living in the Cañada Real to have electricity
or campaigns for vaccination against COVID for all groups.
In addition to this content, Facebook stories are only available for 24 hours. In this
alternative mode, they repost content from other people or entities, promote their own
publications and even publish memes related to their complaints.
In terms of the interactions generated, positive interactions outweigh the negative ones,
which may lead one to think that the public that follows this account is close to or
mobilised towards the defence of human rights. The majority of the publications receive
positive interactions, giving the option to 'Like' or sharing the content; for example, the
publication on the 'Human Rights Goals for 2021' has been one of those that has
generated the most interactions on Facebook and communicates the objectives that
Amnesty International proposes for the year. On the contrary, negative interactions are
more present in publications related to more controversial or politicised content, for
example, the collection of signatures for the victims of Francoism and the civil war which
saw a number of negative interactions due to some comments referring to the fact that
this petition for signatures was to reopen wounds in the history of Spain that had 'already'
been closed.
From the publications analysed in the Facebook profile of this NGO, it can be concluded
that communication is closely related to current issues, generating a link between the
major issues and goals of the organisation in favour of the defence of human rights and
the everyday life of citizens. This makes communication very close to the people, aimed
at raising awareness and mobilisation, using a current, concise and accessible narrative.
They avoid long texts that most people would not read. In addition, with some of the
shorter publications, with simple but powerful posters, they manage to make an impact
on users, as well as getting them to share them. This promotes the organisation in a
simple and emotional way.
4.2. Twitter
The Twitter account is under the username @amnistiaespana, and its description includes
the slogan that summarises the organisation's mission: "At Amnesty International we act
for human rights around the world. HT and RT ≠ support". The link in its description
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redirects to its privacy policy and also to its website. Since its creation on 28 May 2009,
it has posted a total of 28,600 tweets.
The account has been operational since 28 May 2009 and currently has 162.2 thousand
followers. In turn, they follow 17.8 thousand users on Twitter, among them scientific
staff, platforms and NGOs, and personalities and celebrities who support social causes.
The user image is permanent and is a version of their logo in yellow and black on a candle
surrounded by barbed wire; the cover photo changes periodically, during the days
analysed the cover photo corresponded to an image of two grandparents embracing and
a message of encouragement to a group severely affected in the COVID crisis with the
slogan "I ask for dignity for my grandparents".
In terms of the frequency of publication on its wall, we observe that it uploads content
regularly, on a daily basis, and the range of tweets goes from 2 on some days to 8 on
some occasions, which refers to the intense activity that the organisation has on its
Twitter account. The type of information it publishes refers to denunciations of certain
situations of human rights violations, collection of signatures, awareness-raising
campaigns and support for causes, and informative threads. The way it collects this
information is through photographs, videos of testimonies or press articles, in order to
raise public awareness of situations that violate human rights.
It highlights the use of threads based on newspaper articles to explain situations in more
detail. An example of this is the first thread of the year, which includes some of the most
important achievements in terms of human rights in 2020, such as access to education
for Rohingya children in Bangladesh or the new non-discriminatory minimum wage in
Qatar. The publications do not have many interactions, and in most cases the comments
are supportive, although there is also criticism, for example, criticism of the tweet posted
about the celebration of the legalisation of abortion in Argentina as a triumph for human
rights. It is worth mentioning how tweets for the protection of HR usually bring with them
rejection from what we can identify as Internet "trolls", as they rarely have a profile
picture or name.
On the other hand, and no less important, is the use of people's testimonies and
announcements about appearances on issues of special interest that Amnesty
International fights for. Among the most relevant testimonies we find that of Alika, talking
about how she had to be subjected to prostitution; and another, and being of special
interest nowadays after the COVID-19 pandemic and the Filomena storm, the testimony
of Álvaro talking about the precarious situation of health workers having to go to their
place of work with more than 15 cm of snow. On these testimonies, although not all of
them, people who follow his account are urged to join in the collection of signatures to
denounce the situation.
Despite the intense activity on the Twitter account, it seems relevant that explanatory
tweets tend not to be shared (likes and retweets) as much as those that link to an article
or mention specific people. The post with the most interactions of the whole period refers
to the news that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the US, with all replies
celebrating this result.
In the analysis carried out, Amnesty International's capacity to bring up current issues
and connect them with the values and actions that the organisation holds stands out.
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They have a very collaborative work with other delegations (as can be seen in the
retweets they have, often coming from regional delegations) as well as a very careful
and aesthetic structure.
4.3. Instagram
The Instagram profile has 1,292 posts and 46,000 followers (as of 15 January 2021). Its
profile description reads "More than 50 years working for human rights". Amnesty
International Spain posts daily on current issues around rights campaigning, both in the
form of stories (which it highlights) and posts.
Among the publications analysed, in the "featured stories" section, the content is divided
into three different types. The first refers to quizzes to raise awareness of different topics
among followers and to let them evaluate how much knowledge they have about them;
in the period analysed, quizzes on education, devolution and migration were carried out.
The second type of content is awareness-raising campaigns based on specific cases; for
example, the story highlighted under the slogan "Save Yahaya", which explains the
situation faced by a 22-year-old Nigerian boy sentenced to death in his country for
composing and sharing a song on a WhatsApp group for allegedly defaming the Prophet
Mohammed. The complaint is accompanied by a collection of signatures against this
injustice. Another example of a featured story includes the testimony of three women
victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation.
The publications on the Instagram account include relevant topics in terms of Human
Rights. Not only are specific cases that require intervention by Amnesty International
published, but the organisation also publishes images of denunciation, gratitude,
awareness, reflection or data relevant to Human Rights. Moreover, these publications are
not limited to a specific theme, but cover a wide range of issues from all parts of the
world. The publications are presented in the form of images or videos, either real or
explanatory drawings, with text added in the graphic part or in the caption, usually with
a brief explanation of the issue related to the publication. The information in the
publications has the theme of Human Rights as a common link and the specific topics are
very diverse and in many cases take advantage of current news, such as the defence of
public health, human rights in residences, the necessary reforms for women in Saudi
Arabia and their freedom, climate change, LGBTI pride, denouncing the gag law, refuge
and COVID, attacks against women for defending the Amazon rainforest, etc. It should
be noted that, in addition to publishing videos and striking illustrations to publicise the
story, denounce the situation and make it visible, they also propose solutions and invite
users to be part of them, either by signing petitions or by sharing and commenting on
the content.
The publications on Instagram, although they coincide with the themes used on the other
networks, have a different language in order to relate to a younger audience, regular
users of this social network, and to get them interested in international issues from a
more particular point of view. With this type of communication activity, the organisation
seeks to raise awareness and involve young people in the defence of human rights.
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5. Conclusions and discussion
Amnesty International's Spanish Section has an imbalance of staff dedicated to traditional
media (3 full-time) compared to those dedicated to social media (1 full-time and 2 part-
time), which opens a debate regarding short-term results and the staff dedicated to
achieving them. However, the organisation's impact on opinion leaders or decision-
makers still comes more widely through its presence in the media. And even this is also
changing (evolving or devolving, depending on how you look at it), since we have seen
leaders using especially Twitter as a communication tool, dismissing the media; or at the
very least, using this social network to respond and/or propose policy initiatives.
The trend is becoming mixed, the media will not be able to continue without the constant
use of social networks such as Twitter, the newsrooms are made up of digital natives
who are setting this trend, and the communication areas of non-governmental
organisations are no different on this point. And therefore, their relationship is marked
by this reality.
It is essential for NGOs to have systems for adapting formats if they want to continue to
produce compelling content that has space and visibility on social networks, in order to
avoid the temptation to produce empty messages.
Based on the data collected and its analysis, it can be concluded that the use of social
networks to communicate human rights is effective and achieves the objectives that the
organisation sets itself, with a high impact, not only in terms of visibility, but also in
terms of attracting economic resources.
The coordination of three areas of work (content building, campaigns and marketing) has
proven to be a key to the success of Amnesty International's Spanish Section's social
media presence. And the design of specific software to cover their communication needs
through the networks has been the other key to achieving efficiency.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
78
THE EU AGAINST THE DISINFORMATION OF CHINA AND RUSSIA DURING THE
COVID-19. THE NEED FOR GREATER EUROPEAN NARRATIVE PROACTIVITY AT
THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
MIGUEL ANGEL BENEDICTO SOLSONA
miguel.benedictosolsona@gmail.com
PhD in International Relations from the Complutense University of Madrid. He holds a degree in
Law from the University of Zaragoza, a degree in Information Sciences from the UCM and a
degree in Political Science from the UNED. His areas of research are the European Union (foreign
policy, security and defence and communication policy) and public diplomacy. He is a member of
the research team of the project "Public diplomacy in Ibero-American megacities: communication
strategies and soft power to influence global environmental legislation". As a lecturer, he also
collaborates with the Universidad Europea de Madrid (Spain) and the Universidad Pontificia
Comillas.
Abstract
Disinformation has been used by third countries to weaken the EU and its institutions; erode
democracy and create social division. In the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia and
China have been in the spotlight for their influence operations in Europe. In the article we will
analyse the concept of disinformation in the EU; external threats and the new role played by
China and its use of social networks to improve its image and impose its alternative model of
governance with sharp power techniques. Finally, the European strategy to defend itself
against fake news will be evaluated and the need for the EU to be more proactive in creating
frames that allow it to launch a narrative at international level and improve its public
diplomacy.
Keywords
Disinformation, China, Russia, European Union sharp power, Covid-19
How to cite this article
Solsona, Miguel Ángel Benedicto. The EU against the disinformation of China and Russia during
the COVID-19. The need for greater European narrative proactivity at the international level.
Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online]
at dat of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.6
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 2, 2021
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier –International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 78-92
The EU against the disinformation of China and Russia during the Covid-19.
The need for greater European narrative proactivity at the international level
Javier Ángel Benedicto Solsona
79
THE EU AGAINST THE DISINFORMATION OF CHINA AND RUSSIA
DURING THE COVID-19. THE NEED FOR GREATER EUROPEAN
NARRATIVE PROACTIVITY AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
1
MIGUEL ÁNGEL BENEDICTO SOLSONA
Introduction
The European Union has been suffering from the phenomenon of disinformation since
2015. After the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, Moscow has not stopped using
this type of tool to destabilize different European countries, especially during electoral
campaigns, causing social polarization and a decrease in trust in institutions and
democracy. 73% of European internet users were concerned about disinformation during
election periods; 85% of those surveyed perceive fake news online as a problem in their
country and 83% as a problem for democracy in general (Flash Eurobarometer 464,
2018).
To curb these threats, the EU put in place instruments to combat fake news with relative
success during the European Parliament elections in May 2019. However, the Covid-19
pandemic has shown that the measures were not enough. Technology and social
platforms change, attacks are increasingly sophisticated and aggressive. In addition,
countries like China, although with different objectives than the Russians, as we will see,
have also targeted the phenomenon of disinformation in Europe.
1. Methodology and fieldwork
This article examines as actors outside the EU, like Russia and China, have launched
interference and misinformation processes during the pandemic. We have analyzed the
reports of the EU External Action Service (EEAS) since March 2020 to see what the
interference of the Kremlin and Beijing-controlled media has been. Due to the importance
of social platforms, we have also reviewed the Hamilton 2.0 panel
2
, a project of Alliance
for Securing Democracy and the German Marshall Fund, which provides an analysis of
1
Article translated by Miguel Ángel Benedicto.
2
Hamilton Dashboard 2.0 https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/
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the narratives and topics promoted by Russian, Chinese and Iranian officials on social
media and media funded by those countries.
The novelty of the Chinese case in the use of disinformation in the EU has also led us to
analyze the action of China's Foreign Ministry on twitter from February to April 2020, the
toughest months of the pandemic in the EU. For the fieldwork we have collected 266
tweets from the official account of the Chinese Foreign Ministry uploaded between
February and April 2020, which is when the pandemic hit hardest in Europe during the
first wave. We have analyzed how many tweets have been written in relation to Covid-
19 during those months, which countries have been most cited by that ministry within
and outside the EU, which institutions are the most named and the type of coronavirus
information that China has uploaded on twitter.
Likewise, the measures that the EU has put in place against disinformation, before and
after the pandemic, are analyzed.
2. Theoretical considerations about Soft power and Sharp power
During the coronavirus crisis, European institutions suffered attacks from Russia and
China. Moscow has been using disinformation campaigns for years in various EU countries
with the aim of weakening its institutions, creating social division and eroding democracy.
In contrast, Beijing had not used such actions until the emergence of Covid-19 with the
aim of presenting its own narrative on the origin of the pandemic, improving its image in
the EU through mask diplomacy
3
, or supporting countries related to the New Silk Road
4
(BRI).
Both countries have been equipped with instruments to implement coordinated actions
aimed at democratic states to violate their institutions through political, economic,
military, civil means or information related. Russia and China use soft power to attract
foreign audiences, but under that guise are disruptive operations that can be described
as sharp power; used by some countries to crack democratic systems such as the EU.
The concept of soft power is attributed to Joseph Nye (2004: 5) who defines it as a form
of non-coercive power that has the effect of "getting others to want the outcomes you
want" through the "ability of attraction, [which] leads to acquiescence."
The decline of the state monopoly for the benefit of shared sovereignty in economic and
communicative matters raises the need to rethink traditional diplomacy. It does not seem
possible to return to a closed international system monopolized by state activity, but
rather a more open diplomacy, more mediated by the media, in which civil society plays
an increasingly important role. Public diplomacy according to Nye (2008) “is an
indispensable tool for promoting the soft power of a country”. In this sense, Van Ham
(2005: 47) explains that it is "used by states to turn hard power into the soft power of
legitimacy, credibility, cultural superiority, and normative dominance. The wheels of hard
3
It is an attempt to improve China's image abroad as the country from which the virus had come through
medical assistance or the shipment of sanitary supplies or masks by Beijing, donations from companies or
Chinese communities abroad.
4
It is a geopolitical project that seeks to integrate Asia, Europe and Africa into a market with an
intercontinental transport network.
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power alone can work smoothly with the soft power lubricant, of which public diplomacy
is a key element."
However, when Russia or China use diplomacy to undermine the political system of
another country, Walker and Ludwig (2017a) do not speak of soft but of sharp power. A
concept that they coined in Foreign Affairs magazine as the use of manipulative
diplomatic policies by one country to influence and undermine the political system of
another country. According to Walker (2016) “authoritarian regimes exploit the
opportunities that globalization provides and create an undemocratic toolkit”. This
includes NGOs controlled by governments, the use of investment and foreign aid and
they use traditional and online media. They create an alternative model that reduces the
political space of civil society by building an infrastructure, working together in existing
or newly created international organizations, which allows them to challenge democracies
and their values.
Walker and Ludwig argue that Moscow and Beijing's efforts in public diplomacy are not
based on attraction or even persuasion, but on manipulation. Sharp power seeks to
"penetrate or pierce" the political information and environments of the selected countries.
It is a power that uses policies that help authoritarian regimes to coerce and manipulate
opinions abroad. The corrosive effects of sharp power are evident in the spheres of
culture, academia, the media and publications, sectors that are more vulnerable due to
their financial insecurity (Hala, 2020). Open and accessible democracies like the EU are
vulnerable to that sharp power.
China wants to play a more important role at the global level and to do this it promotes
its ideas, rules and models of government through censorship or manipulation to
undermine the integrity of independent institutions. According to Nye (2021) "China must
realize that most of a country's soft power comes from its civil society rather than from
its government." China's problem is that the actors involved in its public diplomacy
depend on the control of the communist party (Walker, 2018). The repressive system of
the Chinese government nullifies non-state actors and turns its soft power and public
diplomacy into a sharp power that seeks to manipulate or coerce opinions abroad
(Benedicto, 2020).
3. Activities of Russia and China during the first wave of Covid-19
COVID-19 has given rise to what the WHO calls an "infodemic
5
", which in the lockdown
was aggravated by the massive use of social networks to access information. During the
coronavirus crisis, the situation has become more complex with false information about
the virus, attacks on ethnic or religious groups as the origin of the pandemic, consumer
fraud, conspiracy theories, cybercrime and selective disinformation campaigns by of
foreign or national agents who seek to undermine democracy and the credibility of the
EU and national or regional authorities (European Commission, 2020a).
5
Excess information on a matter, but also disinformation or conspiracy theories that create confusion and
mistrust and prevent an effective response to the problem. https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200305-sitrep-45-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=ed2ba78b_4
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In this article we focus on the challenge that third countries, such as Russia and China,
have undertaken with disinformation campaigns about COVID-19 in the EU and its
neighboring countries, with which they seek to undermine the democratic debate and
exacerbate social polarization, thereby improving their own image in relation to the
pandemic. Moscow and Beijing took advantage of the fact that the EU's initial response
to the coronavirus was late and unsupportive. The ban on exporting medical supplies by
France or Germany to a needy Italy was a serious blow to the image of the EU. China
and Russia deployed a strategy of public diplomacy, with the shipment of medical
supplies. The EU, which does not have health competencies, saw how China with “mask
diplomacy” filled the gap in European leadership and coordination; and got Italy, Spain
or Serbia to thank and even ask Beijing for help.
The European Commission reacted later by opening transport corridors so that medical
supplies could reach any EU country that needed them. EU also offered assistance to
candidate countries in the Western Balkans, but the initial image of lack of solidarity had
already been set.
3.1. EEAS reports on Moscow and Beijing activity
In the first EEAS report (2020a) the attacks on Brussels were highlighted due to the low
support for its Member States; while countries like Italy were assisted by China or the
Schengen area was broken. Russia's objective was to generate mistrust in authorities
and national and European health systems, international institutions and scientific
experts.
For its part, China spread information about the great work done by Xi Jinping to contain
the coronavirus; while the West and the United States worked too slowly and are now in
total disarray from the virus.
In the second report of the EEAS (2020 b) of the end of April, it is concluded that both
Russia and China, to a lesser extent, have disseminated conspiracy and disinformation
theories directed both to the public of the European Union and of neighboring countries.
Russian state media carry out a coordinated campaign with the dual aim of undermining
the European Union and its response to the crisis, and of sowing confusion about the
origins and health consequences of COVID-19, even if it contradicts WHO official
guidelines and social media content policies.
From mid-February to the end of March 2020, Beijing was characterized by questioning
the origin of the virus, restricting references to Wuhan or sowing doubts by attributing
the start of the virus to the American military; and highlight the role of China as a world
leader in the response to coronavirus led by Xi Jinping (Recorded Future, 2020).
According to the Daily Telegraph (2020), some Chinese state media circumvented the
rules on political advertising on social media and launched campaigns praising China's
handling of the virus and attacking the United States.
China diverted any possible responsibility for the outbreak of the pandemic and did not
stop publicizing the bilateral assistance, which it provides to some European countries,
highlighting that Beijing has been more helpful than the European Union in the fight
against the pandemic. The strategy worked in Italy where 52% of respondents by polling
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company SWG in March considered China a friendly country of Italy, a 42% increase from
January 2020. However, the percentage of respondents who trusted the European Union
fell to 27% in March 2020 from 42% in September 2019. As for China's strategic partners
outside Europe, 36% believe that China should be looked at compared to 30% that they
think they should look at the United States.
Figure 1. “International alliances: China recovers credit among Italians and is now preferred to the
United States”
Fuente: Magazine Formiche.
Formiche magazine (2020) detected a coordinated Twitter bot operation in Italy to
broaden the reach of messages from the Chinese embassy praising their country and to
attack the European Union. Also countries in the Eastern neighborhood of the EU, on the
southern shore of the Mediterranean and the Western Balkans, receive information
showing Europe divided or weak in dealing with the crisis effectively (EEAS, 2020 b).
In the third EEAS report (2020c) in May, “Russian controlled television channels
promoted disinformation narratives about the collapse of Western values and China has
tried to control the narrative about COVID-19 and deflect any criticism to be portrayed
as a responsible and transparent actor during the pandemic and a role model for other
countries."
According to Freedom House (2020), since March 2020, coordinated and covert attempts
have been detected by actors linked to China to manipulate information about Covid-19
in countries such as Italy or Serbia, among others, with content in local languages.
Beijing increasingly adopts the Russian style and no longer only censors the criticism it
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receives, but also starts to sow doubts and use conspiracy theories with a strong
proactivity of officials on social networks called wolf warrior diplomacy.
6
In the fourth report of the EEAS (2020d) of December 2020, disinformation decreases
and focuses on vaccines. Russia praises Sputnik V with a triumphant speech and China
highlights its response to Covid-19 as a commitment to multilateralism and the rapid
reopening of its economy.
3.2. Chinese Foreign Ministry twitter analysis
The dissemination of messages on these platforms aims to ensure China's discursive
power in the world, which is one of the most important goals of increasing its soft power
(Zhao, 2020). According to the analysis, which we have carried out on the tweets in
English uploaded in the account of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, during the first three
months of the first wave of the pandemic in the EU, 78% had to do with Covid-19. The
first month was the one with the most intensity on the social network, especially to try
to hide the origin of the virus and divert attention with conspiracy theories and
accusations of racism. Beijing also appreciated the solidarity of countries such as
Pakistan, Serbia and ASEAN partners.
In February, the country most cited on the Twitter of the Foreign Ministry was Pakistan
and in Europe, Italy was the first and curiously, small countries like Serbia and
Montenegro ranked fourth and fifth. They all have something in common: their
membership in the Chinese geopolitical project of the New Silk Road. As for the most
cited institution, it is undoubtedly the WHO with which Beijing wants to demonstrate its
commitment to multilateralism. In the early stages of the outbreak, official Chinese
messages focused on solidarity, human interest stories and Beijing's efforts to respond
to the crisis such as the video of the construction of the Wuhan hospital.
But in March, as the virus spread rapidly to Europe and the United States, that focus
shifted, criticizing the Trump administration's handling of the virus and highlighting the
chaos of democratic systems. Beijing began to question the origin of the virus in Wuhan.
China began to designate the American military as the inoculators of Covid-19; and to
highlight the role of China as a world leader in the response to the coronavirus and
underline that the Chinese supply chain remains active. In addition, Beijing did not stop
propaganda about his assistance to European countries such as Italy and Serbia, while
highlighting the inaction of Brussels.
In April, the number of tweets rose and the most cited country was the United States,
which is accused of manufacturing the virus in a laboratory in the former USSR. This
conspiracy theory about American biological laboratories was tweeted on more than one
occasion by the official account of the Chinese Foreign Ministry and covered by its official
media.
6
It is characterized by the use of confrontational rhetoric by Chinese diplomats by denouncing criticism of
China and being combative in interviews and on social media.
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Table 1. China on twitter
Months
February 2020
March 2020
April 2020
Total tweets
MFA China
125
63
78
Tweets about
the Covid-19
103
42
63
Most cited
country
outside
Europe
Pakistan 11
USA 7
USA 8
Most cited
European
country
Italy 4
France 2
Germany 3
Serbia 2
Montenegro1
Italy 2
Serbia 2
France 2
Most cited
institution
WHO 10
WHO 7
WHO 8
ASEAN 2
Issues that
most concern
China related
to COVID
-Complaints about
information about
the origin of the virus
in a Chinese
laboratory, racism
and conspiracy
theories.
-Thank you for the
solidarity of Pakistan,
Serbia and ASEAN.
-Video of the
construction of
Wuhan Hospital
-Solidarity with
Japan and South
Korea.
-Don't call it
Wuhan virus
-Support for
countries such
as Italy or
Serbia
-Chinese supply
chain operates
despite Covid
-Laboratories of USA in the former
USSR as the source of the virus.
-Threat of not sending medical
equipment to Netherlands by changing
Taiwan's official name
-WHO experts rule out that the virus
comes from a Chinese laboratory.
-Criticism of the attempt to destabilize
the relationship between China and
Africa.
-Defense of the Director-General of
WHO for racist attacks.
-Tweets sending doctors, masks or
medical equipment to Pakistan, Serbia,
Nigeria Kazakhstan, USA, ASEAN;
Djibouti, Russia, Myanmar, Cambodia,
Bangladesh, and Taiwan.
Source: Own elaboration according to the official Twitter account of the Chinese Foreign Ministry
In addition, campaigns were launched praising China's management of the virus and
attacking the United States. Beijing diverted its responsibility for managing the virus at
the beginning of the pandemic and stressed that the WHO ruled out that it was created
in a Chinese laboratory. Likewise, he did not stop tweeting information about the
shipment of medical supplies, doctors and masks to different countries of the world,
giving rise to the so-called mask diplomacy and improving his image in Italy or Serbia.
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4. EU strategies against disinformation
4.1. Disinformation: a broader concept than fake news
The phenomenon of disinformation in the EU goes beyond the term 'fake news' as is
apparent from the report made for the European Commission by the High-Level Expert
Group (HLEG), which defines disinformation "like all forms of false information,
inaccurate or misleading designed, presented, edited or promoted to intentionally cause
public harm or to profit" (European Commission, 2018 to p.3). Trolls and hackers use big
data
7
and algorithms to identify each person's unique weaknesses and trends for
producing stories consistent with them and help bots spread
8
them. They use these
stories to reinforce the prejudices of those who believe in it to exacerbate the cracks in
society and pierce the democratic system from within. (Brahms, 2019).
4.2. How to combat disinformation
Russia has a budget of between 3 billion and 4 billion for disinformation measures
(McCauley, 2016) and as Roig explains (2018) uses instruments such as Russian
information agencies RT and Sputnik abroad. It controls almost all national televisions,
uses the Internet Research Agency (IRA) to flood social media, and generates
sophisticated and massive disinformation operations. Some 15,000 people work on these
disinformation tasks (McCauley, 2016) and Sputnik and RT, providing stories to be spread
through social media.
A study on information manipulation conducted by the French government (Vilmer et al.,
2018) states that 80% of the European authorities consulted attribute interference in
Europe to Russia but they also do so to other states (mainly China and Iran) and non-
state actors (jihadist groups, in particular ISIS). However, some academics have
questioned this percentage on the basis that such volume is barely measurable "because
there is no consensus on what exactly constitutes disinformation."
The cross-border dimension of disinformation has required a coordinated and long-term
approach among EU Member States to meet this challenge. In 2015, the European
institutions created the East Stratcom (Communication Strategy for the East) Group, a
pioneer against fake news to assist candidate countries and partners in the EU's
neighbourhood in their efforts to counter hostile propaganda and disinformation activities
(European Parliament, 2019). The Working Group disseminates thousands of examples
of Kremlin-friendly disinformation and studies the techniques and intentions of Russian-
origin campaigns on daily basis.
The EU adopted in 2016 a Common Framework for combating hybrid threats underlining
the threat posed by massive disinformation campaigns, which uses social media to
control political narrative or to radicalize, recruit and represent indirect actors. It is an
issue which falls within the scope of national security and defence and the main
7
Person who uses social media to distribute fake news or posts to destabilize and influence public opinion.
8
Computer programs that mimic human interaction and automatically disseminate disinformation campaigns
on social media.
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responsibility lies with the Member States. However, common threats can attack cross-
border networks or infrastructures and they are more effectively addressed with a
coordinated response at European level (EuropeanParliament, 2016).
As part of the planned measures, the Hybrid Threat Fusion Cell was established at the
EEAS in 2016 and one year after the European Centre for Combating Hybrid Threats was
opened in Helsinki with the participation of 10 EU Member States, Norway and the US.
The openness and collaboration between NATO and the EU were a sign that tensions with
Russia over its campaigns of influence in the West could no longer be ignored.
The HLEG (European Commission, 2018a) conclusion report describes the harmful effects
of disinformation due to increased institutional mistrust and increased social tensions,
and the implications it could have for internal security if combined with cyberattacks or
public policy making given its influence on public opinion. Disinformation could affect
policies, social debates and behaviors in areas such as climate change, migration, public
safety, health and finance; and can undermine confidence in science and empirical testing
(European Commission, 2018b). In this document, it was pointed out that the platforms
had barely taken measures against misinformation and it was doubted that they would
protect their users well against the unauthorized use of their personal data by third
parties.
In 2018, a Code of Practice against disinformation was launched, signed by platforms
such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Mozilla and Microsoft, which pledged to take action
and the Commission to monitor its effectiveness on a regular basis. The European
Commission also approved an Action Plan against disinformation, created a Rapid Alert
System to have closer coordination between the EU and national authorities; and
increased international cooperation with the G7 and NATO.
Before the European elections, the European Parliament (2019) approved a Report to
sensitize the public opinion “about the disinformation campaigns of Russia, since they
constitute the main source of fake news in Europe”. The report's speaker (Fotyga, 2019)
noted that “the dissemination of disinformation has become more sophisticated due to
new tools (for example, private messaging applications, search engine optimization,
manipulated sound or images) and more aggressive”. The report condemned the actions
of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, which according to MEPs sought to undermine
European democracies and the sovereignty of all Eastern European Partnership countries,
as well as influence elections and support extremist movements. MEPs urged the EU to
strengthen the East StratCom anti-propaganda group to combat attacks from Russia.
The measures adopted during the European elections helped to combat disinformation
and preserve the integrity of the elections According to the European Commission Report
(2019) “the available evidence has not made it possible to determine the existence of a
clear cross-border campaign of disinformation from external sources and specifically
targeting the European elections.” However, they revealed ongoing and sustained
disinformation activity by Russian sources with the aim of discouraging electoral turnout
and influencing voters' preferences. Thus, democratic legitimacy of the Union was
questioned; controversial public debates were exploited on issues such as migration and
sovereignty. “This confirms that the disinformation campaigns deployed by state and
non-state actors pose a hybrid threat to the EU” (European Commission, 2019a).
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Cooperation with platforms improved, but not enough. “More than 600 Facebook groups
and pages operating in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland and Spain
have spread disinformation and incitement to hatred or have used false profiles to
artificially promote the content of the parties or sites they support.” (Graham-Harrison,
2019). Complaints from researchers, fact-checkers and civil society also served to detect
other cases of large-scale attempts to manipulate voter behavior in at least nine Member
States (Avaaz, 2019).
However, the coronavirus crisis has once again put on the table that it is necessary to
continue working to avoid disinformation, especially in relation to third countries, such
as China and Russia that have launched influence operations, as is clear from the
communication of June 2020 from the European Commission (2020a). To avoid these
external interferences, the EU seeks international collaboration with the G7, NATO and
WHO and a more active role in communicating locally, especially in the use of social
networks.
In the public consultation carried out by the European Commission (2020b), 69% of those
surveyed were in favour of some type of regulation on disinformation and 57% supported
the option of following the Code of Practices on Disinformation and combining it with
some type of legal measure. After the consultation, the Action Plan for European
Democracy was presented with tougher measures to prevent foreign interference in EU
electoral processes and disinformation. The purpose of the European Commission Plan
(2020c), which will be implemented until the European elections of 2023, is to move from
self-regulation to “co-regulation” in line with the next Digital Services Act. According to
the document, it seeks to reduce the economic incentives to spread disinformation and
impose sanctions, although it is not explained how they will be, to the actors involved in
operations of influence and foreign interference”. In the proposal made by the
Commission on the new Digital Services Act, the mechanisms to eliminate illegal content
are improved and greater public supervision of platforms is introduced.
4.3. Creation of European frameworks
The EU has a public sphere under construction in which when it comes to fighting fake
news, it has opted for fact checking instead of creating alternative frameworks at the
European level (Tuñon, Oleart and Bouza, 2019). The commitment to fact checkers is
reactive because their strategy is to deny the falsehoods that circulate in the public
sphere, and in doing so the effect of disinformation is amplified by reproducing the frames
that are used to debate. If we apply the theory of framing, we realize the importance of
proactivity in communication, especially when establishing discursive frameworks.
Following Lakoff (2004), the repetition of the disinformation framework extends it into
the incipient European public sphere rather than defeating it.
During the coronavirus crisis, Russia and China have been active in setting frameworks
and have used sharp power to do so. However, the EU was unable to use its public
diplomacy or proactive narratives to create alternative frameworks at the geopolitical
level. The EU has provided more aid to its states than it has received from China,
however, the perception of European citizens at the beginning of the crisis was the
opposite. As French President Emmanuel Macron explained, the EU and its member states
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have been unable to display such mutual assistance in their public narratives (Mallet and
Khalaf, 2020).
5. Conclusions
Russia continues with its disinformation campaigns in the EU with the aim of destabilizing,
polarizing and diminishing the confidence of Europeans in its institutions and in
democracy in order to avoid the enlargement of the EU and the Atlantic Alliance to its
area of influence. A strategy that China has joined, especially since the first wave of the
pandemic in Europe, to hide the origin of the virus and promote a positive image abroad
and its governance model as opposed to Western democracy.
China saw in Italy and Spain or in the request for help from Serbia, its opportunity to
turn around the global narrative on the coronavirus that placed Beijing as the origin,
cover-up and accelerator of the pandemic and Covid-19 as the “Chernobyl" Chinese.
Beijing turned the crisis into a geopolitical opportunity with a strong soft power campaign
to fill the gap left by the US and the EU. Chinese officials have increased their presence
on Western social media platforms. Thus, for example, the diplomatic corps uses Twitter
more and more as a platform to influence world public opinion, with the paradox that it
is blocked in China. Beijing has chosen to shape the global information environment
beyond its borders. The proactivity of Chinese officials in social networks and foreign
media points to a change in their foreign policy that is increasingly assertive as is their
communication and public diplomacy, although it is full of sharp power.
China has opted for an international narrative that no longer passes only by censoring
the criticism it receives, but by using disinformation and Russian-style conspiracy
theories. Mask diplomacy has worked in the EU and in its neighborhood. In Italy, China's
image improved at the beginning of the pandemic, and the inaction of Brussels served
as Serbian President Alexander Vucik to ask Beijing for help. These examples
demonstrate the need for the EU to strengthen and coordinate its strategic
communication within and outside its territory to neutralize misinformation and stories
such as its lack of solidarity during the pandemic. But it is not only necessary to
strengthen strategic communication, but also to improve the public diplomacy of the EU
delegations abroad in collaboration with the embassies of the 27 Member States.
Internally, the offices of the European Parliament and Commission representations should
also play a more active role in national debates at the media and social media level.
The EU should not only try to defend itself against third country operations, but it needs
to be able to create alternative narrative frameworks at the geopolitical level as a road
to combat disinformation in a weak and incipient European public sphere.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
93
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES REFLECTED IN THE
SOCIAL DISCOURSE OF THE MAIN DISABILITY ORGANISATIONS IN SPAIN
ISMAEL LÓPEZ-CEPEDA
ismaellopezcepeda@ucm.es
Marketing and Publicity Degree professor. PhD candidate in Audiovisual Communication and
Advertising Doctoral Program at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). Member of the
project "Visual map of professional orientation for the Degree in Advertising and Public Relations"
at the Complutense University of Madrid.
LUIS MAÑAS-VINIEGRA
lmanas@ucm.es
Professor in the Department of Applied Communication Studies at Complutense University of
Madrid (Spain). He holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising with Extraordinary
Award from the same University. His research interests include the management of intangibles in
Communication
HIPÓLITO VIVAR-ZURITA
hvivar@ucm.es
Professor of Information Technologies and Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense
University of Madrid (Spain). Director of the research group FONTA (Training in New Audiovisual
Technologies) officially recognized by the UCM. Currently I direct as Principal Investigator the
national project 'Inclusion and Employment of people with disabilities in the audiovisual sector'
(COMPENSA).
Abstract
Ever since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities took place
in 2006, the promotion of fundamental rights for this group has been continuous, fostering
social inclusion to reduce the stereotypes and prejudices that had prevailed until that time.
The aim of this research is to analyse the discourse on social networks of the main
associations, foundations, as well as public and private organisations with regard to disability
in Spain on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2020, in order to identify the
topics that generate the highest level of interaction among the different profiles on social
networks. The results suggest that despite the limited reach of these organisations on social
networks, their discourse is based on fundamental rights such as participation and inclusion,
accessibility, individual autonomy, and equal opportunity, which provide greater knowledge
and a positive vision of persons with disabilities to society as a whole, raising awareness about
stereotypes, prejudices and hate speech that are still common.
Keywords
Disability, Human rights, Social media, Inclusion, Accessibility.
How to cite this article
López-Cepeda, Ismael; Mañas-Viniegra, Luis; Vivar-Zurita, Hipólito. Fundamental rights of
people with disabilities reflected in the social discourse of the main disability organisations in
Spain. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks, July 2021. Consulted
[online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.7
Article received on December24, 2020 and accepted for publication on February 23, 2021
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Thematic dossier – International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 93-111
Fundamental rights of people with disabilities reflected in the social discourse
of the main disability organisations in Spain
Ismael López-Cepeda, Luis Mañas-Viniegra, Hipólito Vivar-Zurita
94
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
REFLECTED IN THE SOCIAL DISCOURSE OF THE MAIN
DISABILITY ORGANISATIONS IN SPAIN
1
2
ISMAEL LÓPEZ-CEPEDA
LUIS MAÑAS-VINIEGRA
HIPÓLITO VIVAR-ZURITA
Introduction
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006) was a
milestone in the struggle against the exclusion suffered by people with disabilities within
the UN human rights system, even though its recognition in subsequent agreements has
only sometimes been comprehensive, often limited to formal statements (Skarstad and
Stein, 2018). Today, there continues to be a clash between personal identity and the
social construction of disability (Tsatsou, 2020). Stigma, discrimination, and social
exclusion of this group has been continual from the point of view of societal aspects,
health, transport, housing, education, employment, and public services, as well as the
negative image transmitted through the media (Oliver, 2004).
Recognition of the social model of disability has allowed us to move beyond medical
circumstances affecting people with disabilities to focus on the social, political, legal and
attitudinal experiences affecting people with disabilities, which require a greater
understanding of justice (Riddle, 2020). Although people with disabilities are now
recognised beyond their disability, a stronger social model is needed to enable people
with disabilities to prosper and be more active in order to change society and its values,
to uphold the dignity of the lives of people with disabilities, and to reflect on the social
values being sought through struggle, which are not always clear in many laws and
reports related to this issue (Berghs et al., 2019). Despite the consolidation of the right
to a dignified life, society still has not achieved a high level of inclusion, not to mention
the disadvantages that may or may not arise from disability (Riddle, 2020a), as well as
from regulatory rulings that limit a positive connotation of group differences (which
critical disability studies aim to eliminate), and prejudices that use dissimilarity to criticise
1
Article translated by Charles Edmond Arthur.
2
Project PID2019-105398RB-C21. Disability and Digital Skills in the Audio-visual Sector (COMPENSA), funded
by the Ministry of Science and Innovation - State Research Agency/10.13039/501100011033.
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of the main disability organisations in Spain
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95
disability (Vehmas and Watson, 2014). Both the social model of disability, or in other
words, the social injustice and stigma associated with disability that can be eliminated,
and the human rights model (disability policy), are actually complementary, with the
latter having greater importance in the legal and policy-oriented context, yet both models
focus the main problem on social factors outside the individual (Lawson and Beckett,
2020).
The use of adaptive ICTs has highlighted skills development for the independence of
young people with disabilities (Pacheco, Lips and Yoong, 2019), although it has taken a
very long time to bridge the disability digital divide through accessibility as well as
inclusive, innovative design (Pullin, 2011). Thus, people with disabilities have had to
adapt to techno-social standards, and infrastructure has had to undergo a redesign in
order to accommodate this situation (Yu et al., 2019), even though there is also digital
exclusion that affects people based on the type and degree of disability, digital skills, and
socio-economic circumstances (Dobransky and Hargittai, 2016). Specifically, the third-
level theory of the digital divide focuses less on digital access and usability and more on
the social, economic, and personal consequences of digital access (Ragnedda, 2017). In
fact, young people with disabilities actively interact with adaptive technology in the same
way as their non-disabled peers in their inclusion at the university level (Pacheco, Yoong
and Lips, 2020).
Social networks have also enabled people with physical disabilities to gain instrumental
and informational support, with positive effects on building social reinforcement, lower
tendency toward symptoms of depression (Lee and Cho, 2018), and greater social
integration of people who are more isolated outside the online environment (Banjanin et
al., 2015). Likewise, people with intellectual disabilities have had positive experiences on
social networks in terms of friendships, social identity development, self-esteem and
enjoyment (Caton and Chapman, 2016). Social support can be received structurally from
the point of view of the extent and form of structural connections, or functionally,
consisting of emotional, instrumental or practical help, informational support, and self-
evaluation in relation to others (House, 1981; Sherbourne and Stewart, 1991).
Social networks also allow individuals to control how and when they disclose information
about their disability based on their online relationships, or in other words, whether they
choose to do so in a way that is open, safe, or limited (Furr, Carreiro and McArthur,
2015). However, it seems that the psychological benefits of using digital technology
result primarily from the anonymity with which people with disabilities interact on the
Internet and social networks (Tsatsou, 2020), although a person can build their identity
in a positive way until they decide to disclose their disability (Bowker and Tuffin, 2002).
The most recent studies conducted in medical centres have revealed that half of the
patients surveyed who have intellectual and/or developmental disabilities do not use
mobile devices (44.6%), and that the majority (86.8%) do not use social networks
(Patrick et al., 2020).
Consequently, this research aims to answer the following questions: How are the
fundamental rights of people with disabilities disseminated on social networks that
represent them? What social discourse is transmitted during the International Day of
Persons with Disabilities? Which posts on social networks achieve greater interaction
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depending on the informative, commemorative, or vindicatory messages they
disseminate?
Methodology
The overall objective of this research is to analyse the content published on social
networks on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2020 in order to identify
the social discourse of specialised organisations.
The specific objectives are as follows:
- Identify public and private organisations specialising in disability that generated posts
on their social networks on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2020.
- Determine which fundamental rights are explicitly addressed in their social discourse.
- Identify what type of content attains the highest level of interaction.
- Compare the reach that the organisations obtain through the social networks they use.
The quantitative content analysis was carried out using on-demand computational tools
that use the API of the four main social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
YouTube. All the posts were collected for the date analysed and ranked according to the
highest number of interactions they received, while the data on the interactions attained
was recorded from their date of publication until 11 January 2021. A qualitative analysis
of these posts was also carried out using Atlas.ti v.8.4.4 software, which has helped to
reduce the number of redundant concepts that are present in social discourse
(Benavides-Delgado, 2005).
The International Day of Persons with Disabilities was chosen based on its status as a
day on which commemorative and vindicatory discourses converge, so that specialised
organisations communicate their priorities within their main areas of activity. The
selection of the sample was based on the directory of public and private organisations
that operate in Spain and specialise in people with disabilities. The directory has been
developed within the framework of the COMPENSA R&D&i project
(https://proyectocompensa.es/datos) and has involved the analysis of all the posts of
the 18 organisations that have met the requirements of having operational social
networks, or in other words, that have updated content, and that published messages on
social networks on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2020. The directory
includes the following organisations: Asociación Empresarial para la Discapacidad
[Business association for disability] (AEDIS); Asociación de Atención a Personas con
Discapacidad Intelectual [Association for the Care of People with Intellectual Disabilities]
(APSA); Federación Española de Enfermedades Neuromusculares [Spanish Federation of
Neuromuscular Diseases] (ASEM); Confederación Española de Asociaciones de Atención
a las Personas con Parálisis Cerebral [Spanish Confederation of Associations for the Care
of Persons with Cerebral Palsy] (ASPACE); Asociación Española de Familias de Personas
con Sordoceguera [Spanish Association of Families of People with Deafblindness]
(APASCIDE); Asociación Proyecto Autismo [Autism Project Association] (ASPAU);
Autismo España [Autism Spain]; Comité Español de Representantes de Personas con
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97
Discapacidad [Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities]
(CERMI); Confederación Estatal de Personas Sordas [State Confederation of Deaf People]
(CNSE); Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y Orgánica
[Spanish Confederation of People with Physical and Organic Disabilities] (COCEMFE);
Down España [Down’s Syndrome Spain]; Federación Española de Daño de Cerebral
[Spanish Federation of Brain Injury] (FEDACE); Confederación Española de Familias de
Personas Sordas [Spanish Confederation of Families of Deaf People] (FIAPAS); Fundación
ONCE [ONCE Foundation]; Ilunion; Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles [Spanish
National Organisation of the Blind] (ONCE); Plena Inclusión; and Servimedia.
Results
Typologies, resources and scope of the posts
The 18 disability organisations that made up the final sample posted a total of 122
messages on social media on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (Figure
1), excluding those that referred to news unrelated to disability: 43 on Facebook, 50 on
Twitter, 25 on Instagram, and 4 videos on YouTube.
Figure 1. Total number of posts per social network
Source: Prepared by the authors
Organisations specialising in people with disabilities hardly make any reference to the
specific purpose of their activity (Figure 2), beyond generalities with regard to providing
care service or information about people with disabilities. Twitter is the site where the
organisations make the most references to their objectives in their posts, accounting for
30% of the posts published, followed by YouTube (25%), Instagram (20%) and Facebook
(18.60%). In this way, the opportunity to spread information about the specific problems
affecting the particular group in which they specialise is lost, although one can observe
35%
41%
20%
3%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Total number of posts (n=122)
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that there is a tendency for associations with less communicative resources to join larger
and more representative organisations in order to show solidarity or support their
initiatives.
Figure 2. References made regarding the mission of the organisations in their posts
Source: Prepared by the authors
With regard to the audio-visual resources used by the organisations in their posts (Figure
3), they fail to take advantage of the possibilities offered by these resources to facilitate
access for people with disabilities, despite the specialised nature of these organisations.
Thus, the use of accessible video with subtitles is low, even with sign language dubbing
in the case of ONCE, ONCE Foundation, and Ilunion, and is only present in 16% of the
posts on Twitter, 12% on Instagram, 11.63% on Facebook, and 50% on YouTube, the
latter figure being influenced by the fact that the two videos are published by the largest
organisation in the sector, which is the ONCE Foundation.
The other half of the videos on YouTube (even though there are only two) are not
subtitled, which could entail accessibility problems for users with certain types of
disabilities. The presence of these videos is reduced to 4.65% on Facebook and 2% on
Twitter, with no cases identified on Instagram. The use of the organisation’s logo, or an
anniversary, as the only image provided occurs on Facebook (4.65% of the posts) and
Twitter (4%), with text appearing as the only resource mainly on Twitter (14% of posts)
and to a lesser extent on Facebook (4.65%). In any case, images are the visual resource
most heavily used on the three main social networks, with a higher incidence on
Instagram (88%) than on Facebook (72.09%) and Twitter (64%), despite the fact that
no use is made of either tags or alternative text with descriptions that facilitate
accessibility for all people with disabilities.
In the discourse on social networks of organisations specialising in people with
disabilities, which is developed in the following section, there are frequent references to
18,60%
30,00%
20,00%
25,00%
81,40%
70,00%
80,00%
75,00%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00%
70,00%
80,00%
90,00%
100,00%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
References made regarding the mission of the organisations in their posts
Yes No
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the need for a digital transition in which technological innovation would foster inclusion
and accessibility to information and communication. However, the use of technology is
minimal, both in the resources used and in the discourse that emanates from the posts
on social networks of these associations and foundations: QR codes, traditional audio-
visual content (TV commercials, animated videos), Zoom video conferences, infographics
with data, a live broadcast on Instagram on one occasion, an award-winning accessible
app, and the setting up of a laboratory by people with intellectual disabilities.
Figure 3. Audio-visual resources used in the posts
Source: Prepared by the authors
In relation to audio-visual resources, an analysis as to whether the information published
is expanded through links has also been conducted (Figure 4). This question is relevant
given the lack of accessible technological and audio-visual resources detected. However,
in three of the four social networks analysed, the percentages of the posts that have a
link are between 50% (YouTube) and 58% (Twitter), with an exceptionally high presence
only on Instagram, where 84% of the posts include a link that usually leads to the text
of the websites where associations and foundations have greater chances of providing
accessible formats for the information produced.
72,09%
64,00%
88,00%
11,63%
16,00%
12,00%
50,00%
4,65%
2,00%
50,00%
4,65%
4,00%
6,98%
14,00%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00%
70,00%
80,00%
90,00%
100,00%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Auvio-visual resources used in the posts
Images Subtitled videos Videos without subtitles Logo Text only
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Figure 4. Links used in the posts
Source: Prepared by the authors
Disability organisations are also missing the opportunity to extend the reach of their
posts by not using specific hashtags (#) (Figure 5) for the International Day of Persons
with Disabilities, for the organisation promoting the publication, or both, which would be
the most effective. In fact, the majority of the posts on all the social networks do not use
any of these hashtags, especially on YouTube (absence in 75% of all posts) and
Instagram (72%), in contrast to Facebook (55.81%) and Twitter (44%).
The hashtag for International Day is the most heavily used on all the social networks,
although there is clearly no consensus on the use of a representative hashtag, as several
names have appeared, sometimes according to the date, and at other times according
to the name of the entire commemorative day, or a short version of it, which makes it
even more difficult to achieve the desired reach of the posts. On Facebook, the hashtag
of International Day and the of the posting organisations is present in 18.60% of the
posts, whereas 6.98% use both hashtags. Twitter, however, is the social network where
both the hashtag of International Day (36%) and the of the organisation itself (8%) are
most used. On Instagram, the hashtag of International Day appears in 16% of the posts,
yet never appears in combination with the of the organisation, and on YouTube, the
hashtag of International Day appears in 25% of the posts, yet it never appears together
with the of the organisation. On both Twitter and Instagram, the hashtag representing
the organisation is present in 12% of the posts, while it is not used in any of the posts
analysed on YouTube.
53,49%
58,00%
84,00%
50,00%
46,51%
42,00%
16,00%
50,00%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00%
70,00%
80,00%
90,00%
100,00%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Links used in the posts
Link No link
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Figure 5. Hashtags used in the posts
Source: Prepared by the authors
Facebook is the social network on which a higher number of organisations are present
(Figure 6), and is similar for Twitter (18 vs. 14, respectively), precisely because they are
the two most widely-used social networks among the older public, and consequently
easier to manage for organisations that often have a shortage of specialised staff. The
most active organisations on Facebook are ASPAU (11.63% of posts), CERMI (11.63%),
COCEMFE (11.63%), Servimedia (9.30%) and FIAPAS (6.8%). The most active on
Twitter are CERMI (16%), COCEMFE (10%) and Plena Inclusión (10%), while on
Instagram and YouTube there is a greater concentration of larger organisations with more
resources.
18,60%
36,00%
16,00%
25,00%
18,60%
12,00%
12,00%
6,98%
8,00%
55,81%
44,00%
72,00%
75,00%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00%
70,00%
80,00%
90,00%
100,00%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Hashtags (#) used in the posts
# Intl. Dis. Day # Organisation # Intl. Day and the organisation None
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Figure 6. Total posts on each social network by organisation
Source: Prepared by the authors
However, the reach and interaction achieved by these organisations is uneven (Table 1).
Although ASPAU, CERMI, COCEMFE and Servimedia, respectively, have been the most
active in posting on Facebook, COCEMFE has the lowest percentage of interactions
(0.03%) (Table 1), followed by APASCIDE (0.11%), ASPAU (0.14%), CERMI (0.26%),
Down España (0.39%), and COCEMFE (0.49%). Consequently, despite having a high
number of followers (ASPAU with 3.5 million and COCEMFE with 19,153), the number of
reactions, comments or shares they achieve in relation to the number of people who see
their posts is very low. The entities that get the most interaction are APSA (1.66%),
Ilunion (1.56%) and CNSE (1.21%), despite being among those that posted the least.
2,33%
2,00%
4,65%
48,00%
4,65%
2,00%
4,65%
8,00%
4,00%
2,33%
11,63%
2,33%
6,00%
8,00%
11,63%
6,00%
4,65%
10,00%
11,63%
16,00%
25,00%
4,65%
6,00%
4,00%
4,65%
8,00%
8,00%
6,98%
8,00%
4,65%
4,00% 4,00%
50,00%
2,33%
6,00%
4,00%
2,33%
8,00%
4,00%
4,65%
10,00%
25,00%
9,30%
16,00%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00%
70,00%
80,00%
90,00%
100,00%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Total posts on social networks by organisation
AEDIS APSA ASEM ASPACE ASPASCIDE ASPAU
Autismo España CERMI CNSE COCEMFE Down España FEDACE
FIAPAS Fundación ONCE Ilunion ONCE Plena Inclusión Servimedia
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Table 1. Interaction achieved on Facebook
Source: Prepared by the authors
The interaction data are nearly irrelevant in the case of Twitter, where FIAPAS reaches
the highest level of interaction at 0.64%, with only four other entities obtaining an
interaction of 0.10%: COCEMFE (0.25%), ASEM (0.19%), CNSE (0.17%) and AEDIS
(0.14%). Instagram is the site where the percentage of interactions is highest, with
standouts including Ilunion (5.63%), ONCE (3.74%), APSA (2.84%) and Down España
(2.34%). On YouTube, the fact that only 3 organisations published 4 videos limits the
analysis, but the number of views among the total number of subscribers to the
Fundación ONCE channel is 8.75%, the Plena Inclusión channel attained 3.70%, and the
COCEMFE channel had 1.92%.
Topics of the discourse posted by the specialised organisations
When structuring the discourse by topic in the posts on social networks on the
International Day of Persons with Disabilities (Figure 7), the pattern on Facebook and
Twitter is very similar, with a majority of posts combining commemoration and
vindication (32.56% on Facebook and 30% on Twitter). In addition, one must add the
use of the topic of commemoration of International Day (6.98% on Facebook and 10%
on Twitter), as well as the demand for specific solutions or rights for persons with
disabilities (6.98% on Facebook and 14% on Twitter). There is also a more positive topic
combination that joins commemoration and acknowledgement (6.98% on Facebook and
Organisation
Followers
No. of
posts
Reactions,
comments, and
shares
Commitment
(%)
Interactions
(%)
AEDIS
575
1
3
0.52%
0.52%
APASCIDE
922
1
1
0.11%
0.11%
APSA
7,787
2
259
3.33%
1.66%
ASEM
5,746
2
90
1.57%
0.78%
ASPACE
15,365
2
218
1.42%
0.71%
ASPAU
3.5 million
5
24,220
0.70%
0.14%
Autismo España
37,620
1
203
0.54%
0.54%
CERMI
7,774
5
102
1.31%
0.26%
CNSE
24,667
2
595
2.41%
1.21%
COCEMFE
19,153
5
467
2.44%
0.49%
Down España
52,457
2
404
0.77%
0.39%
FEDACE
8,893
2
97
1.09%
0.55%
FIAPAS
6,314
3
100
1.58%
0.53%
Fundación ONCE
32,479
2
301
0.93%
0.46%
Ilunion
16,436
1
257
1.56%
1.56%
ONCE
44,080
1
259
0.59%
0.59%
Plena Inclusión
57,770
2
568
0.98%
0.49%
Servimedia
4,696
8
11
0.23%
0.03%
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4% on Twitter), either for users, workers, volunteers, or society itself for its support and
effort. Also noteworthy is the publication of news related to people with disabilities, the
holding of conferences, meetings, round tables, etc. (18.60% on Facebook and 24% on
Twitter), as well as the announcement of awards received by associations and
foundations or granted by them (9.30% on Facebook and 6% on Twitter).
On Instagram, however, 48% of the posts are oriented toward fundraising, even though
there is some distortion due to the fact that APSA accounts for 48% of the total number
of posts on Instagram, all of which are related to the sale of a solidarity calendar. This
social network differs from the others in showing a higher number of commemoration
and acknowledgement posts (16%), with a substantial reduction in commemoration and
vindication (12%) and most of all in vindication (4%), thus revealing the opportunities
for topic specialisation that these organisations can adopt depending on the profile and
characteristics of each social network.
In the case of YouTube, the four posts are equally distributed (25% each) among the
following topics: commemoration; commemoration and vindication;
news/conferences/meetings; and awards.
Figure 7. Post topics by social network
Source: Prepared by the authors
4,65%
48,00%
6,98%
14,00%
4,00%
6,98%
10,00%
25,00%
32,56%
30,00%
12,00%
25,00%
2,33%
6,98%
4,00%
16,00%
11,63%
12,00%
4,00%
18,60%
24,00%
8,00%
25,00%
9,30%
6,00%
8,00%
25,00%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00%
70,00%
80,00%
90,00%
100,00%
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Post topics
Fundraising Vindication
Commemoration Commemoration and vindication
Commemoration and fundraising Commemoration and acknowledgement
Conmemoration & data/awards/conferences, etc. News/conferences/meetings, etc.
Awards
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The rights of people with disabilities in social discourse
The rights of people with disabilities that specifically appear in the analysis of the
discourse presented in the social network posts of the organisations specialising in this
issue (Figure 8) are similar on all social networks, despite the greater intensity with which
they appear depending on the peculiarities of each social network. The results of this
section are not presented in percentages, because sometimes more than one right
appears in each publication. Consequently, with regard to the rights included in the
general principles of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities, held in 2006, reference is made to the number of times each of these rights
is mentioned, which are structured as follows:
a) Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s
own choices, and independence of persons;
b) Non-discrimination;
c) Full and effective participation and inclusion in society;
d) Respect for differences, and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human
diversity and humanity;
e) Equalilty of opportunity;
f) Accessibility;
g) Equality between men and women;
h) Respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right
of children with disabilities to preserve their identities. (United Nations, 2006: 5)
Firstly, the right to participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in society stands
out, with the highest number of mentions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, although
this right does not appear on YouTube. Of particular note in this section is the declaration
by CERMI, which has been endorsed and supported by many other organisations in their
posts and advocates the participation of people with disabilities in the social and economic
reconstruction in the post-pandemic scenario, so as not to increase the gap that
continues to exist with regard to the full inclusion of people with disabilities. Such
participation and inclusion is also reflected in specific messages oriented toward
commemoration of International Day, such as the slogan, “A day for all”. The use of
inclusive language (and specifically inclusive behaviour) is another expression of this
right in the posts, as well as the necessary e-inclusion that must be adopted more
decisively in education. These rights are even presented in a way that is interrelated
when it is claimed that inclusive language should effectively promote the full participation
of people with disabilities in today's society, and that doing so requires greater
technological innovation to offer support for different types of disabilities, without ever
forgetting the universal nature that inclusion must entail.
Accessibility is the second most frequently mentioned right in the discourse that has
emerged from the posts on the four social networks analysed, especially on Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube. Accessibility is presented by the organisations as a broad concept
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in which the removal of barriers stands out, sometimes referring to a physical issue, but
on most occasions referring to the term in a more general way. The current nature of the
health crisis can also be seen in the elimination of the barrier of masks for communication
with people with hearing disabilities, or other types of barriers that have emerged in
people with cognitive disabilities due to the restrictions imposed, which are issues related
to other rights as well.
Individual autonomy also has a strong presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,
from the perspective of both health and well-being, showing a clear reaffirmation of the
dignity and dignified living conditions of people with disabilities and their families, and
demanding quality care for them with real support that makes the former possible. With
regard to individual autonomy, during the commemoration of International Day many
organisations celebrated the news of the Spanish Parliament's decision to eliminate
forced sterilisation of people with disabilities who were declared to be incapacitated by
court order, which was a decision that these entities had been demanding for decades.
Substantially fewer mentions were made of both the right to non-discrimination and the
right to equal opportunity. Regarding the right to non-discrimination for people with
disabilities, the organisations focus on using constructive dialogue to fight against hate
speech on social networks. On the other hand, equal opportunity is focused on
employment.
With only three mentions, respect for differences and the acceptance of people with
disabilities as part of human diversity and the human condition is related to the need for
support and the preservation of dignity. With two mentions, the right to gender equality
is presented from the perspective of gender-based violence with an emphasis on women
with cerebral palsy. The only mention made of developing aptitudes and identity refers
to the fact that a disability is not something that is suffered nor possessed.
Figure 8. Explicitly mentioned rights of people with disabilities by social network
Source: Prepared by the authors
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Individual autonomy
Non-discrimination
Participation and inclusion
Difference and diversity
Equal opportunities
Accessibility
Gender equality
Empowerment and identity
development
Explicitly-mentioned rights of people with disabilities in the posts (n=122)
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
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The ten posts with the highest number of “Likes” (Table 2) are on Facebook (with the
remarkable fact that ASPAU has 3.5 million followers), and Instagram. This order has
been chosen considering the low level of interaction analysed. These ten posts stand out
for their variety, and they are represented by six different organisations, with a majority
presence related to the commemoration of International Day of Persons with Disabilities,
the demand for participation and inclusion, accessibility, and autonomy.
Table 2. Posts with the most Likes among all the social networks
Social
Network
Organisation
Post
Likes
Facebook
ASPAU
3rd DECEMBER, INTERNATIONAL DAY OF DISABILITY <3.
Disability Day, because there is still a lot to do.
quiéretemucho.com
4,293
Facebook
ASPAU
The only truly dangerous disability is not having a heart. 3rd
December. International Day of Persons with Disabilities
3,396
Facebook
ASPAU
To include means not only to let someone in, but to
WELCOME them. ASPAU Autism Project Association
2,443
Facebook
ASPAU
3rd DECEMBER, INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PERSONS WITH
DISABILITIES. That is what normality is all about. We all
want to be on the inside, and not excluded. Even if it means
hurting ourselves and causing harm. –Nacho Calderón
Almendros–
871
Instagram
ONCE
ONCE and Telefónica, united by innovation for
inclusion.󰨝 🦯Today, on the #DíaDeLaDiscapacidad (Day of
Disability), Paco, who is one of the sales vendors in our
network of more than 19,000 guardians of #hope, tells us
how the technology of his POS terminal helps him and
others every day in their work. Full story on #PeopleFirst
🔗https://blogthinkbig.com/peoplefirst/terminal-accesible-
once-telefonica #tecnologíaaccesible #accesibilidad
#innovación #discapacidad
406
Instagram
Down
España
From DOWN ESPAÑA (Down’s Syndrome Spain), we want to
take advantage of the opportunity on this International Day
of Persons with Disabilities to advocate, together with
@cermi_estatal, the universal acceptance of inclusion by
providing support that is genuine, adequate, and
individualised in all areas of life for people with disabilities,
as well as the creation of an authentic social and health care
space to act as a welfare provider and support network to
guarantee assistance for decent living conditions for people
with complex needs.
359
Instagram
Autismo
España
People with #discapacidad (disabilities) are among the
hardest hit by the #COVID19 pandemic. On
#DiaInternacionalDiscapacidad (International Disability Day)
we join the manifesto of @cermi_estatal and demand to be
part of the economic and social reconstruction. +Info with
#pictos #TEA #autism in 👉 Current events-
www.autismo.org.es
299
Instagram
Ilunion
‼ Today we commemorate the International Day of Persons
with Disabilities (#Discapacidad) with the slogan 'A Day for
All'. A day for everyone to show their appreciation, in this
highly complicated year, for all the efforts and commitment
of more than 15,000 people with disabilities who are part of
#ILUNION
262
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Instagram
Autismo
España
📣📣 Parliament permanently outlaws forced or non-
consensual sterilisation of people judged to be incapacitated
by court decree. We celebrate this historic milestone that will
especially benefit girls and women with #disabilities #TEA
#autism We leave you +Info in Current events -
www.autismo.org.es
240
Facebook
CNSE
The CNSE (State Confederation of Deaf People) and its
associated network publicly announce this Declaration for
the accessibility of deaf people. #SomosRedCNSE
233
Source: Prepared by the authors
Discussion and conclusions
Although the activity of the 18 disability organisations analysed was moderate on their
social networks on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, with an average of 6.78
posts each on the four social networks, most of it was concentrated on Twitter (41% of
the total number of posts) and Facebook (35%). These results seem consistent with the
increased effort in social network management that requires visually appealing
photography, in the case of Instagram, and quality video recording and editing, in the
case of YouTube. Previous research on digital communication of non-profit organisations
has already highlighted the minimal professional structure they have in this area, and
the result is heavier use of Facebook and Twitter as the two networks are most familiar
to older people, who are usually the ones in charge of multiple tasks within these
organisations, even regarding charity work (de-Cos-Carrera and Mañas-Viniegra, 2018).
Only three organisations have more than 50,000 followers on Facebook, and only three
have more than 1% of the interactions achieved by the total number of their posts on
International Day, which clearly shows the effectiveness of posting less but with higher
quality content that is more interesting for the audience. Previous studies carried out
with this same methodology in other areas such as the digital press, sponsoring brands
and museums have revealed the difficulty in achieving numbers of interactions higher
than 1% on Facebook and Twitter, yet the numbers are higher on Instagram. (Mañas-
Viniegra & López-Cepeda, 2018; Mañas-Viniegra, Sierra-Sánchez and López-Cepeda,
2019; López-Cepeda and Mañas-Viniegra, 2020).
This research has revealed areas of potential improvement for increasing this low
percentage of interaction, such as the following: publishing specific messages related to
the disability sector in which the organisation specialises; using topic-related hashtags
about an organisation’s activity that specifically identify the organisation (such hashtags
are currently non-existent with highly dispersed terms); using audio-visual resources to
address accessibility, either with images or video, along with subtitles, which are often
not included; and finally, greater use should be made of audio-visual technology. This
shortcoming in terms of accessibility can partially be overcome by expanding the
information published on a website that is outside the social network, yet more
accessible, through the use of links. This approach is particularly used on Instagram, with
a presence in 84% of the posts. Similarly, the posts of organisations with fewer resources
are diluted by relying on material generated and published by other organisations, and
consequently they hardly generate any content of their own.
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Commemoration and vindication took advantage of the social network discourse on the
International Day of Persons with Disabilities, prioritising everything related to the human
and fundamental rights of this group, with emphasis on the participation and inclusion of
people with disabilities in society, accessibility, individual autonomy, and well-being. One
can observe the way in which Twitter's own identity as a social network, which is more
inclined toward protest and exalted discourse, also influences the more vindicatory-
oriented activity of these organisations, but always with an institutional tone. On
Instagram, the activity has focused on fundraising through the sale of solidarity calendars
by one of the organisations, although this approach has also been used by the rest of the
organisations to show their appreciation for the volunteers, users, and families for their
support.
The limitations of this study stem from the scarcity of organisations specialising in people
with disabilities that are also active on social networks, as well as the limitations in terms
of scope and percentage of the interaction of their posts. Another limitation is the lack of
data that would allow for a comparative study to be carried out, either with other years
or with the activity on social networks during the rest of the year. Similarly, it would be
useful to determine whether or not the Spanish case is typical of the situation in other
European countries. On the other hand, it seems that the anonymity on both the Internet
and social networks that provides psychological benefits to people with disabilities
(Tsatsou, 2020) is drastically declining due to the influence on personal identity exerted
by visual social networks with preferences for beauty and fashion (Mañas-Viniegra,
Núñez-Gómez and Tur-Viñes, 2020), an issue that has already emerged as a future line
of specific research on Instagram through the use of neurocommunication techniques.
There is also a need for a cross-cultural study that would help to compare differences,
depending on whether society is more inclusive or more individualistic (Alsaleh et al.,
2019), and would also aid in understanding the use of digital skills by people with
disabilities in promoting accessibility, and their own employability as well.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
112
DONALD TRUMP'S POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ON FACEBOOK - AN ANALYSIS
OF THE PRE-ELECTION PERIOD (2020)
BRUNO FERREIRA COSTA
bdfc@ubi.pt
Holder of a PhD in Political Science, University of Lisbon. Researcher at the Praxis – Centre of
Philosophy, Politics and Culture (Praxis-UBI). Assistant Professor of the University of Beira
Interior, Department of Communication, Philosophy and Politics (Portugal).
Abstract
The media coverage of electoral campaigns has been reinforced by the massive use of social
networks. The impact and dynamics associated with these contents are a unique object of
study in the analysis of the political message transmitted by the candidates and in the study
of its effectiveness. The digitization of politics and the transformation of traditional electoral
campaigns implies the need to reinforce studies on the impact of social media during an
election campaign. Using content analysis, in a qualitative and quantitative study, this article
aims to address the presence of Donald Trump on Facebook in the last month of the 2020
presidential election campaign. Considering the proliferation of online information, it is
important to study the content expressed by the Republican candidate and its impact on his
followers. According to the purposes of the research, the expected results will allow us to
understand the discursive dynamics and the communication adopted by Donald Trump in this
social media, as well as to gauge the reactions to each publication, in a path that mixes the
contributions of electoral and political communication studies.
Keywords
Political communication, Donald Trump; Facebook; US presidential elections; social media.
How to cite this article
Costa, Bruno Ferreira. Donald Trump's political communication on facebook - an analysis of
the pre-election period (2020). Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks,
July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-
7251.DT21.8
Article received on January 4, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 21, 2021
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Donald Trump’s political communication on Facebook – analysis of the pre-election period (2020)
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DONALD TRUMP'S POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ON FACEBOOK -
AN ANALYSIS OF THE PRE-ELECTION PERIOD (2020)
1
BRUNO FERREIRA COSTA
Introduction
The approach to the presidential elections in the United States of America is one
of the determining paths to understand the international political system and
existing political communication forms. The emphasis given by the international
media to this electoral process, as well as the impact of US foreign policy on the
global order, constitute core aspects to understand the various political
phenomena, as well as governance models at a supranational scale.
Likewise, communication strategies are a relevant source of analysis of existing
trends in terms of the preparation and handling of electoral campaigns on a global
comparative scale.
The study of leaderships has been based on a strengthening of the relationship
between the political agenda, the media agenda and the way political actors seek
to convey their message to the electorate. In this context, there is a significant
change in the means and in the way of communicating, corresponding to a
paradigm shift regarding traditional electoral campaigns.
The emergence of political leaders outside the traditional axis of the “party
leadership” and other media stages, such as the world of television, the world of
entertainment or business deals, requires reinforcing the scope of research in the
field of the type of intervention and the impact of these new leaders on the general
population. Similarly, the universalization of Internet access has led to greater
concern on the part of political parties and their candidates to ensure a more
effective presence on digital platforms, finding a new space to recover the
importance of the political message and the connection with the electorate
(Bimber and Davis, 2003). The alternative to traditional media allows political
actors to challenge the rigidity of the political and media system, in a process that
significantly changes the campaign strategy.
1
Article translated by Carolina Peralta.
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The growing interest in the analysis of digital electoral campaigns stems,
precisely, from the engagement they provide, as well as the possibility of ensuring
an inverse communication (bottom-up) from the electorate. This influences the
discourse and the proposals presented by political actors. In this sense, Gunn Enli
and Eli Skogerbø (2013) identify three central reasons for using social networks:
marketing, mobilization and direct contact with voters. The latter is more evident
in political systems centred on the image and action of the candidates, when there
is strong personalization of the campaign (Gunn Enli and Eli Skogerbø, 2013:
758). In this growing media space, social media provide the tools that candidates
need to assert themselves with the electorate, dispensing with or, at least,
relegating the role of traditional media to a secondary level. This new centrality
of digital communication and the mechanisms of continuous interaction between
political agents and the electorate represents a new functionality to ensure the
involvement of citizens in the political dispute (Carlisle and Patton, 2013). This
impact was evident in the election campaigns of Barack Obama (2008 and 2012),
generating mass involvement through simple and effective messages (Bode,
2012). Social media, more specifically Facebook and Twitter, “mark a new
environment and a new form of communication with citizens and organizations in
a multidirectional way, but with the commitment to interact, that is, to be a
proactive user in virtual communities” (Túñez and Sixto, 2011: 1).
The advent of the Trump presidency (2017-2021) marks a relevant period of
analysis of the use of social media, whether in terms of studying the content of
the message sent, or in terms of civic engagement and comparative studies
resorting to the social media used by other political leaders. One notices a greater
appeal to emotion on the part of the Republican candidate, as well as a more
intensive use of these communication tools for the affirmation of identity values
(Costa and Khudoliy, 2019).
This new communication model appears as an alternative to the traditional media,
in a direct call to emotion and contact with each user, allowing meaningful
interaction, either with the candidate, or with thousands of followers.
In fact, the victory of Donald Trump in the presidential elections of the US in 2016
was characterised by a significant use of social media, which became an
instrument of communication with the electorate and of support around the
candidate. This fact was amplified by the high number of Trump followers on the
various social platforms (Azari, 2016). In this sense, this paper aims to analyse
the way Trump used the Facebook platform during the election campaign period
in the 2020 elections.
This paper focuses on three core objectives: to understand the importance of the
impact of the digitization of information in electoral campaigns; to analyse how
Donald Trump used Facebook to convey his message; and to examine the impact
of these messages on his followers.
The speed of the transmission of information is a challenge in any scientific
analysis. We need to check the scope of the communication, the meaning of the
words/expressions used, and to understand the existing interaction dynamics, in
order to contribute to the study and understanding of the success or failure of an
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electoral campaign. In fact, are we faced with an increasing role of the media and
digital platforms for the electoral success or failure of a certain candidate or party?
Will we move towards an excess of personalization, in a process focused on the
candidate at the expense of the proposals presented? This paper aims to
contribute to the studies that link political communication, the use of social media
and the handling of electoral campaigns, in an alternative process to in-person
electoral campaigns.
Political communication and social media
There is growing debate about the impact and the typology of political
communication expressed in social media, with this new communication model
constituting an effective way of bringing together candidates and voters. The
opening of an “unlimited” stage for citizens to express their opinions represents a
direct mechanism for political participation, challenging traditional conceptions of
participation. In fact, we can understand political participation as “the set of acts
and attitudes that aim to influence, more or less directly and more or less legally,
the decisions of those in power in the political system” (Pasquino, 2005: 50).
However, involvement in social media implies a less conventional and less
controlled model of participation by political actors. The proliferation of digital
communication has eliminated intermediaries between political actors and
citizens, which has advantages and disadvantages.
The greater possibility for intervention and the direct participation of citizens in
the public debate may constitute valid alternatives for participation and constitute
a new form of “control” of the action of public authorities, with the possibility of
including social groups that were previously excluded in this debate. However, the
quality of the debate can be affected by a wealth of information, which is difficult
for all stakeholders to process. There is also the risk that political actors act in the
face of social/media pressure at the expense of action based on reason (Dader,
2001 and Sampietro and Ordaz, 2015).
In addressing the political communication aspect, we are aware of the vast field
of research in this field. Our approach reflects the concern to reconcile the scope
of political communication in the field of social media in a specific context, the US
presidential elections in 2020.
The personalization of the campaign, centred in a two-party context and involving
an immediate choice between two governance options, reinforces the need to
analyse the context of the electoral campaign and the message conveyed. The
option to address the political communication associated with Donald Trump
results from the impact of the Republican candidate on social media, as well as
the fact that he uses digital platforms as an alternative to traditional media, in a
path initiated in the first candidacy in 2016 (Azari, 2016). We bring together two
central concepts, “communication” and “politics”, bearing in mind that the
democratic debate implies a way of conveying the message, this being facilitated
and leveraged by the immediate access to information. The proliferation of social
media and universal access to the Internet increasingly questions the role of
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traditional media, but it offers an opportunity to deepen the relationship between
candidates and voters.
We do not advocate the view that this substitution automatically corresponds to
a reinforcement of communication or improvement of the democratic goals of a
given country. We are aware of the importance of traditional communication for
the functioning of democracy, and of the possibility of the proliferation of online
communication to generate the increase in fake news” (Pepp, Michaelson and
Sterken, 2019). This increase was evident during the electoral debates in the 2016
US presidential election (Farkas and Schou, 2018).
The weight of the political message must be measured according to its scope. Its
presence on social media provides a broad set of indicators of the reach of each
post. This analysis should be carried out in the context of the use of social media,
and the interpretation should not be automatically extrapolated to electoral
results.
In a comprehensive way, and using Mcnair's (1999) contribution, we can identify
three central elements of political communication: the media, political
organizations, where political representatives are included, and citizens. These
elements are in constant interaction and the system is conditioned by permanent
feedback, with the content of the message producing a volume of interactions
between the different actors in the communication process. However, the reach
and power of social media go beyond this triple analysis by allowing a more direct,
regular communication free from a set of constraints, namely the issue of the
“selective participation filter”.
However, some studies indicate that the use of communication via Facebook is
not so different from the behaviours that individuals have in offline
communication. The individual's action is not marked by the creation of a “virtual
character” distinct from political involvement in a face-to-face environment
(Miller, Bobkowski e Maliniak, 2015). The biggest difference lies in the number of
interactions recorded on social media, making the impact of each message less
visible or perceptible in a more global approach.
In a context in which there is exponential growth of social media and online
communication, there is a path that ensures the creation of differentiated content
and maintaining a level of permanent public discussion. In this domain, the
Facebook platform “has emerged as an important political portal in North America
and in a more global context” (Elmer, McKelvey and Devereaux, 2009: 416),
ensuring, since 2008, a set of partnerships with traditional media in electoral
periods.
Another path that must be followed in the analysis of this topic is the ability of
social media to shape and condition the view of public opinion. With a high level
of interaction, will it be possible to find patterns of communication and
understanding between users of social media? Or are we looking at platforms that
validate previous ideas that individuals have about certain parties or candidates?
We cannot fail to mention the importance of analysing the “play on emotions” and
the ability to achieve significant user involvement with the candidate through
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messages, images or videos, as part of a communication strategy based on the
appeal to the sentiment or the defence of moral and identity values. This “play on
emotions” is decisive for the construction of group identity, whether in the context
of defending the values and positioning of the candidate, or in attacking the
opponent's candidacy (Sampietro and Ordaz, 2015). This analysis of a discourse
that appeals to emotion or the adoption of a discourse based on rationality
produce different contents and impacts, the option of each candidate/political
actor being consistent with the campaign objectives.
The critical look at Donald Trump's actions on social media, specifically on
Facebook, results from the very organization and dynamics of the functioning of
international decision centres and the posture of the 45th President of the US.
Donald Trump's leadership promoted the affirmation of a populist, anti-
globalization and protectionist agenda, triggering a succession of significant
cultural events and confrontations (Inglehart e Norris, 2016 e Mayda e Peri,
2017).
This intervention dynamism was fuelled by Trump’s strong presence on social
media, namely on Facebook and Twitter, ensuring a considerable civic
engagement in these domains (Ott, 2017 and Ross and Caldwell, 2020). It is
important to highlight that this presence was more evident in periods of electoral
competition. Still, the use of digital platforms of the fact checking model and
verification of the veracity of the information can question the exposed contents,
reducing or mitigating the message’s impact.
The importance of observing the relationship of political communication within the
scope of social media is core in the analysis of current electoral campaigns. The
change in the traditional model of communication with the electorate and the
involvement of thousands of citizens in the public debate produce significant
changes in the theoretical models of analysis of campaigns and electoral results,
with the inclusion of a set of variables and indicators in this analysis.
Research design, methodology and data collection
This research focused on the analysis of the political communication of Donald Trump on
Facebook immediately before the US presidential elections in 2020 (held on 3 November
2020). The research design makes it possible to ask a central research question: what
was the communication model adopted by Trump in the period before the presidential
election? Likewise, we resort to two derived questions to deepen the analysis: what were
the characteristics and elements used in the candidate's publications as a whole? What
was the impact of the publications on the followers of Trump’s official page?
In the vast literature we identify two relevant paths: studies that focus on the influence
and impact of the media on electoral results and the functioning of democracy
(Ansolabehere, Behr and Ivengar, 1991; Graber 2004 and Lange and Ward, 2004) and
empirical studies focusing on the impact of social media and communication models
associated with everyday political life (Elmer, McKelvey and Devereaux, 2009; Farkas
and Schou, 2018; Thorson, Cotter, Medeiros and Pak, 2019; Ross and Caldwell, 2020;
Linden, Panagopoulos and Roozenbeek, 2020).
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We chose the second path as it allows to decode the communication codes associated
with Trump's strategy in an attempt to ensure his re-election, as well as to gauge the
impact of each publication on the network of followers. The option for Facebook is justified
by the number of followers that the candidate has (more than 35 million followers on 3
November 2020), as well as by the dimension of the platform, widely disseminated and
recognized in the context of digital platforms
2
.
The study uses content analysis of publications on Donald Trump's official Facebook page,
from 1 October 2020 to 3 November 2020. All publications from the month before the
elections, as well as the days in November prior to this election, were aggregated. It
should be noted that the electoral process is continuous, with a record amount of early
votes registered in these elections
3
.
This approach allows us to know what kind of topics were included and to analyse the
impact (reactions) to each post, enabling interpreting Trump's communication and
electoral strategy.
From a methodological point of view, the research focused on content analysis. It used
the quantitative and qualitative approach, with a category basis, and considered the
number of publications and their typology. The use of content analysis is in line with
studies on the analysis of messages published on social media and the approach to the
online political communication strategy.
In addition to content analysis, we used the semiotic communication model in the same
way, with the aim of analysing and understanding the meaning of the messages of the
Republican candidate in the period preceding the electoral act.
This approach is in line with the contributions of Berelson (1952), Bardin (1977) and
Krippendorf (2004), with a special focus on the descriptive analysis of the content
expressed in the media (Semetko, and Valkenburg, 2016 ). This strategy corresponds to
a classic approach to the use of this research technique, combined with its adaptation
through the specificity of the phenomena to be observed, associating a quantitative
aspect with a qualitative aspect with a category and inferential basis.
During the selection of the number of messages, we framed the study in an analysis
model composed of six categories and respective variables: William Benoit's political
discourse functional theory (acclaiming; attacking; defending); Aristotelian rhetoric;
(logic; customs; emotion); the action request (donation; vote; involvement); the topics
covered; the structure of the publication (video, image, text, hyperlink) and the impact
of the publication (number of reactions, shares and comments).
2
Facebook is the most used digital platform/social media in the world. In: https://datareportal.com/social-
media-users, accessed on 10 January 2021.
3
Over 100 million voters voted in advance, removing a significant impact from the face-to-face vote on 3
November 2020 In: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/politics/a-staggering-100-million-
americans-voted-early-suggesting-a-record-turnout.html, accessed on 12 January 2021.
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Table 1. Analysis Model
Categories
Variables
Benoit’s Functional Theory
Acclaiming
Atacking
Defending
Aristotelian Rhetoric
Logic
Customs
Emotion
Action Request
Donation
Vote
Support/Involvement
Topics Covered
Structure of Publication
Video
Image
Text
Hyperlink
Impact of Publication
Reactions
Shares
Comments
This analysis model allows us to take a global and comprehensive approach to
communication strategies, as well as Trump's options in using this social network. In a
schematic way, it should be noted that the functional analysis theory has been regularly
used to analyse electoral debates and the various contents of political communication
(Benoit et al., 2002). The objective is to structure the type of campaign and language
used according to the aspirations of each candidate.
In a second segment of analysis, we framed the publications according to Aristotle's
rhetorical art, structuring registered publications as “appealing” to logic, emotion,
customs or traditions (Rohden, 1997). In a third segment, we structured the publications
according to the action request, which may involve a request for donations, a call to vote
or a request for support/involvement in the campaign. The analysis also focuses on the
core campaign topics exposed in each of the publications in the period under study. The
fifth and sixth segments deal with the format of the publication (text, video, image or
use of hyperlinks) and the respective impact, considering the number of shares, the
comments generated and the number of reactions.
The data is organized based on this category framework. The central objective was to
address the communicational intentionality associated with each publication in this social
media. The use of content analysis and the semiotic model of communication allows to
group the collected information and structure the contents in processes of codification,
categorization and inference (Espírito Santo, 2008). The selected model starts from a set
of predefined variables, in order to frame the publications registered in that analysis.
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Corpus Analysis
This paper examined the period between 1 October 2020 and 3 November 2020. It
studied the publications in the official account of Donald Trump on Facebook in the period
immediately prior to the Presidential elections, also characterized by a high record of
early voting (by mail and in person).
A total of 215 publications made in 34 days (average of 6.3 publications per day) were
extracted and analysed using the NodeXLGraph software. The categorization process thus
ensures the conditions for the scientific validation of the time and thematic cut-off of this
study, in a process based on the objectivity of the information and the adequacy of the
methodology to the studied contents (Bardin, 1977).
1. Results
The analysis of the data collected took into account a set of a priori conditions: the
publications occur in the middle of the electoral campaign period, but simultaneously in
the process of voting, given the size of the early vote in the last North American elections.
The publications appear on President Donald Trump's official Facebook account
(https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump) and were collected the day after the
elections (4 November 2020). The fact that the United States' political system is strongly
marked by a dichotomous, two-party perspective, which increases the polarization of the
political debate, must be highlighted.
Functional theory of political discourse
The functional theory model is directly related to the communication strategy of each
candidate and to the potential associated with each communication platform, in this case
social media (Facebook). The model determines the classification of publications in three
dimensions: submission of proposals (legislative/thematic) or announcements of the
candidate's acclaim; attack speeches (to opponents, other actors involved in the electoral
debate or other institutions) or defence speeches (in the face of previously confirmed
attacks).
It should be noted that this analysis takes into account the number of publications (n =
215), but several publications combine acclaim, attack and defence content, as seen in
the other categories. The same publication may contain elements that allow framing it in
multiple variables. It should be noted that more than half of the contents corresponded
to acclaim messages from the candidate or presentation of political proposals, despite
being of a general scope, that is, of proposition in relation to certain topics or
demonstration of intentions in public policies.
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Chart 1. Theory of functional analysis of political discourse
This approach also reflects the fact that this acclamation was made with the systematic
use of the broadcast of Trump and Mike Pence rallies live on Facebook (79 publications,
that is, 37% of all publications). In turn, there is a considerable number (21%) of
publications that substantiate attacks, namely on the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden,
and on the media. The attacks are dispersed, involving Joe Biden's tax plan, measures
on the legalization of immigrants, the reinforcement of lockdown due to the health
pandemic or the attack on the media by disclosing certain electoral polls.
Aristotelian Rhetoric
In the political discourse analysis model presented on Facebook, the publications fit into
three types of discourse, according to the Aristotelian rhetoric model. There is an
interpretation of these contents in the light of the defence and promotion of logical
reasoning based on the evidence or data presented, a second model of communication
based on the valuing or presentation of North American customs or traditions and a third
model of communication based on emotion and the direct involvement of users with their
candidate.










 
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Chart 2. Language model according to Aristotelian rhetoric
In this regard, mention should be made of the primacy given to emotional speeches/
content, calling for a reinforcement or a deepening of the symbiosis between Trump
supporters and the Republican candidate. These contents reflect a message of “struggle”
on behalf of the candidate and on behalf of the country. There is also regular use of
positive adjectives by American citizens (ex: “proud”, “great”) and the dissemination of
Trump images surrounded by crowds of supporters, creating a population "support" for
the Republican Party campaign.
Action Request
Political communication is often based on a direct request for support or involvement
from users (voters) in the electoral campaign. When examining the publications during
this period, we checked if there were any requests for donations, traditional in North
American campaigns, any direct or indirect call to vote and calls for support and
involvement in campaign actions.
From the data analysis, despite the strong investment required to launch a presidential
campaign in the US, there is only one publication related to requests for or references to
donations, which may be related to the fact that the analysis focuses on the final part of
the electoral campaign.
42
25
65
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Logic Costumes/Traditions Emotion
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Chart 3. Action requests
The communication was based on calls for direct involvement in campaign actions (in
person or online) and direct references to voting, namely with the creation of an incentive
for users to send a message to a campaign number with the word “vote”. This allowed
the campaign team to create a wide network of contacts/database of potential voters.
Thus, the requested involvement focused on creating greater monitoring of online
initiatives (engagement on social networks) or requesting a direct call to vote.
Topics Covered
In this category, we chose to identify the topics covered in each publication, creating a
thematic “script” of Trump's communication structure. From the analysis carried out,
there is a significant diversity of contents, and it is not possible to unveil a coherent
thematic line of action during this period.
Table 2. Main topics covered
Topics
Economy
Media
Religion
Covid
Polls
Health
Industry
Energy
21
7
6
6
6
4
4
3
In the middle of a pandemic, in terms of communication priority was given to economic
issues, precisely the aspect where Trump sought to capitalize his action in the White
House, namely with emphasis given to economic indicators and the recovery period
experienced after the second half of 2020. These contents were strongly related to
publications associated with the industry and energy sector and job promotion in the
country.
1
90
121
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Donation Vote Support / Involvment
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Also worthy of note is the regular reference to the media and polls, in a strategy of
playing down and attack the media during the campaign, as well as the broadcast of
religious content (live prayers on Facebook), in a direct appeal to the catholic and
evangelical vote.
The references to Covid-19 were made in order to defend the testing capacity of the US
and to attack the possibility of promoting the closure of services or economic activity. It
was a topic with little impact on the communication dynamics on Facebook.
Publication Structure
Chart 4. Publication Structure
Almost all publications had at least two formats, the most recurrent being text
communication. Alongside this option, there was live broadcast of several campaign
events, including rallies by Donald Trump and Mike Pence, as well as the broadcast of
some programmes by Trump’s campaign team. The regular publication of videos (live or
recorded) allowed greater user engagement and the establishment of synchronous
comments, in a process of systematic politicization of the shared content. Less usual was
the use of hyperlinks, which corresponds to the objective of directly publishing
information without the need to “force” users to access other electronic addresses. This
option, of simultaneous use of video and image alongside the text, attests the
effectiveness of the image and the permanent interaction in the live content. The power
of the image was decisive for the effectiveness of the political message and for inviting
the reactions of users.
Publication Impact
With regard to the impact of publications, the number of reactions, shares and comments
that each publication triggered were analysed. It also enabled seeing the contents that
generated greater adherence on the part of users.
118
36
199
26
0
50
100
150
200
250
Video Image Text Hyperlink
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Chart 5. Impact (average of reactions, shares and comments)
The figures reflect a significant dynamic of Trump's official website, with a disparity in
the impact of each publication. Graph 5. shows the averages of the number of reactions,
shares and comments, but it is important to check the content that produced the most
impact, paving the way for greater understanding of the content with the greatest impact.
Regarding the sharing of publications, the most shared content was a cover of the “New
York Post” newspaper, with a quote from the American rapper 50 Cent, with the
statement “I don't want to end up 20 cent”, in a criticism of the tax plan defended by Joe
Biden. This publication was shared by 162,000 users. The second publication with the
highest number of shares (118,000) was the release of a video with images of Donald
Trump and Joe Biden rallies, with the first recording a considerable crowd and the second
having a small number of participants, due to the campaign strategy adopted in times of
pandemic. The third most shared publication (104,000) was a video of a set of Trump
supporters “escorting” a Joe Biden campaign bus in the State of Texas, with the video’s
description: “I love Texas”.
In terms of comments, the publications with the greatest impact were the presidential
debate between Trump and Biden, which was broadcast live on 23 October 2020, with a
total of more than 290,000 comments; the final campaign message, written on 3
November, had a total of 224,000 comments and reflected Trump's thanks to his
supporters (“To all our supporters: thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have
been there from the beginning, and I will never let you down. Your hopes are my hopes,
your dreams are my dreams, and your future is what I am fighting for every single day”)
and the debate between the two vice president candidates, Mike Pence and Kamala
Harris, on 18 October 2020 (118,000 comments).
In terms of the typology of reactions, we opted for a global approach, taking into account
that most of the reactions were positive (like “like” or “love”). The publication with the
highest number of reactions was precisely the final campaign acknowledgment text set
out above, with a total of 1.515,469 reactions (more than 98% of the reactions were
134179
10545
27441
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
160000
Reactions Number of shares Comments
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positive). The second publication with the greatest impact was Trump's statement after
recovering from Covid-19, on 6 October when he wrote on the platform a short text
stating that he felt great. This publication generated a total of 1.476,929 reactions (more
than 96.6% positive reactions). The other publications with the greatest impact
addressed the issue of education (approval of legislation to prevent indoctrination in
schools), with a total of 803,000 reactions and the transmission of the campaign motto
adopted in 2016 and replicated in 2020 “Make America Great Again”, with a total of
745,000 reactions.
Simple messages were more successful and there was greater dynamism of social media
with live content, promoting greater participation of followers of Trump’s official page.
Thus, the use of a direct communication model was confirmed, using the publication of
face-to-face events on Facebook and content to promote user involvement and
participation dynamics in campaign actions. The option lied in content linked to
appreciation and promotion of Trump, as well as the use of content promoting
sentimental/emotional links around the candidacy.
From a strategic point of view, there was regular use of messages to attack political
opponents and the media, using a combination of text and video publications. A
significant variety of topics were covered, with emphasis on economic issues. The official
page records a significant level of engagement, with thousands of comments, shares and
reactions. The content was simpler and more objective, along with the broadcast of
campaign debates, which provoked a higher level of reaction on the part of users.
Although Trump was defeated in the elections, this level of enthusiasm and presence on
social media may be associated with an improvement in the vote compared to 2016
(Trump got 10 million more votes in 2020 than in the first election), as well as a more
competitive performance compared to the forecast of electoral studies.
Conclusions
The research around the strategic communication options of political leaders directly
intertwines with the analysis of the electoral results and with the voters' perception of
the charisma and action of each political actor. Although the importance of analysing the
impact of physical presence, namely the role of candidates in electoral debates or at
rallies, continues to be confirmed, the proliferation of social media and their daily use by
voters indicates the need to examine their use for political purposes, both by political
actors (message senders) and users (message recipients).
This research enabled understanding Donald Trump's campaign strategy regarding the
use of Facebook, as well as analysing the engagement of its users, in a period strongly
marked by political and social instability in the US due to political polarization and strong
electoral mobilization.
The analysis of electoral campaigns implies a multidisciplinary view and a critical stance
at the multiple variables that influence voters' behaviour and their perception of
candidates and the central topics in the decision-making process regarding the vote. The
use of social media represents one of the paths of this research process, considering the
growing access to these platforms and the progressive replacement of institutional
communication with daily communication on social media.
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The advent of online communication adapted to political content opens the opportunity
to broaden electoral studies, as well as theories to explain voters' behaviour. In this
context, the reasons associated with the use of social media (marketing, mobilization
and direct contact) are part of the strategy and the path followed by the Republican
candidate.
By focusing the analysis on the publications made in the period immediately prior to the
election, we were able to unveil political communication in the most intense phase of the
campaign on Facebook, where Trump has the largest number of followers.
The data presented allow us to characterize Trump's strategy on Facebook. His presence
was marked by the publication of several daily messages and the use of a simple,
objective and focused discourse in an attempt to ensure the immediate adhesion of users
to his political message. Likewise, the analysis of this social media shows the impact and
importance of social media in the campaign strategy, ensuring the creation of a wave of
enthusiasm around the candidacy, in a period when the face-to-face events decreased
due to the pandemic.
The communication processes during the electoral campaign period focused on topics
that reflected the voters' concerns. However, this does not mean an immediate adhesion
of the candidate to a hierarchy of topics presented or defended by the electorate. The
discourse was centred on Trump’s political agenda and his objectives of attacking the
proposals presented by Joe Biden. This process determines the need to deepen the
research around the content expressed in each publication and in the associated
comments, allowing future research (causal relations) between communication and the
users' perception of the various topics addressed.
In a context of significant growth in the use and potential of online communication, it is
important to deepen the study of the means, techniques and strategies used to promote
political participation, opening up a range of opportunities for public discussion outside
the traditional channels of debate. The partisanship and polarization of social media are
one of the most relevant objects of study in the near future, in a rediscovery of forms of
communication and in an analysis of the dimension and reach of the digital platforms on
politics. With this study we seek to map future analyses on the relationship between the
media and politics, based on the theoretical articulation between communication and
political science.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic Dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July 2021
130
QATAR'S COMMUNICATION STRATEGY AND THE RESOLUTION OF THE
DIPLOMATIC CONFLICT IN THE GULF
ANA ISABEL GONZÁLEZ SANTAMARÍA
ana.gonzalez@esic.edu
PhD in Applied Economics. Postgraduate Course on Economic Intelligence and Security.
Economist specialised in Arab countries and their economic relations with the EU. Professor in
ESIC Business and Marketing School as well as in several masters and postgraduate courses.
Senior researcher in the research project group of CEMRES (Euro-Maghreb Center for Research
and Strategic Studies) since 2014. She was in charge of the Business Program of Casa Árabe and
worked as a Market Analyst at the Spanish Commercial Office in Amman (Jordan)
Abstract
On the 5th of June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain
announced the rupture of diplomatic relations and the closure of borders with Qatar in
response to its alleged support for terrorist activities destabilising the region. In order to
revert the situation, 13 demands were made, which Qatar refuses to meet.
Qatar was isolated within the Gulf Cooperation Council and its international image was
damaged, particularly after the Trump Administration backed the blockade. In these trying
circumstances, Qatar has managed to resist by developing a public diplomacy that integrates
the analogue and digital environments in which communications play a vital role. Qatar has
protested its innocence before regional and international public opinion, and it has denounced
the anti-Qatar campaign and fake news stories that flooded social media, particularly Twitter,
before and during the first months of the crisis.
It has developed a communication strategy showing its willingness to open dialogue, respect
for international bodies where it defended its cause, together with diplomatic activities
reinforcing its positions before very diverse actors such as the United States, international
bodies, Kuwait and Turkey. Qatar used this strategy to transform its online influence into
offline diplomatic influence until it succeeded in getting Kuwait to act as mediator, with the
support of the United States, in order to put an end to the blockade, which was the top goal
of its foreign policy.
Keywords
Communication; blockade; digital diplomacy; Qatar; public diplomacy.
How to cite this article
Santamaría, Ana Isabel González. Qatar's communication strategy and the resolution of the
diplomatic conflict in the Gulf. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks,
July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-
7251.DT21.9
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 18, 2021
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Ana Isabel González Santamaría
131
QATAR'S COMMUNICATION STRATEGY AND THE RESOLUTION OF
THE DIPLOMATIC CONFLICT IN THE GULF
1
ANA ISABEL GONZÁLEZ SANTAMARÍA
1. Introduction
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was created in 1981 and it is formed by: Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. It is a political
and economic alliance with the goal of fostering cooperation in all areas. The presidency
of the GCC rotates every year and it is headquartered in Riyadh. The highest decision-
making entity, the Supreme Council of Heads of State, meets annually.
The GCC constituted an example of cooperation for the Arab world until the 2017 crisis.
From an economic point of view, it is the Arab space with the highest degree of
integration, its highest achievement being the creation of a common market that came
into effect on the 1st of January 2008. This involved the free movement of people, goods
and capital. Despite some failed initiatives such as the creation of a single currency in
2010, the GCC has succeeded in connecting the electrical grids of the six countries and
started a project in 2009 to connect railway networks transporting both passengers and
goods. The diplomatic crisis changed the outline of this project created to connect Saudi
Arabia and Qatar, which was later expanded to the rest of the countries (Keynoush,
2020)
2
.
Cooperation in the area of Defence came into effect with the creation of the Peninsula
Shield Force in 1984, with headquarters in Saudi Arabia, and was expanded in 2004 with
the signature of a pact for sharing intelligence. The Shield Force has been deployed
numerous times, the most significant occasion taking place in 2011 when the Bahrain
government requested help in order to control the strong protests in its territory.
The diplomatic crisis undoubtedly marks a before and after for the GCC and puts into
question the entirety of the cooperation carried out throughout 36 years. It also casts
doubts on the possibility of making more progress in the area of political and economic
integration. In addition, it has affected the geopolitics of the Middle East and generated
new alliances and alignments, which have effects that are difficult to predict.
1
Article translated by Najual Traductores & Intérpretes.
2
https://insidearabia.com/gcc-railway-project-held-up-by-financial-problems-and-qatars-exclusion/.
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This article aims to offer a perspective on how Qatar has used public diplomacy (PD) in
the digital environment. The objective is to analyse how Qatar's PD has managed
communication and determine the basis on which its PD has created an official narrative
for defending its case before the international community, both in traditional media as
well as in social media, especially on Twitter. The ultimate goal was to end the blockade
without meeting the demands of the countries that imposed it. In order to achieve this
goal, Qatar needed to translate its online influence into offline influence.
1.1. Milestones of the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf
The announcement of the rupture of diplomatic relations took place on the 5
th
of June
2017. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain unilaterally declared the closure of land,
air and maritime borders with Qatar, as well as the interruption of trade in goods and
services. These actions were followed by the expulsion of all the Qatari residents that
were present in their territories and the immediate recall of all their citizens that were
residing in Qatar.
On the 8
th
of June, the quartet
3
published a joint declaration including a list of 59 people
and 12 foundations in Qatar that were linked to terrorism. On the 22
nd
of June, it
published a list of 13 demands for putting an end to the crisis, which included the closure
of the television chain Al Jazeera, the end of Iran's diplomatic missions in Qatar, as well
as the closure of the Turkish military base that was under construction in Qatar. If Qatar
accepted these demands, a period of ten years would begin in which the quartet would
audit in situ whether these conditions were met or not.
Qatar did not accede to these demands since it considered that they compromised its
sovereignty, and thus faced an unprecedented financial boycott aggravated by its
geographical location. Qatar is a peninsula with a single land border with Saudi Arabia,
and its main supply lines are the container ships moored on the ports of the UAE. In
addition, the closure of the neighbouring airspace of the GCC grounded a large part of
Qatar's air fleet. Qatar was forced to look for alternatives in order to secure supplies, air
routes and security. Moreover, it had to defend itself before the international community
against what it considered to be infringements on the rights of its citizens and companies,
and it had to protest its innocence at being accused of promoting terrorism in the region.
All these actions came at a great financial and reputational cost that cast doubts on,
among other things, the country's suitability to host international events such as the FIFA
World Cup in 2022.
For three years and seven months, Qatar managed to survive the blockade, forge new
alliances and restructure its economy by means of an active foreign policy in which
communications have played a vital role. The end of the diplomatic crisis was announced
on the 4
th
of January 2021 when Kuwait's Minister of Foreign Affairs officially announced
that Saudi Arabia was opening its air space and its borders with Qatar that same
afternoon. The following day, the fortieth summit of the GCC began on the Saudi city of
Al-Ula, where the reconciliation between the countries of the Gulf was confirmed.
3
The terminology used by Qatari media in English referred to the group of countries as “the quartet” or the
blockading countries. They were often mentioned as a group led by Saudi Arabia.
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1.2. Public diplomacy in the digital era
The term public diplomacy (PD) appeared in the United States in 1965, coined by Edmond
Gullion. Its definition has evolved alongside international relations, particularly since the
end of the Cold War. (Manheim,1994) defined PD as “the actions that the government
of a nation takes in order to influence the public opinion and the elites of another nation
with the aim of making the foreign policy of said government favourable to it”. More
recent definitions state that PD consists of “indirectly influencing the behaviour of a
foreign government by exerting influence on the attitudes of its citizens” (Noya, 2006:
6). It is important to point out that PD aims to influence not only foreign policy matters
but also any matter that may affect a country's national interests. In this regard, (Lee &
Hocking, 2010: 11), recognise that PD is concerned with promoting a state's strategic
objectives.
Since it wants to exert influence on a foreign public with certain goals in mind, PD can
be mistaken for propaganda. The difference is that PD is “a two-way street” that in
addition to exerting influence on a foreign public, it also establishes a sort of dialogue
with it (Melissen, 2011: 18). Similarly, (Hayden, 2012) states that in a digital
environment, audiences are active agents, so this diffuses the boundaries between PD
and traditional diplomatic activities, which include communication.
At this point it is necessary to mention the term digital diplomacy (DD), which relates to
the use of digital technology and social media for diplomatic ends. Currently there is not
a unified definition of DD nor a unified focus of research (Manor, 2017). Some authors
state that DD is just diplomacy that uses digital technology media and involves changes
in the exercise of diplomacy but no changes to its objectives. In this regard, (Hocking &
Melissen, 2015:9) declare that the digital revolution produces fundamental changes in
diplomatic functions, including negotiation, representation and communication. In the
digital era, DD must be capable of building a network of networks of followers and
influencers, as well as knowing how to link the effects of DD with tangible foreign policy
outcomes in order to convert online influence into offline diplomatic influence (Bjola,
2018).
In this context, the communication function of PD experiences a type of hybridisation
between the environments of new media and diplomatic channels. According to (Hocking
& Melissen, 2015: 11), this results in an adaptation between analogue and digital, so that
traditional media are adapting to new ways of conceptualising, sharing and viewing news.
According to (Rubio, 2015 :16), PD has expanded its scope to global public opinion, and
this transformation "has been accelerated by digital media (Twitter), the rise of
international television stations (CNN and Al Jazeera) and the advent of transparency in
our lives (Wikileaks)”. Nowadays, almost no one questions that PD practices on social
media influence the perception of a country by target audiences, although measuring
their impact is complex (Sevin & Ingenhoff, 2018). The conclusion applied to DD in the
United States that “network technologies give the power back to the nation-state and to
large institutions” (Ross, 2011) is more debatable, though interesting.
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2. Communication as a new battlefield in this diplomatic crisis
Like a product of its time, this conflict had one of its battlefields in cyberspace, where
cyberattacks, disinformation, the use of bots and campaigns in social media were carried
out in favour and against the countries involved. When reviewing the literature related
to communication management by official bodies during this crisis, it becomes apparent
that there are not many studies published, and that qualitative analyses of
communications in social media are predominant though with two different focus.
The first group studies the content of the messages of public bodies in social media as a
DD tool, while the second group focuses on analysing the hashtags of the most popular
tweets during the first months of the crisis. Among the first group, (Mitchell, 2019) does
an outstanding qualitative and quantitative analysis of the digital discourse in the six
countries of the GCC during the diplomatic crisis, which is centred around sensitive topics
such as the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the role of women, and the demarcation of borders.
This author concludes that “the politicisation of the online public sphere in the region
does not represent a fundamental change in the diplomacy of the region but rather a
new battleground for old regional rivalries.”
One of the most complete studies was carried out by (Al-Mansouri, Al-Mohannadi &
Feroun, 2021) that analysed the communications on Twitter by the ministers and the
ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of the four GCC countries involved in the crisis during
the period between the 5
th
of June and the 13
th
of September 2017. The study is limited
to messages in Arabic and on Twitter, since it considers it the only social media platform
used by the Gulf States for their PD activities addressed to the public in the region. These
authors note that the minister and the MFA of Qatar are the second most active in the
number of tweets published, and that the predominating subject is the visits and
meetings with their counterparts from other countries, followed by terrorism. The focus
on the latter is radically different from the rest of the countries involved in the conflict,
since it always highlights Qatar's commitment to fighting international terrorism. These
authors compare their conclusions with the analysis carried out by (Akdenizli, 2018)
based on the tweets in English published by the government bodies in the Gulf. According
to these authors, there are differences in the frequency, wording of the statements,
target audience and subjects discussed.
In addition to the above-mentioned analyses, (Jones, 2017) studies the use of bots and
considers it proven that 20% of the Twitter accounts posting anti-Qatar content were
bots. The same author expands the scope of his research (Jones, 2019) and highlights
the anti-Qatar propaganda using tweets with tags against the emir and his “regime”,
against Al Jazeera, and those linking Qatar with terrorist groups or with Iran. This author
casts doubt on the use of Twitter “as a tool to generate valid discussions about public
opinion, even though it is a very important tool for sharing news”. In a similar way,
(Leber & Abrahams, 2019), consider proven the manipulation of discourse on the internet
and the mass production of messages using bots with the goal of earning supporters.
The second group of analysis focuses more on the topics that support people to people
communications, among which (Allagui & Akdenizli, 2019) should be highlighted, which
studies the information war and the role played by media and new technologies as tools
to divide people and propagate the crisis. The authors conclude that “either voluntarily
or by force, social media users backed the positions of their governments”. This backing
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loses significance in light of the threats that the majority of the States levied against the
citizens that backed the propositions of the opposing countries.
Among this second group there is also an article published in the Singaporean newspaper
The Straits Times
4
about the content of the tags featured in messages that appeared
during the first days of the crisis on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. This article is useful
for reflecting on and remembering the reactions of the users supporting their countries
or making references to matters such as the celebration or potential cancellation of the
Football World Cup in Qatar. It is interesting to note that many expatriates originating
from numerous countries, and particularly Asian countries, also participated in the
discussions that took place on social media.
In spite of its limitations, peer-reviewed literature shows that the countries involved in
the crisis used social media as a PD instrument. However, it seems that the messages
published on social media aimed at the regional public had a purpose more related to
propaganda. In the case of Qatar, it involved showing national unity and support for its
leaders, refuting accusations and showing a prominent activity abroad as proof that the
country was not isolated.
As for the messages published in English on social media by official government bodies
or media, these reflect the official narrative, and they are an additional media channel
trying to influence international public opinion. In the case of Qatar, taking into
consideration the centralisation of official government communications and that most of
the media is owned by the state, it can be stated that communications on social media
reflect the official narrative and they are another tool of PD. As a result, faced with the
technical limitations involved in analysing the contents on social media of all of Qatar's
official government media and their international impact, the analysis of news published
in English on the websites of government media for the international community can
serve for the purposes of this analysis. This indirect way of studying both the content of
the narrative as well as the priority target audience makes it possible to understand the
core ideas on which the Qatari version of the crisis has revolved around, and get a
perspective about the organisation of the communications used to achieve the objectives
of its PD.
3. Analysis of Qatar's official government communications during the
crisis
All matters related to official government communications in Qatar are handled by a
government body called The Government Communications Office (GCO). This body
answers to the prime minister and it is the main source of official government news. As
a guide for this study, the timeline of the crisis that appears on the website of the GCO
has been followed, which reflects the most significant events for Qatar. Similarly, the
news published in English by official government media have been used, mainly Al
Jazeera, but also by the MFA and the QNA. In addition, evidence of the impact that some
of these news had on international media and institutions was sought.
4
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/qatar-crisis-spills-onto-social-media.
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This section is divided into three blocks. The first one details Qatar's version of what
transpired before the official announcement of the rupture of diplomatic relations, and it
is obviously a retrospective view of events. The second one focuses on presenting the
relevant facts to Qatar and that have an international impact when it comes to seeking
support. This section has a subsection dedicated to U.S. related news and another
subsection making reference to sharing news related to Kuwait and Turkey. The
conclusion of the analysis is detailed in a third section presenting how the end of the
diplomatic crisis was communicated.
3.1. Presenting the relevant facts before the crisis
The official timeline of the GCO presents three relevant facts that took place before the
crisis. The first one is the publication of an article in a U.S. media outlet, which is not
mentioned by name, on the 20
th
of April 2017. According to the GCO, it is the first in a
series of thirteen articles with unfounded accusations aimed at smearing the reputation
of Qatar in the U.S.
The second one is the summit in Riyadh between the U.S. and the countries of the Muslim
World League, in which Qatar commits to fight terrorism together with the countries of
the GCC. In addition, Al Jazeera
5
highlights in its chronicle of the summit the differences
between the respectful speech about Islam given by Trump at the summit and the
measures taken by his Administration “against several Muslim majority nations and his
previous comments about Islam”. Moreover, it highlights the signature during the
summit of the biggest arm sales contract in the history of the U.S., which was agreed
with Saudi Arabia.
The third relevant fact was the hacking of QNA's web and the social media accounts of
other governmental institutions on the 24th of May 2017
6
. One year later, Al Jazeera
7
reported that the attack was carried out by a “pirate cell” working from inside a Saudi
ministry. These attacks consisted of publishing false statements attributed to the emir or
the QNA on social media in order to start a smear campaign that would reach its highest
point during the diplomatic crisis of the 5th of June. It also highlights that before and
after the day of the rupture of diplomatic relations, Saudi Arabia and its allies created
187 Twitter accounts.
3.2. Narrative of the facts relevant to Qatar during the crisis and their
international impact
Once the crisis was declared, the measures of the blockade began to be enforced. Thus,
on the 19
th
of June 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE ordered their citizens
residing in Qatar to immediately return to their countries of origin and banned any Qatari
citizens from entering or remaining in their territories. That same day, Qatar denounced
5
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/21/riyadh-summit-discusses-ways-of-rooting-out-terrorism,
6
Days later, an article published in the U.S. press did not give credence to the statements attributed to the
emir of Qatar nor to a fake interview of the QNA declaring that, among other things, Iran was the great
stabilising power in the region: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2017/06/01/whats-going-on-with-qatar/
7
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/6/4/qatar-state-news-agencys-hacking-linked-to-riyadh.
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these unilateral measures before the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
of the UN
8
For the GCO, these measures represented a violation of fundamental rights
since they “divide families, interrupt studies or force businesses to close”
9
.
On the 8
th
of January 2018, Al Jazeera
10
shared the news that a report of the UN
concluded that the blockade was illegal. This report was based on the conclusions of a
representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN, who travelled to
Qatar in November 2017. The statement of Ali bin Smaikh al Marri, chairman of the
Committee for Human Rights of Qatar, is transcribed in the same news story, highlighting
that “the blockade not only seriously affects diplomatic relations and it is not only an
economic boycott, but its measures are also unilateral, abusive and arbitrary, and they
affect Qatari and expatriate citizens.”
This news story was widely shared in numerous international media and institutions
throughout 2018. The reaction of the U.S. media is detailed in point 3.2.1. In turn,
Amnesty International
11
condemned the damage caused to thousands of people in the
Gulf. Additionally, it rejected the coercion exerted on the citizens of the States imposing
the blockade, which included threats of prison sentences to anyone who expressed
sympathy for Qatar and to those who had not left the country. The Euro-Mediterranean
Human Rights Monitor also published a report denouncing the measures of the blockade
as “a flagrant violation of human rights” (Euro-Med Monitor, 2018).
Concurrently, Qatar began legal actions via government channels to denounce that the
blockade breach international agreements related to human rights or free commerce.
Each one of these complaints was echoed in mainstream and social media. Table 1 shows
the most significant requests before international bodies.
One of the most remarkable cases that was taken before the WTO was the pirating of
BeIN Sports, a company with the rights to broadcast Premier League matches in the
Middle East and North Africa. Al Jazeera
12
reported that the hack was carried out in an
operation called “beoutQ”. The WTO created a panel to investigate the complaint. Another
interesting case was Qatar Airways’ request of international arbitration against the four
states of the blockade on the 22
nd
of July 2020. It claimed $5 billion in damages for the
closure of airspaces and the cost overrun of having to trace longer routes.
Table 1. Qatar’s requests before international bodies
Action
Date
Resolution
Date
Qatar requests starting proceedings against Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt before the
ICAO for the blockade of airspace, which infringes
on article 84 of the International Convention of
Civil Aviation.
30/10/17
The ICAO accepts Qatar's
request.
29/06/18
8
The United Nations Human Rights Training and Documentation Centre for South-West Asia and the Arab
Region has been headquartered in Doha since 2009.
9
The public body Doha International Family Institute (DIFI,2018) published a about the consequences of the
blockade on Qatari families and on other families of the Gulf.
10
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/1/8/qatar-un-report-proof-saudi-led-blockade-illegal.
11
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/06/one-year-since-gulf-crisis-qatar-bahrain/.
12
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/12/18/wto-to-investigate-saudi-rights-breach-over-qatars-
bein
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Dispute with the UAE before the WTO due to the
measures restricting commerce and the rights of
intellectual property.
23/10/17
The Dispute Settlement
Body of the WTO accepts
Qatar's request and
creates a panel to study
the complaints.
The panel is created.
Qatar withdraws from the
dispute
22/11/17
28/05/19
19/01/21
Qatar requests provisional measures against the
UAE before the ICJ for violating the Convention
against all kinds of racial discrimination.
11/06/18
The ICJ orders provisional
measures.
The ICJ dismisses the case
23/07/18
04/02/21
Appeals presented by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the
UAE and Egypt before the International Court of
Justice against the decision of the ICAO.
04/07/18
The appeals are rejected
and Qatar's right to
continue its procedure
before the ICAO is
recognised.
14/07/20
Legal action taken against Saudi Arabia before the
WTO for blocking BeIN Sports' network and
pirating its contents.
10/18
The WTO accepts
investigating Qatar's
accusations.
18/12/18
Source: author's own research (WTO: World Trade Organization. ICAO: International Civil Aviation
Organization. ICJ:International Court of Justice).
3.2.1 Relevant news for Qatar related to the United States
Trump's initial show of support for the countries promoting the blockade seemed to affect
bilateral relations. In the days after the announcement of the diplomatic rupture, some
U.S. media reported on the humanitarian tragedy caused by the blockade and presented
the arguments put forth by Qatar's official government communications detailed on
section 3.2. An article in The Washington Post
13
described the panic felt by all the
residents in Qatar, not only Qatari nationals, at the possibility of running out of supplies,
and detailed specific cases of people affected. Los Angeles Times
14
also highlighted the
situation of the citizens of the four countries of the Gulf affected by these measures and
mentioned the reactions of the international bodies.
There are three facts in relation to the U.S. that are mentioned in the timeline of the
GCO. The first one is the signature of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the
11
th
of July to cooperate against international terrorism and its financing, which the MFA
reports in detail. Other news published in the two months following the announcing of
the blockade cast doubts on whether bilateral relations had been affected
15
.
The second milestone highlighted by the GCO was the inaugural United States-Qatar
Strategic Dialogue meeting, held on the 30
th
of January 2018. This was interpreted as a
new mechanism for strengthening bilateral relations. Some experts believe that this
meeting was the first message sent to the boycotting countries that their goal of isolating
Qatar had failed (Kabalan, 2018)
16
.
13
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/qatari-capital-brims-with-fear-uncertainty-and-
resilience-as-arab-crisis-intensifies/2017/06/10/bf1b2060-4d4b-11e7-987c-42ab5745db2e_story.html
14
https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-qatar-blockade-20170619-story.html.
15
On the 24th of July works began to expand the Al Udeid military base hosting 11,000 American troops, and
on the 2nd of August the Minister of Defence of Qatar visited the U.S.
16
http://arabcenterdc.org/policy_analyses/the-us-qatar-strategic-dialogue-messages-and-implications/.
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The third fact in the Qatari timeline took place in Washington when the emir of Qatar was
welcomed by Trump on the 10
th
of April 2018. It appeared that Trump's position was now
“more impartial and supportive of finding a solution to the crisis” in the Gulf (Kabalan,
2018). The subsequent meetings of the Strategic Dialogue on the 13
th
of January 2019
and the 18
th
of September 2020 strengthened bilateral relations and supported Qatar's
good reputation in the international sphere.
3.2.2 Narratives affecting third countries
This section makes reference to two countries that are key for Qatar's cause for very
different reasons, though there are no news stories that made reference to them in the
GCO’s timeline. Kuwait was mentioned especially in communications by government
bodies such as the MFA in matters related to the U.S. The news of the signature of the
MoU on the 11
th
of July 2017 also confirmed Qatar’s support for Kuwait's role as mediator.
From that moment on, each news story asserting Qatar's bilateral relations with the U.S.
included a reference to Kuwait's mediation in solving the crisis via diplomatic means. Al
Jazeera also recognised Kuwait's role as mediator
17
.
As for Turkey, in the first weeks of the blockade the government media highlighted its
military support and provision of supplies. One year after the crisis, Al Jazeera published
a long article detailing that bilateral relations had been strengthened
18
. Qatar is now the
second biggest investor in Turkey, has backed the Turkish currency when it fell against
the dollar, and it is planning to expand its investments. Turkish companies increased
their exports to Qatar and were given contracts for projects related to the FIFA World
Cup for over $11 billion. An outside observer can see that one of the “bothersome”
alliances for the blockading countries has strengthened its ties with Qatar across every
field. Government media also covered the official visits made by the emir and the Turkish
president in the last two years.
3.3. Presenting the reconciliation
The GCO featured a single piece of information about the summit of the GCC at Al-Ula
19
.
The content was quite neutral in tone and highlighted that the goals of the summit were
promoting good-neighbourliness, “emphasising the illegality of infringing on the
sovereignty of any of the member states”, in addition to not interfering in their internal
affairs. Al Jazeera did not publish too many news stories either about the end of the
blockade, and the matter was treated, indirectly, through the opinions of experts. An
example is (Aboueldahab, 2021)
20
, who highlighted that in order to move on, the Gulf
region must recognise the social and political damage caused because “the fissures in
the Gulf social fabric cannot be reverted nor forgotten so easily.” This expert suggested
putting into place a process of transitional justice
21
.
17
Particularly in the news story about the death of the emir of Kuwait.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/29/sheikh-sabah-the-gcc-has-lost-his-voice-of.
18
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/8/16/turkey-and-qatar-behind-the-strategic-alliance.
19
https://www.gco.gov.qa/en/top-news/41st-gcc-summit-al-ula/.
20
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/1/20/mending-the-gulf-rift-calls-for-reconciliation.
21
This process includes reparations, compensations, researching and unearthing the truth about what took
place, applying criminal liabilities among other measures.
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Therefore, reconciliation must go beyond merely restoring diplomatic relations and
opening the borders. Al Jazeera’s
22
web page published a podcast summarising the
consequences of the blockade for the population of the Gulf and the economic burden it
has entailed. It also highlighted how the blockade strengthened Qatar's cooperation with
Iran and Turkey. This piece of media does not omit a single offence, and neither does it
leave any sensitive topic aside.
4. Outcomes
The analysis of the previous section shows that the narrative constructed by Qatar to
explain the facts that took place before the diplomatic rupture is based on the idea that
it was “a plot orchestrated wilfully and with the clear intention of damage Qatar’s image”.
This plot involved all kinds of dishonest actions such as the hacking of government
websites and the spread of fake news promoting the idea that Qatar supports
international terrorism.
As for the narrative used during the crisis, it was based on two core ideas that try to
prove that Qatar was treated unfairly and that it was a victim of the quartet:
1.The blockade is a violation of the fundamental rights and the security of the population
residing in the four Gulf countries involved.
2.Qatar is a loyal ally of the U.S and has strengthened its cooperation with it in order to
maintain the stability in the region and fight against terrorism.
The first core idea is aimed at the international community and it has two ideas that
derive from it. The first one is that the blockade is illegal because it violates the
fundamental rights of the Qatari people and the citizens of the other three countries of
the GCC implicated in the conflict, as well as those of expatriates. Qatar defends before
the international community the rights of the people that were forced to leave their place
of residency. The defence of the expatriates with lower incomes received some coverage
in Asian media, especially at the beginning of the blockade, since it put at risk even their
food security. The second idea is related to the complaint before international bodies
about the breach of international agreements by the countries of the blockade, which
affect Qatari companies. The underlying idea is that Qatar respects international
agreements and takes the international institutions it belongs to seriously.
The second core idea aims to show that bilateral relations are still alive in spite of the
crisis. Qatar hopes to earn the sympathy of part of the U.S. public opinion and show the
different attitudes of their Administrations regarding the conflict. The dichotomy between
the U.S. Ministry of Defence and Trump's attitude until September 2018 is very
remarkable. From that date on, the U.S. supported the diplomatic solution and Kuwait's
mediation.
22
https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2021/1/13/why-the-blockade-against-qatar-is-ending-now.
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5. Conclusions
In light of the facts, it seems evident that the Qatari PD met its objective of putting an
end to the blockade without meeting the demands and achieved it through diplomatic
means.
Qatar has centralised the construction of its narratives. This has facilitated spreading the
message through official government channel, both in traditional and social media.
Qatar has created strong narratives that have convinced their target audiences. These
were international institutions and the U.S. public opinion.
It has earned credibility thanks to its arguments and a stance that was both firm yet
always open to dialogue, without making unwarranted retaliations. Using international
institutions to solve its problems in the framework of international legality has given
Qatar an image of transparency and legality.
This smart strategy has allowed Qatar to convince the reluctant Trump Administration
and show the world that the accusations that gave rise to the blockade were part of a
smear campaign. Qatar has been the champion of fair play while subtly showing, at the
same time, that it has found other alternatives for ensuring its security across every field.
After many of the arguments of its opponents have fallen apart, the end of the blockade
represents the beginning of a new stage in the relations of the GCC.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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INFORMATION VERIFICATION DURING COVID-19. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
IN SOUTHERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
RAÚL MAGALLÓN-ROSA
raul.magallon@uc3m.es
Raúl Magallón Rosa works as a professor of journalism in the Department of Communication of
Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain). He has a degree in Journalism and a Ph.D. with a
European component from Complutense University of Madrid. His research strand focuses on the
relationship between disinformation and fact-checking. He is the author of "Unfaking News. How
to fight disinformation" (also published in Portuguese) and "Disinformation and pandemic. The
new reality". (Unfaking News. Cómo combatir la desinformación" and "Desinformación y
pandemia. La nueva realidad").
JOSÉ MANUEL SÁNCHEZ-DUARTE
josemanuel.sanchez@urjc.es
He has a degree in Sociology from the University of Salamanca,
a Ph.D. in Communication from the Rey Juan Carlos University, and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences
(political specialty) from the Pontificia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. He is a Professor of
Political Communication at Rey Juan Carlos University (Spain) and Deputy Secretary General of
the Menéndez Pelayo International University.
Abstract
Disinformation poses a challenge for democracies, especially in exceptional periods such as
electoral processes but, above all, as a consequence of a global health crisis with no clear end
date. The objective of this research is to analyse the type of hoaxes identified during the
COVID-19 pandemic in southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece). To
this effect, 936 pieces of disinformation reported by the main verification organizations in
those countries were examined between February and August 2020: Observador and Polígrafo
(Portugal), Newtral, Maldita and EFE verifica (Spain) Facta, Open, Effecinque and Pagella
Politica (Italy) and Ellinika Hoaxes (Greece). As a final conclusion, the presence or absence of
a common pattern in the four countries is examined based on the topic of the hoaxes, their
distribution channels and how viral they spread abroad. Two axes of disinformation were
established: one health-preventive and the other in terms of political polarization.
Keywords
Disinformation, fact-checking, COVID-19, polarization, Europe.
How to cite this article
Magallón-Rosa, Raúl; Sánchez-Duarte, José Manuel. Information verification during COVID-
19. Comparative analysis in Southern European Countries. Thematic dossier International
Relations and Social Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit,
https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.10
Article received on December 30, 2020 and accepted for publication on March 19, 2021
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Raúl Magallón-Rosa, José Manuel Sánchez-Duarte
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INFORMATION VERIFICATION DURING COVID-19. COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS IN SOUTHERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
1
RAÚL MAGALLÓN-ROSA
JOSÉ MANUEL SÁNCHEZ-DUARTE
1. Introduction
2
The crisis arising from COVID-19 has been a challenge health wise, and also regarding
economic and social terms and management of (dis)information. The objective of this
work is to analyse the hoaxes identified during the first six months of the pandemic in
southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece). The selection of these
countries was due to the fact that they share the same relationship pattern between the
political and media systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Brüggemann et alt., 2014; Büchel
et al. 2016).
In this regard, authors such as Humprecht point out that these types of countries stand
out due to their comparatively high levels of social polarization, populist communication
and high use of social networks for news consumption. Similarly, countries in this group
tend to have lower levels of trust in the media (Humprecht et alt., 2019).
In Portugal, the first cases were registered on 2 March 2020. Two weeks later, the
government closed the border with Spain and decreed a state of emergency (between
17 and 18 March). In Spain, the first case was reported on 31 January. On 12 February,
the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was cancelled and a month later, on 12 March,
the Government announced the first measures to stop the pandemic.
On 14 March, the state of alarm was declared alongside the lockdown of the population.
In Greece, the first case was registered on 24 February, and the closure was decreed on
23 March. Italy was the first European country hit by COVID-19. The first cases were
registered on 30 January 2020. On 8 March, the quarantine was extended to cover the
1
Article translated by Carolina Peralta.
2
This work has been carried out thanks to a Research Grant signed with The Poynter Institute for Media
Studies (“Poynter”). By accessing the #Coronavirusfacts database of the International Factckecking
Network (IFCN), we have been able to carry out this comparative study.
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entire Lombardy region, in addition to 14 northern Italian provinces (Peña-Ascacibar et
alt, 2021).
On 31 August 2020, 462,858 cases were confirmed in Spain, 10,317 in Greece,
269,214 in Italy and 58,012 in Portugal.
Graph 1. “Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 cases”
Source: Our World Data.
Infodemic (Nielsen et al., 2020), tsunami of misinformation or information saturation
(Tangcharoensathien et alt., 2020) are some of the concepts and problems that were
linked to media and information consumption during the first months of the COVID-19
pandemic (Brennen et al., 2020; Papapicco, 2020). From an information point of view,
these studies have had an impact on the relationship between risk communication and
communicating risk (Lozano, 2008), but also on information saturation or fatigue.
As indicated by the WHO, such fatigue can be described as: “the lack of motivation to
follow the recommended protective behaviours that appears gradually over time and is
affected by various emotions, experiences and perceptions, as well as by the social,
cultural, structural and legislative context”.
3
3
See: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/335820/WHO-EURO-2020-1160-40906-55390-
eng.pdf
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It is not new that, in periods of high information intensity and unforeseen events of
indeterminate duration, citizens urgently need to expand their data and obtain details
about the events narrated in the news. What is new is that social networks, instant
messaging systems and the use of political actors who use lies as tactic and deception
as a strategy have developed an information ecosystem that is often off the radar of the
media and complementary to the latter as manager and producer of information
(Sánchez-Duarte and Magallón-Rosa, 2020a, López-Pan and Rodríguez-Rodríguez, 2020,
Vizoso & Vázquez-Herrero, 2019).
In this sense, the approach to the phenomenon of disinformation (Wardle and Derakshan,
2017) has become increasingly specialized and glocal, compared to the first research that
sought to take a still photograph of a historical event in permanent motion. Claire Wardle
and Hossein Derakhshan published a report in September (2017, 5) entitled The
Information Disorder: Towards an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy
Making, in which they stated:
We refrain from using the term ´fake news`, for two reasons. First of all, it is
woefully inadequate to describe the complex phenomenon of information
pollution. The term has also begun to be appropriated by politicians around
the world to describe news organisations whose coverage they find
disagreeable. In this way, it is becoming the mechanism by which the
powerful can clamp down, restrict, undermine and circumvent the free press.
From this point of view, it is necessary to point out that the disinformation cycle is
adaptive and linked to eventual and opportunistic niches based on confusion, media
deficiencies and information saturation.
Beyond the lack of coordination between administrations, the rise of conspiracy theories
(Uscinski et al., 2020) and the development of anti-vaccine campaigns, perhaps the most
relevant fact has been that the pandemic has acted as a catalyst for polarization in many
countries. In this sense, the first research works are showing how belonging and affinity
to certain political options is related to having a position in favour or against COVID-19
vaccination. At the same time, the first works that link polarization, disinformation and
the predisposition to vaccinate have been published (Loomba et alt., 2021).
According to Brennen's work (2020), disinformation from well-known promoters such as
politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures accounted for 20 percent of his
analysis but made-up 69 percent of total social media interactions. Therefore, and despite
the initial anonymity and the impossibility of often identifying the origin of hoaxes, their
extreme viral spread is caused by recognized promoters who consciously or
unconsciously spread the messages.
Authors such as Sánchez-Duarte and Magallón-Rosa (2020b) established a typology of
hoaxes that circulated in the first months of the pandemic based on four categories:
infections, status and evolution of the pandemic; forms of prevention and cures;
measures (public and private) adopted in the fight against the pandemic and to alleviate
its effects and others.
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Table 1. Typology of hoaxes.
Typology of hoaxes
Examples
Contagion
Condition and evolution of those infected, numbers,
contagion areas, specific situations of localities with
contagious sources, evolution of the disease, situations
of chaos, characteristics and symptoms.
Prevention
Forms and methods of prevention, cures, drugs, etc.
Measures (public and private)
adopted in the fight against the
pandemic and to mitigate its effects
Closure of spaces, control and restriction measures,
orders by government and political parties, prohibitions,
presence of the army, actions taken by companies, etc.
Other
Issues related to security (burglaries, computer security,
scams (phishing), theories about the origin of the virus,
predictions about the arrival of the pandemic,
information on specific population groups, etc.
Source: Sánchez-Duarte and Magallón-Rosa (2020b).
They also analysed the origin and distribution channels of the hoaxes (social networks,
instant messaging or the media), the intent of the hoax (deny or expand information),
their possible viral spread in other countries and whether it was possible to identify the
promoters of the hoaxes.
From this point of view, a study on southern European countries is essential for two
reasons. In the first place, because of the predominance of studies on Anglo-Saxon
countries compared to other languages and cultures and because of the traditional
polarized nature of southern European countries.
Regarding the information gap related to studies on disinformation, it should be noted
that the work by Seo and Faris (2021) highlights that 62.8% of the academic works
published between January 2015 and October 2020 were carried out with data from the
US. In quantitative terms, computational social science methods, experiments, and
surveys were the dominant approaches. The experiments accounted for 23.8% of the
articles analysed, followed by computational social science methods (18.1%), surveys
(15.2%), interviews or focus groups (14.3%), human-based or textual analysis coded
content analysis (11.4%) and meta-analysis or secondary data analysis (9.5%). Other
methods (7.7%) included image analysis, ethnography, and case studies. Thus, the
combination of methodologies for the analysis and study of fact-checking (López et alt,
2020; Freiling et alt. 2020), disinformation (Aguado and Bernaola, 2020; Apuke and
Omar, 2020) and regional characteristics and individuals from each country are essential
to conduct a comparative analysis capable of establishing analogies, relationships and,
of course, knowledge.
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2. Method
This research is focused on describing the disinformation identified by the verification
organizations of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece in the first months of the COVID-19
pandemic (March- August 2020).
The choice of these countries is justified because since the beginning of the health crisis,
and with different intensities depending on the waves of contagion:
1) They share a region (southern Europe)
2) They share the relationship model of the political and media systems (Hallin and
Mancini, 2004)
3) They present different levels of incidence of the pandemic. This internal divergence
between the most affected (Spain and Italy) and the least (Portugal and Greece)
allows us to identify, in a descriptive way, the extent to which disinformation had
greater impact in situations and geographical contexts with more accentuated crises.
For the analysis, the disinformation pieces reported by fact-checking organizations from
these countries to the verification platform of the International Fact Checking Network
(IFCN)
4
were selected.
This network, dependent on the Poynter Institute, was created in 2015 with the aim of
“bringing together data verification initiatives by promoting and exchanging good
practices”. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the IFCN launched the #CoronavirusFacts
Alliance initiative, bringing together more than 100 verifiers from around the world to
“share, translate and publish” new coronavirus data”
5
.
In the same way, this alliance has made it possible to monitor in real time and
simultaneously - in very different countries and completely antagonistic information
cultures - how hoaxes, rumours, erroneous information, propaganda or false information
circulated. It also enabled analysing in a much more complete way how the narratives
circulated disinformation worldwide (Marin, 2020) and adapted to national, cultural and
local contexts (Naeem and Bhatti, 2020; Salaverria et alt., 2020).
Based on the IFCN database, 936 pieces of disinformation reported by the main
verification organizations in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece were selected: Observador,
Polígrafo, Newtral, Maldita, Open, Effecinque, Facta, Pagella Politica and Ellinika Hoaxes.
The number of hoaxes in each of the countries was distributed as follows:
4
See: https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/ [Accessed on 09/02/2021]
5
See: https://www.poynter.org/coronavirusfactsalliance/ [Accessed on 09/02/2021]
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Table 2: Number of pieces of disinformation in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece between March
and August 2020
Country
Number of pieces of disinformation
Portugal
88
Spain
574
Italy
209
Greece
65
Total
936
Source: International Fact Checking Network.
After being identified, these pieces of disinformation formed a data matrix organized
according to the following variables:
- Evolution by months: hoaxes in the four countries (between March and August).
- Subject categories: authorities (information related to political or government
actions), causes, symptoms and cures (information focused on health aspects),
conspiracy theories (hoaxes that addressed the origin of the pandemic and its
management based on conspiracy theories), propagation (evolution in regions, cities,
expansion by geographical areas, etc.) and others (category with diverse and
personalized disinformation in each of the countries in the presence of celebrities,
questions about security, etc.).
- Qualification of disinformation: false (complete false disinformation) or misleading
(disinformation with aspects that did not conform to reality or half-truths).
- Degree of viral spread in other countries: disinformation replicated or not in other
countries.
Based on these variables, a descriptive analysis of the disinformation identified in the
four countries was carried out. Although this technique has certain limits, it is relevant
when exploring trends and laying the groundwork for future research.
3. Results
From the comparative analysis presented here, we can establish some clear results and
learnings. The months of March and April were the most active from the point of view of
disinformation, and consequently, of the verifications made by the fact-checkers.
In Portugal, they account for 58.4% of verifications, in Spain 57.7%, in Greece 59.6%
and the only exception is Italy where only 33.7% of verifications were recorded.
In Italy, the month of May stood out, when 29.7% of circulating hoaxes were identified.
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Graph 2. Evolution of disinformation by country between February and August 2020.
Source: International Fact Checking Network.
The second objective was to analyse the preferred topics during the period in question.
From the point of view of the topic categories of disinformation, those related to causes,
symptoms and cures were the most frequent in general terms. In Greece they represent
27.6% and in Portugal 25.8%.
For their part, verifications related to authorities were the most frequent in Spain and
Italy, coinciding with the fact that they were the most polarized countries during the
pandemic.
In the case of Greece, a particularity is also identified that should be examined in
subsequent studies. Up to 50.7% of the hoaxes were related to conspiracy theories.
Graph 3. Topic categories of disinformation between February and August 2020.
Source: International Fact Checking Network.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
February March April May June July August
Portugal Spain Italy Greece
0
10
20
30
40
50
Portugal Spain Italy Greece
Authorities Causes, symptoms and cures Conspiracy theories Spreading Others
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Another element of analysis was the rating, by fact-checkers, of the verified content: the
options could be divided into false or misleading. In Portugal and Spain, more than 90%
were identified as false compared to Greece and Italy, where this type of disinformation
accounted for 78.5 and 66.6%, respectively.
Graph 4. Qualification of disinformation by country between February and August 2020.
Source: International Fact Checking Network.
From the point of view of the viral spread of hoaxes in other countries, Spain clearly
stood out with 17.7% of hoaxes and Italy with 5%. Neither Greece nor Portugal identified
patterns of disinformation replicated in other countries.
Thus, Spain comes across as an exporter of hoaxes. At first this could be assumed to be
because its hoaxes are replicated in South America. However, their disinformation (in
terms of format, content, etc.) reached the whole world: China, the US, etc.
In this regard, it would be interesting to continue delving into this type of analysis to see
which categories, formats and narratives are more likely to be exported.
On the other hand, it is important to note that 34% of the hoaxes denied by all fact-
checkers in these four countries were refuted by Maldita and 20% by Newtral. Facta in
Italy with 12.7% and Elinika Hoaxes in Greece with 6.8% ranked third and fourth in
quantitative terms. This also indicates the professional attitude of these fact-checkers
within IFCN and their relevance in giving early warnings of disinformation.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Portugal Spain Italy Greece
False Misleading
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Graph 5. Viral spread of disinformation abroad by country between February and August 2020
Sources: International Fact Checking Network.
4. Conclusions and discussion
The normalization of disinformation processes has been one of the most significant
lessons from this pandemic. During the first months, the disinformation focused on 3
main themes from a temporal point of view: the forms of contagion and cure of the virus,
the opening measures and political management of the different countries and the issue
of vaccines.
Thus, months after the pandemic and disinformation set in permanently - although with
different intensities- throughout the world, the different academic works continue to
analyse and create theories, correlations, typologies and topics of disinformation related
to COVID-19.
Our work confirms previous studies: the greater the information intensity, the greater
the disinformation (Paniagua et al., 2020). March was the month with the highest number
of hoaxes and the information that reached fact-checking organizations was mostly false.
In this context, Spain stands out, with 61.32% of hoaxes that circulated in these
countries that were verified by fact-checkers. In second place comes, Italy with 22.32%
of disinformation, Portugal with 9.4% and Greece with 6.94%.
In this regard, and as a first conclusion, it should be noted that during the first 6 months
of the pandemic, 3 out of 5 hoaxes that were denied by the fact-checkers of these four
European countries were verified by Spanish fact-checkers. According to First Draft,
17.3% of the disinformation analysed during the first six months of 2020 related to the
pandemic was in Spanish, compared to 8.8% in Portuguese.
From this perspective, those countries with the highest incidence, and also the largest in
terms of territory and population, such as Spain and Italy, were the ones that had to
deny most of the hoaxes.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Portugal Spain Italy Greece
Not going viral in other countries Going viral in other countries
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Second, March and April were the most active months from the point of view of
disinformation. About 3 out of 5 hoaxes were refuted in Portugal, Spain and Greece
during these two months.
Third, there are two axes when identifying the topic categories of disinformation: those
related to causes, symptoms and cures were the most frequent in Greece and Portugal.
Those related to authorities were the most frequent in Spain and Italy, which were more
polarized during the pandemic. Thus, we can highlight a health-preventive axis and
another polarized political axis.
In the case of Greece, it is important to note that up to 50.7% of the hoaxes were related
to conspiracy theories.
Fourth, the qualification of the denials by fact-checkers stands out, with the options being
divided between false or misleading. In Portugal and Spain, more than 90% were
identified as false compared to Greece and Italy, where this type of disinformation
reached 78.5% and 66.6%, respectively. In this regard, it would be interesting to analyse
in detail the internal verification dynamics of fact-checkers in these countries to identify
the fact-checking cultures of this type of organization.
Fifth, and from the point of view of the viral spread of hoaxes in other countries, Spain
clearly stands out with 17.7% of hoaxes, and Italy with 5%. Neither Greece nor Portugal
had patterns of disinformation replicated in other countries.
We consider that there are two factors that helped Spain exporting hoaxes. On the one
hand, the language makes it possible to export hoaxes to Latin America and, on the other
hand, the importance of Maldita, and to a lesser extent Newtral, as fact-checkers when
it comes to refuting hoaxes at global level.
Based on these results, it could be interesting to continue delving into these typologies
to see which categories, formats and narratives are most likely to be exported.
Sixth, we should assess these data with caution as they can measure the effectiveness
of verification partnerships rather than the impact of hoax dynamics in different
countries. In this regard, it is important to note that 34.5% of the hoaxes refuted by all
fact-checkers in these four countries were disproved by Maldita and 20% by Newtral,
which indicates the relevance of these two verifiers at European level but also the
competition dynamics between them.
In conclusion, it should be noted that in Spain there has been a much higher number of
hoaxes reproduced than in other countries, because it is a country with many cultures
and it is a highly politicized country.
The data also indicates the professional stance of Spanish fact-checkers within IFCN to
place themselves as references that send early warnings of disinformation to the rest of
the organizations.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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International Relations and Social Networks
July2021
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THE COVID-19 VACCINATION AGENDA. EUROPEAN AND PORTUGUESE
OFFICIAL SOURCES’ PERFORMANCE IN FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, TWITTER
AND LINKEDIN
CLARA ALMEIDA SANTOS
clara.santos@uc.pt
Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information of the
Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and integrated researcher in CEIS20 -
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies.
OLGA ESTRELA MAGALHÃES
olgamagalhaes@med.up.pt
Coordinator of the Communication and Image Office of the Faculty of Medicine of the University
of Porto (Portugal) and researcher at CINTESIS - Health Technologies and Services Research
Centre.
CATARINA DUFF BURNAY
cburnay@ucp.pt
Associate Professor at FCH/UCP (Portugal), Coordinator of the Masters in Communication
Sciences and researcher at the Centre for Communication and Culture Studies (CECC).
RITA ARAÚJO
rita.manso.araujo@gmail.com
Researcher at CECS - Centre for Communication and Society Studies, University of Minho,
Institute of Social Sciences (Portugal).
Abstract
The authorization for the vaccine against Covid-19 and the beginning of the vaccination in the
European Union represent a very singular moment in several dimensions, including strategic
communication. In the context of a pandemic and an infodemic - an epidemic also recognized
by the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized by the abnormal increase of
information on a given subject carrying the risk of severe disinformation phenomena - the
need for authorities (both Portuguese and European) to convey accurate information and to
maintain a communicative proximity is crucial. In these circumstances, online social networks
represent ineluctable channels to deliver official information. In this article, we analyze how
the European Commission, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the WHO Regional Office
for Europe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Representation of
the European Commission in Portugal, the Portuguese Government, the Portuguese
Directorate-General of Health, and the Portuguese National Health Service have used
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to communicate the vaccination during one month
since the EMA’s authorization (21st December 2020). All posts from the referred sources on
the four social networks (719 occurrences) were collected and content analysis methods were
then applied. The results show that both Portuguese and European official sources use social
media to convey authoritative information about the vaccination against Covid-19: more than
one third of the posts analyzed link to institutional websites and more than half the
publications have an informative framing. On the other hand, the analyze suggests that there
is a strong political capitalization of the momentum of hope. This exploratory study case shows
the importance of social media analysis in the context of the Covid-19
Keywords
Covid-19; Vaccination; social media; Disinformation; European Union
How to cite this article
Santos, Clara A.; Magalhães, Olga E.; Burnay, Catarina D.; Araújo, Rita. The COVID-19
vaccination agenda. European and portuguese official sources’ performance in facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social
Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-
7251.DT21.11
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 20,0 2021
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Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
158
THE COVID-19 VACCINATION AGENDA. EUROPEAN AND PORTUGUESE
OFFICIAL SOURCES’ PERFORMANCE IN FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM,
TWITTER AND LINKEDIN
1
CLARA ALMEIDA SANTOS
OLGA ESTRELA MAGALHÃES
CATARINA DUFF BURNAY
RITA ARAÚJO
1. Introduction
It was quite surprising when European Commissioner Thierry Breton, in May 2020,
speaking on a debate promoted by the Regulation Center in Europe, said that
disinformation was “the disease of the century”. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic,
the statement was likely to sound misfit, to say the least. Nevertheless, we can be quite
sure that we are globally dealing with a syndemic, a concept developed by Merrill Singer
(2009) that refers to complex epidemics implying disease interactions. Along with and
fueled by Covid-19, an infodemic has developed worldwide. Coincidentally enough, the
term “infodemic” was coined by David Rothkopf in 2003
2
in relation to the flood of
information accompanying the SARS-CoV-1 (the “first" coronavirus) outbreak. An
infodemic, as defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is an “overabundance of
information – some accurate and some not – that occurs during an epidemic. It can lead
to confusion and ultimately mistrust in governments and public health response”
3
. The
dimension of this infodemic (and consequent syndemic, according to Santos et al, 2021)
is amplified by the unprecedented massive use of technology and social media.
Researchers (eg Cinelli et al, 2020) are using variants of standard epidemic models to
simulate the spreading of information on social media.
In fact, one of the fundamental dimensions of this global crisis is digital dependence.
Digitalization and digitization made it possible to overcome many of the restrictions the
world had to face. Lockdowns obviously increased the time spent online and changed
1
Article translated by the autors and reviewed by Carolina Peralta.
2
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/05/11/when-the-buzz-bites-back/bc8cd84f-
cab6-4648-bf58-0277261af6cd, accessed January 21 2021.
3
https://www.who.int/teams/risk-communication/infodemic-management, accessed January 21 2021.
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digital habits. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020, and not
surprisingly, the use of online and social media substantially increased in most countries.
In this aspect (as in others) the Coronavirus disease is unprecedented: it is “the first
pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive
scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected. At the same time, the
technology we rely on to keep connected and informed is enabling and amplifying an
infodemic that continues to undermine the global response and jeopardizes measures to
control the pandemic”
4
. In early May 2020, the European Commission registered daily
more than 2.700 articles with “fake news” related to Covid-19 on social networks,
including false or misleading publications.
In October 2018, several platforms and companies – including Facebook, Twitter, Google
and Mozilla – signed a “Code of Practice”, under the umbrella of the European
Commission, that includes a wide range of commitments to fight online disinformation.
Since then, the signatories have been producing periodic self-assessment reports on the
measures undertaken “from transparency in political advertising to the closure of fake
accounts and demonetisation of purveyors of disinformation”
5
. The declared aim is to
“contribute to a fast and measurable reduction of online disinformation”
6
.
According to the report from Facebook for December 2020
7
, over 401 thousand pieces of
content on Facebook and Instagram were removed for containing misinformation that
might lead to imminent physical harm, such as content relating to fake preventative
measures or exaggerated cure, and 40 thousand pieces of content related to Covid-19
and which violated the platform medical supply sales standards.
The war against infodemy is particularly relevant to prevent and control the effects of
the syndemic. As Josep Borrell, Vice-President of the European Commission put it:
“Disinformation in times of the coronavirus can kill. We have a duty to protect our citizens
by making them aware of false information and expose the actors responsible for
engaging in such practices”
8
.
1.1. “Information disorder”
Following UNESCO’s recommendations (Ireton and Posetti, 2018), we will not use the
popular term “fake news” to refer to information disorders. Wardle and Derakhshan
(2017) dismiss the utilization of this expression for two reasons: on the one hand,
because it has been used by politicians to describe news coverage that they find
“disagreeable”; on the other hand, because they find that it is “woefully inadequate to
describe the complex phenomena of information pollution” (Wardle and Derakhshan,
2017: 5). In plus, as several other authors point out, the term “news” presumptions
information that is delivered after a process of professional verification – which is not the
case for “fake news”. The referred authors coined the expression “information disorder”
4
https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-
behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation, accessed January 21 2021.
5
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEMENT_18_5914, accessed February 3 2021.
6
Idem
7
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/latest-set-reports-and-way-forward-fighting-covid-
19-disinformation-monitoring-programme, accessed January 20 2021.
8
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1006, accessed February 3 2021.
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to describe a much more complex phenomenon considering two dimensions: falsity and
intention. “Information disorder” includes three types of “toxic” information:
misinformation, disinformation and mal-information. Misinformation and disinformation
are both characterized by falseness. The difference according to Wardle and Derakhshan
is that misinformation has no intention to harm while disinformation is conveyed with
malicious intentions. Disinformation might include different forms of willingly forged
content and context, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Concepts of misinformation, disinformation and mal-information
Source: Ireton and Posetti (2018).
Mal-information though mischiefing, is based on reality. True facts or partially truthful
facts are used but in most of the cases, it is not the whole story and the narrative is
purposefully used to “inflict harm on a person, organisation or country” (Wardle and
Derakhshan, 2017: 46).
In the Covid-19 syndemic context, the information disorder combined with the already
referred unprecedented usage of social media create an humungous challenge for
authorities that need to keep the population accurately informed about the virus and the
disease and to disseminate important health messages. Previous epidemic crisis during
the 21st century have shown how harmful and even lethal the information disorder can
be (eg Oyeyemi, Gabarron, Wynn, 2014, Knobler et al, 2004). It adds up that given the
uncertainty in much that is related to the virus and the disease, “distorted versions of
concepts and scientific facts proliferate, employing extraordinarily plausible narrative and
rhetorical forms that flourish in the midst of the scarcity of contents recommending
biosafety practices during a pandemic” (Vasconcellos-Silva and Castiel, 2020: 2). The
same authors claim that fact-twisting – emerging as misinfomation, desinformation or
mal-information – proliferates in the absence of the official narrative. As the WHO puts
it in the context of the 1st WHO Infodemiology Conference, held on June and July 2020,
“like pathogens in epidemics, misinformation spreads further and faster and adds
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complexity to health emergency response”
9
. The WHO recognizes the difficulty to find
trustworthy sources and reliable guidance. And “even when people have access to high-
quality information, there are still barriers they must overcome to take the recommended
action”
10
.
The usage of social media by governments and other official entities can be regarded as
part of evolving practices of digital governance. As Magro (2012) underlines after
analysing several case studies, using social media in disaster management is an
important role for governments. According to Dadashzadeh (2010), using social media
in governance might prompt many benefits such as: improving social and economic
conditions of citizens, providing access, engaging, and educating all citizens, improving
Government accountability by increased transparency, or improving te effectiveness of
initiatives and providing citizens the opportunity to “talk back”.
1.2. Health communication: the Covid-19 vaccination campaign
The vaccination campaign against Covid-19 that started in every member state of the
European Union (EU) on the 27th December 2020 represents a very singular moment in
several aspects. Firstly, because of its institutional, concerted, transnational, political and
scientific character as a response to “the most formidable challenge to humanity in a
century” (Jeyanathan et al, 2020). As far as communication is concerned, a vaccination
campaign occurring in the midst of the pandemic and infodemic increases drastically the
need for official sources to disseminate accurate and reliable information. Vaccination is
actually the theme of one of the most well-known case studies on the effects of
information disorder. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield published an article in the prestigious
medical journal The Lancet that linked mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and
autism. The journal eventually retracted the paper in 2010 because the findings were
discredited but its message had already reached many people (Arif et al, 2020) namely
through subsequent news. Online, both information and information disorders remain
(and remain). As the referred authors conclude, counteracting disinformation about
vaccines by health authorities is part of the solution. Political and health authorities face
many challenges as current public health communications about vaccines may not be
effective and may, in fact, “increase misperceptions or reduce vaccination intention”
(Nyhan et al 2014: 2013). The authors claim that more studies of pro-vaccine messaging
are needed, and that vaccination messaging should be carefully tested before making it
public.
A study conducted by Neumann-Böhme et al (2020) has shown the willingness of
Europeans from seven countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the
Netherlands, and the UK) to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The results show that 73.9%
of the 7664 participants stated that they would be willing to get vaccinated. The
willingness ranged from 62% in France to approximately 80% in Denmark and the UK.
Only 7.2% stated that they do not want to get vaccinated. France, Portugal and Germany
present the highest rate of respondents that stated their uncertainty towards the vaccine.
9
https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2020/06/30/default-calendar/1st-who-infodemiology-
conference, accessed on January 20 2021.
10
Idem.
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When asked about the reasons for being unsure, more than half (55%) said they were
concerned about potential side effects of a vaccine. Around 15% of respondents stated
concern about the vaccine safeness.
Figure 2: Willingness to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by country
Source: Neumann-Böhme et al (2020)
In this context, it is crucial to recognize the importance of health communication, which
has emerged as one of the most important public health issues in this century (Ishikawa
and Kiuchi, 2010). Furthermore, several authors agree that it is a key factor in fighting
the Covid-19 pandemic (Finset et al, 2020, Fielding, 2020). Indeed, he sudden
appearance of SARS-CoV-2 has highlighted the importance of health communication and
health literacy within infectious diseases, and the constant evolution of the virus and the
science surrounding it makes people seek health information in order to adapt their
behaviors (Paakari and Okan, 2020), see their questions answered, and limit
transmission.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the infodemic surrounding Covid-19 “poses a
serious problem for public health” (Zarocostas, 2020), since an adequate level of health
literacy is required to deal with both misinformation and disinformation. In that sense,
the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the underestimated public health problem of
low health literacy (Paakari and Okan, 2020). Indeed, “providing the population with
evidence-based scientific data is beneficial and necessary but does not necessarily lead
to individuals correctly understanding or interpreting the information” (Biasio et al,
2020). Several studies recognize the importance of health literacy as a determinant of
health outcomes and a driver of unnecessary costs (Parker and Ratzan, 2010; Berkman
et al, 2010; Paasche-Orlow and Wolf, 2010), as well as pointing out the association
between literacy skills and the engagement in health-related decisions, such as the
management of a chronic disease or the compliance with health-promoting and disease-
preventive behaviors (Rudd et al, 2012, Zarcadoolas et al, 2006). Vaccination is one of
those disease-preventive behaviors that can be seriously affected by low health literacy
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163
levels, along with dis- and misinformation. Vaccine hesitancy – the reluctance or refusal
to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines – is recognized by the WHO
11
as a major
threat to global health. Moreover, the rapid production of Covid-19 vaccines and all the
information surrounding vaccine development and implementation as well as safety and
efficacy may be challenging for individuals to gather and process (Vanderpool et al,
2020).
Hence, news media play a central role in the promotion of health since they are often the
primary source of information to the lay public. During a public health crisis people
depend on the news media to convey accurate and up-to-date information that allows
them to make informed health decisions. Equally important is “training scientists and
government agencies to discuss in plain language the benefits of a future Covid-19
vaccine with the media” (Schiavo, 2020: 74). The medical-scientific language is one of
the problems traditionally identified by journalists in health and science communication
and all strategies that can improve the individual skills of sources to communicate with
different audiences, including journalists, are welcome. Therefore, the intervention and
expertise of communication professionals, who understand the media routines and
master efficient health communication strategies, is very important (Magalhães, 2020).
Health authorities and political leaders are responsible for mitigating the potential
information disorder around the vaccination through communication. Social media
provide the possibility to communicate in a “disintermediated environment” (Vicario et
al, 2016), the exact same environment that can foster confusion, encourage mistrust and
allow communicative proximity, and convey accurate and authoritative information.
The vaccination campaign in the UE provides a precious momentum to analyze how
official sources use social media to encourage vaccination, to dismiss doubts and
apprehension about the safety of the vaccines and to disseminate reliable facts
counteracting against possible information disorders.
2. Research design and methodology
Social media are in contemporary communication dynamics the main vehicles of
disinformation, misinformation and mal-information (Newman et al, 2020). Fracturing
themes become permeable to the instantaneous construction and rapid dissemination of
conspiracy theories and little grounded perspectives, motivating, in the context of a
pandemic like Covid-19, over and under reactions (Pennycook et al, 2020). These
reactions call into question the safety of the individual, but in this specific case, the safety
of the community itself, making it difficult to control the disease and its global effects. In
a joint and global effort, strategies have been developed to combat the proliferation of
false or distorted news around Covid-19 from a communication/journalistic and legal
point of view, as also by the social media platforms, showing themselves to be more
aggressive than they were on political topics (Radu, 2020, Nunziato, 2020).
According to Reuters Digital News Report 2020, Portugal, along with Finland, is the
country, out of 40 analysed, that trusts the news the most, but less than 3 out of 10
11
https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019, accessed on January
18th 2021.
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Portuguese say they trust news spread by social media and three quarters of the sample
shows concern about the legitimacy of online content. If Facebook is the main network
for news consumption (50.2%), it is interesting to see how in a pandemic context instant
messaging apps (eg Whatsapp) have gained relevance, boosting the dissemination of
disinformation (Cardoso et al, 2020). At the same time, because of their reach and
spreadability potential, social media are also powerful weapons to fight back against
information disorders, playing an important role in policy announcement and health
education (Tsao et al, 2021), allowing sources to deliver authoritative information directly
to the receivers. In this sense, the use of social media by official sources as a vehicle of
excellence to reach a wide and widespread audience has grown, showing itself as a
potential step towards dealing with misinformation (Butcher, 2021).
Passing on the information that vaccines are safe is a new challenge in managing
communication on pandemic issues, therefore, the present study
12
sought to understand
the use of social media in building credible and reliable information on the subject. We
selected four social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn – and
collected all utterances concerning vaccination posted by the European Commission
(EC/EU), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the World Health Organization Regional
Office for Europe (WHO/ROE), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
(ECDPC), Representation of the European Commission in Portugal (REC/PT), Portuguese
Government (Gov/PT), Portuguese Directorate-General of Health (DGS), and Portuguese
National Health Service (SNS) during one month, starting from the authorization of the
first vaccine in the EU (21st December 2020).
The relevance of digital communication in the current media and information landscape
is undeniable (Neuman, 2016; Reyna et al, 2018), so the official sources are increasingly
betting on this type of communication, through the promotion of their websites and their
pages in digital social networks that are more active and closer to the public. The choice
of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) was based on an exploratory
analysis of the platforms most used and promoted by the elected official authorities.
According to data presented by Statecounter/Global Stats
13
, for the period between
January 2020 and January 2021, Facebook had a usage of around 77%, followed by
Pinterest (10.3%), Twitter (7.2%) and Instagram (2.1%). With a view to large-scale
communication, the sources analyzed used the three social media platforms of
mainstream interaction (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), to which was added
LinkedIn, a professional platform with almost 740 million members (166 million in
Europe)
14
, showing signs of growth, both in terms of access and in terms of interaction.
12
This is part of a wider project that aims to study the communication about Covid-19 vaccination through a
twofold analysis: the media coverage of Covid-19 vaccination in the Portuguese news media and the
strategic communication of official news sources, both Portuguese and European.
13
https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/europe, accessed on February 14th 2021.
14
https://news.linkedin.com/about-us#Statistics, accessed on February 14th 2021.
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Table 1: Number of followers of the official sources on each platform in January 2021 (M-Million;
m-thousand)
Source: Prepared by the authors
3. Case study and data analysis
The corpus consists of 719 posts corresponding to all utterances on the subject of or
referring “vaccination” published between December 21st, 2020, and January 21st, 2021,
by verified public pages of the above-mentioned official sources on the selected social
media platforms
15
.
15
After coding and using the application Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) the posts were
submitted to content analysis using the following variables:
V1. Social Media [Indicates the platform where the post was published]
1.Facebook
2.Instagram
3.Twitter
4.LinkedIn
V2. Official source [Indicates who authored the post]
1. European Commission
2. WHO Regional Office for Europe
3. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
4. Portuguese Government
5. Portuguese Directorate-General of Health
6. Infarmed, IP
7. Portuguese National Health Service
8. Representation of the European Commission in Portugal
V3 and V4. Multimediality [Indicates the media formats used in the post, up to 2]
1. Text
2. Photo
3. Photo gallery (more than one photo)
4. Video
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5. Audio
6. Graphic
7. Poster
8. Animation
9. Live
10. Infographics
V5. Hypertext [Describes the landing pages or platforms to where the post links to]
1. Developed information in sites (other than the source’s)
2. Further information in the platform where the post was published
3. Other national sources (sites)
4. Other international sources (sites)
5. Other social media
6. Source’s site
7. Repost [when the post is simple repost with no other format (V3 or V4)
8. Other resources
V6. Hashtags [string variable that collects all the hashtags used in the post]
V7. Geography [Indicates the geographical approach]
1. National
2. International
3. Both
V8. Frame [Analyses the post’s discourse aiming to assess the motivation/intention of the post and post’s
author]
1. Informative
2. Pedagogical
3. Persuasive
4. Defensive
5. Positive
6. Other
V9. Theme [Indicates the main theme of the post; the list of potential themes was adapted from a project on
health communication] (Lopes et al, 2013, Araújo, 2016).
1. Research development
2. Ribonucleic acid
3. Clinical trials
4. Vaccine validation
5. Vaccine administration
6. Difficulties in administration
7. Adverse effects
8. Deadlines
9. Priority groups
10. Distribution
11. Storage
12. Deadline failure
13. Distribution problems
14. Storage problems
15. National portraits
16. International portraits
17. Political decisions
18. Health officers’ decisions
19. Political reactions
20. Economy
21. Protests
22. Vaccine security
23. Professional situations
24. European success
25. Generic approach
26. Authorization
27. Technical/scientific information
28.Acknowledgment
29. Fact check
V10. Actor [Indicates the main actor/s in the post; if the post is a repost, the actor is the author of the original post]
1. Source’s official representative
2. Expert
3. Celebrity
4. Politician
5. Citizen(s)
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The posts were collected in the four platforms during the period of analysis (from the
21st to the December 2020 to the 21st of January 2021). The objective was to gather all
the posts produced by the sources that are being studied.
We computed the data using SPPS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Then, we
run a descriptive analysis of all variables, crossing results when considered interesting
for getting some insight.
4. Findings and discussion
From all sources analyzed, the most prolific was the Portuguese National Health Service,
authoring 31% of all posts, followed by the EC, with 24% of the posts.
Table 2. Number of publications by source
Source: Prepared by the authors
Twitter was the most used social media platform with 56,9% of all posts, followed by
Facebook with less than all the amount of posts (22.5%). All sources (except the
Portuguese
Directorate-General of Health) used more Twitter than the other social media (Table 3).
6. Several (when more than one of the other actors in this list)
7. Health professional(s)
8. Other official source
9. Other
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Table 3: social media used by each source
Source: Prepared by the authors
During the time period that was analyzed, the days with more posts (more than 5% of
the total) coincide with: 1) the authorization of the first vaccine in the European Union
(21st December 2020); 2) a public meeting held by the EMA about the vaccine (8th
January 2021); 3) the beginning of vaccination in every member state of the EU (27th
December); 4) the day before the beginning of vaccination in the EU (26th December
2020); 5) the authorization of the second vaccine (6th January 2021) (Table 4 and
Graphic 1).
Table 4: Number of posts per date
Source: Prepared by the authors
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Graphic 1: Number of posts per date
Source: Prepared by the authors
When crossing the date with the theme for those five days, we find that the most
prominent themes were “Vaccine administration”, “Authorization”, “Generic approach”
and “Vaccine security” (Table 5).
Table 5: Themes on specific dates
Source: Prepared by the authors
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The posts about “Vaccine administration” focus on the beginning of the vaccination
process in every member state of the EU and particularly in Portugal (as far as the
Portuguese sources are concerned). The National Health Service has carried out a
campaign showing vaccines being inoculated in several institutions outside the capital
and main cities. The European sources also used this kind of approach but being less
prolific. One interesting remark is the use of the hashtag #EUVaccinationDays. The theme
“Authorization” refers mainly to posts focusing on the announcement of the authorization
of the vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech, on the 21th December 2020, and Moderna on the 6th
January 2021). The “Generic approach” theme is registered when the vaccine is
mentioned generically, without any specific thematic or when several themes are
addressed in the same post, none of them being sufficiently prominent to be identified
as “the” theme of the post. “Vaccine security” identifies normally reassuring content
about the safeness of the vaccine, thus showing understanding citizens’ main concern.
These four themes account for 79.5% of all themes in the referred dates. If we include
all dates (Table 6), we will find that “Vaccine administration” is present in 34.8% of the
posts, followed by “Generic approach” (19.7%) and “Authorization” (12.2%). We should
also underline the 8.5% of posts devoted to “Vaccine security”, published by European
official sources and by the EC Representation in Portugal.
Table 6: Themes
Source: Prepared by the authors
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As far as multimediality is concerned, the most used format is text, present in nearly
80% of the posts. The posts that do not present texts are reposts (not identified as
having text authored by the official source). Posters, a category that identifies a sort of
billboard that uses both photography and typography, and sometimes even illustrations,
very similar to advertising signs, account for 28.4% of all formats used in the posts.
Crossing multimediality with sources, we find that the Portuguese National Health Service
uses this format in 133 posts (out of 223, representing the presence of this kind of
resource in 59.7% of all posts). The Representation of the European Commission in
Portugal also relies on this format in 29.3% of its posts and the European Commission
uses it in 12.8% of its posts.
It should be noted that the posters used by the Representation of the European
Commission in Portugal are often the same used by the European Commission (translated
into Portuguese).
Table 7: Multimediality
Source: Prepared by the authors
Video is used mainly by the European Commission (present in 20.3% of all posts), being
the second most used format by this source (after text) and by its Representation in
Portugal (24.2% of all posts).
Regarding hypertext in the posts, the most frequent is reposting (used in nearly half the
posts with hypertext), what relates to the wide use of Twitter and the habit of reposting
in this platform. Given this result, we crossed hypertext with the actors (Table 8) to find
that the reposts are mainly authored by other official sources (namely the ones identified
in this article, both national and international) and by the source’s official representative.
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Table 8. Hypertext and actors
Source: Prepared by the authors
Linking to the source’s official sites is done in 37.4% of all posts where we can find links.
It is interesting to notice that hypertext is present in 60.8% of all posts (not in all of
them actors can be identified). The sources that use this feature the most are the
European Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Infarmed, IP (only one of their
posts does not have hypertext). The Portuguese Government uses hypertext in more
than 90% of its posts (Table 9).
Table 9: Hypertext and sources
Source: Prepared by the authors
Many posts refer several actors simultaneously, namely UE citizens and health
professionals, what occurs frequently when the theme is the administration of the
vaccine. When adding up official sources and representatives of the source that authors
the publication or other official sources, official sources prevail (Table 10).
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Table 10. Actors
Source: Prepared by the authors
Regarding the discursive frame of the messages, the results show that the majority of
the posts (55.4%) are informative, conveying uncluttered and objective information. The
themes with more informative frame are "Vaccine administration” (43.7% of all posts
labeled as informative) and when the vaccine is generically approached (in 17.1% of the
informative posts) (Table 11). These are also the themes where a more positive discourse
is constructed. A pedagogical approach is used when posting about the vaccine safety
and about several aspects of the vaccine and vaccination process (Generic approach).
Table 11: Themes and message framing
Source: Prepared by the authors
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In absolute numbers, the most positive source is the European Commission, followed by
the Portuguese National Health Service, which is the most informative source (Table 12).
Table 12: Sources and discursive framework
Source: Prepared by the authors
When weighing the frame used with the total amount of posts, we find that the
Portuguese National Health Service is still the source with a higher percentage of
informative posts (80.7%). The more pedagogical is the European Medicines Agency
(31.3% of the posts), followed closely by the WHO Regional Office for Europe (27.3%).
The persuasive frame is more used by the European Commission (10.5% of its posts)
and by the European Commission’s Representation in Portugal (7.1%). The defensive
mode is practically only activated by the European Center for Disease Prevention and
Control (6% of its publications). The most positive source considering weight of this
frame on the total of publications is the European Commission’s Representation in
Portugal (61.8%), followed by the European Commission (43%).
Crossing frames with the social media platforms, Facebook is where the highest
percentage of informative posts is published. In all platforms, informative and positive
framing account a very high percentage of the total of posts (88% on Facebook; 89% on
Instagram; 84% on Twitter and 85% on LinkedIn) (Table 13).
Table 13: Message framing in social media
Source: Prepared by the authors
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5. Final remarks
The results show that Portuguese and European official sources (governmental and health
authorities) are using social media to convey information about Covid-19 vaccination. In
average, all sources together published 24 posts per day during the month of the study.
The most prolific source in this study, the Portuguese National Health Service, published,
in average, 7.4 posts each day.
Twitter is the platform where more posts are published by 8 out of 9 sources analyzed,
even though it is not the one with the highest number of followers. The exception is the
Portuguese General-Directorate of Health, whose number of total posts is scarce – 17
publications, representing 2.4% of the corpus. Although this source has played a very
prominent role since the beginning of the pandemics in terms of communication, the
vaccination campaign seems to have been delegated to the National Health Service.
Adding up all followers of the official pages of the sources in the digital networks in this
research (data accessed in January 2021), Facebook leads with 3.4 million, followed by
Twitter with 1.9 million, LinkedIn with 1.2 million and Instagram with 931 thousand. A
possible explanation for the 56,9% of all posts published on Twitter is that this platform
is attended by many journalists and is claimed to be the preferred professional
tool/source as far as social media are concerned (Parmelee, 2013). This possibility brings
us back to a sophisticated and digitalized version of Lazarsfeld and Katz’s theory of the
“two-step flow of communication”: using Twitter (and other social media), official sources
might reach journalists in an unconventional, uncommitted way; sources are directly
speaking to the general public knowing that the message will also target journalists. The
apparently unmediated content gains the potential to be mediated through journalists
playing their role as opinion leaders. In this version of the two-step flow theory, social
media are in the beginning of the chain and legacy media on the other end.
This communication strategy also contributes to create a buzz marketing effect. The
positive framing of the vaccine campaign (registered in 30.5% of all posts), especially in
what concerns the European accomplishment, the authorization and the administration
process starting on the same day in every member state, contributes to the emotional
trigger that buzz marketing relies on. The effect depends on repetition and redundancy:
administration and authorization in the EU account for 47% of the themes in all posts
that constitute the corpus. Other explanation for the expressive usage of Twitter has to
do with the platform’s posting characteristics, privileging shorter and more frequent
posting. Twitter shows, more than the other platforms, an articulation between European
official sources with many cross referral and tagging, especially between the European
Medicines Agency and the European Commission. Instagram, in turn, relies mainly in
images and official sources use that specificity to channel the more promotional format
and language, using the “poster” messages. The sources strategy takes into
consideration the specific potential of each platform, and efficiently adjusts the formats.
There seems to be some contempt regarding LinkedIn (with a considerable number of
followers in some sources’ page while other sources do not even have a page). Given the
nature of this social network it could be an effective space to disseminate authoritative
information, nourishing the “two-step flow”.
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With the death and disease tolls, after the lockdowns and under the shadow of a new
wave of Covid-19, vaccination represents hope (a “light at the end of the tunnel”, as was
constantly repeated) and that hope was capitalized by official sources (mainly
governmental, both European and Portuguese) also with strong political intentions. The
momentum, especially in what concerns the authorization of the vaccine and the
beginning of the vaccination process, was favorable to the appraisal of the European
ideals of solidarity, working for common goals and attaining them. The European
Commission and its Representation in Portugal are the most positive sources, reinforcing
the importance of the European project in an adversarial context. This positiveness is
enhanced by using abundantly the hashtags #EUVaccinationDays, #StrongerTogether
and #UnitedAgainstCoronavirus.
Political twist and uplifting do not mean that the main concerns about vaccinations –
assuring its security and providing authoritative information to mitigate information
disorders – were not met though the communication practices in social media. In more
than one third of the posts there are links developed information on the source’s official
websites. And it should be noted that informative framing is the most common one (in
55.4% of the posts). The strategy to convey authoritative information from reliable
sources is thus enforced. Yet, it seems that a much broader task of disseminating this
kind of information is entrusted to social media themselves, through several initiatives
that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and also TikTok have agreed to engage in.
This case study shows the importance of social media analysis in the context of the Covid-
19 vaccination. It will be used as an exploratory study on official source’s digital
communication practices during the vaccination campaign in the EU.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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Thematic dossier
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July 2021
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LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL:
THE CATHOLIC CASE
ALBA SABATÉ GAUXACHS
albasg@blanquerna.url.edu
Journalist and PhD in Communication. Professor of Journalism at the Blanquerna School of
Communication and International Relations and vicedirector at the Blanquerna Observatory on
Media, Religion and Culture (Ramon Llull University, Spain). Member of the Global Board of
Directors at the World Association for Christian Communication and United Nations Alliance of
Civilizations (UNAOC) Fellow.
ADRIANA CHIVA POLVILLO
adrianacp2@blanquerna.url.edu
Global Communication Management student at the Blanquerna School of Communication and
International Relations, Ramon Llull University (Barcelona, Spain). Blanquerna Observatory on
Media, Religion and Culture member. Chair on Religious Freedom in Catalonia member.
Abstract
Leadership takes place when a member of a group modifies the motivation or abilities of
others or when their attention is directed towards goals or to the path required to accomplish
goals (Bass, 2008). Therefore, it would not make sense to limit the scope of leadership to
business or politics, where the concept is most commonly referred to. Leadership is a practice
that can positively impact many areas, including religion (Campbell, 2021; Díez Bosch, Micó
and Sabaté Gauxachs, 2020; Hoover, 2016; Soukup, 2017). Additionally, during this present
time of uncertainty and complexity, leadership is necessary for any type of organization.
How is leadership approached by religious institutions? What is the role of the digital world in
leadership formation? The objective of this study is to map the formation of religious
leadership in Spain and Portugal in order to find initiatives and identify current necessities.
The selected methodology follows a three-stage process. First, it includes a mapping of online
initiatives regarding leadership in Catholic communities. Second, it includes a quantitative
survey. Third, is a qualitative focus on groups and in-depth interviews (Busquet and Medina,
2019).
Through the findings of the study, the situation of leadership formation in religious institutions
in both countries and the role communication plays in the matter are defined.
Keywords
Leadership; religion; Covid-19; communication; technology
How to cite this article
Gauxachs, Alba Sabaté; Polvillo, Adriana Chiva. Leadership and communication in Spain and
Portugal: the catholic case. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social Networks, July
2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.12
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on February 23, 2021
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Alba Sabaté Gauxachs, Adriana Chiva Polvillo
181
LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL:
THE CATHOLIC CASE
1
ALBA SABATÉ GAUXACHS
ADRIANA CHIVA POLVILLO
1. Introduction
1.1. Context
These past years have seen a decrease in Catholic membership in many areas of Europe,
including Spain and Portugal. Although these areas have Catholic traditions, numbers
have been shrinking, which could cause concerns, especially in light of the downward
curve shown by the data. Of the total population, the percentage of those who consider
themselves Catholic believers has declined in comparison to former years (INE, 2020).
For example, from 2012 to 2017 the percentage of Catholic Christians within the total
population has decreased from 88.8% to 60% in Spain, and from 85.6% to 77% in
Portugal (The Global Economy, 2013) (Pew Research Center, 2018). It is important to
notice the downward trend that could potentially culminate in unfavorable results.
With this context in mind, it is thought that leadership could promote a more favorable
environment to stabilize or even increase membership while also complementing and
improving perception, performance, attraction and communion (Zsupan-Jerome, 2017).
In addition, the current circumstances brought on by the global Covid-19 pandemic
further emphasize this to the extent where leadership has become a necessity to assess
during these unprecedented times of uncertainty and ambiguity (Campbell, 2020). With
this vulnerability and lack of predictability, a good leader emerges to provide assistance
and guidance.
1.2. The Concept
A fundamental step in this study is to describe the concept of leadership. According to
Bernard Bass, leadership has more than 350 uses (2008), which serves to acknowledge
the field in which this study is developed. Due to this elevated number, leadership can
be seen as a notion that is flexible, fluid and very adaptable to particular contexts (Díez
Bosch, Micó Sanz and Sabaté Gauxachs, 2020).
1
Article translated by Diana Clavería.
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Nonetheless, it is accurate to say that there is an overarching meaning embedded in the
concept, a principal idea that stands to be true in the face of particularities. Bass
describes the practice of leading as an interaction between members of a group, involving
the structuring or restructuring of situations as well as the perceptions and the
expectations of its members. Leadership takes place when a member of a group modifies
the motivation or abilities of others or when their attention is directed towards goals or
to the path required to accomplish goals (Bass, 2008). Therefore, the comprehensive
intention of leadership is directed by individuals who create links between goals,
motivations and the members of a group. This direction should provide a change in the
actions of group members, making them intensify their contemplation of the achievement
of said goals. Hence, leadership requires capability. The ability to motivate, influence and
awaken possibilities in individuals in order to fulfill their organizational objectives (House,
Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, Gupta, 2004).
It is important to note that this ability for leadership can be put into practice in a variety
of ways. In other words, there are different types and ways to exercise leadership. This
classification has been studied by a variety of authors. Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis
and Annie McKee, in their book “Primal Leadership”, studied six distinct emotional
leadership styles (Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee, 2002), which are:
− Visionary: leadership that coordinates the group members to work towards a vision.
This approach provides optimal results when guidance or change is necessary.
− Coaching: leadership that develops and trains group members by encouraging them
to improve their future. This approach provides optimal results when helping people
grow on a long-term basis is necessary.
− Affiliative: leadership that links group members through emotions and harmony,
creating strong bonds among them. This approach provides optimal results when it is
necessary to mend gaps in teams or motivate members.
− Democratic: leadership that tries to find agreement and consensus by involving group
members and creating a favorable environment to participate so their voices can be
heard. This approach provides optimal results when creating consensus or getting
insights is necessary.
− Pacesetting: leadership that sets high-standard steps in order to achieve excellence.
This approach provides optimal results when getting quick results from a highly skilled
team is necessary.
− Commanding: leadership that demands an action to be done and calls for immediate
compliance. This approach provides optimal results in cases of crisis.
Each leadership style works differently with the aim to meet a goal and each one is
suitable in different circumstances. The all-embracing condition that these three authors
call attention to is emotion. Effective leaders are emotionally compelling and connect with
their group members on a closer and more personal level, which results in a change in
action and enhances engagement. (Greenleaf, 1998).
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It can also be argued that values and integrity in leadership are needed in order to
achieve group goals. To determine the values needed requires specificity. In some cases,
values could even be dismissed. Nonetheless, one of the main reason’s values are
necessary is because the group members themselves often require it. For the Spanish
and Portuguese Catholic Church, it is clear that it is essential for an effective leader to
have values of faith that are shared within the religious community. These values can
then be combined with emotions in order to lead.
In addition, in the Catholic Church there is another concept of leadership that is useful
to analyze. Robert Greenleaf’s servant-leadership is a popular theory among
organizations that can be applied to this study. Servant-leadership is explained in the
framework of two roles that are often seen as antithetical in our culture. There is the
servant who, by acting with integrity and spirit, builds trust and lifts people up and helps
them grow, and there is the leader who is trusted and who shapes others’ destinies and
leads by example (1970). The emphasis is on the combination of these two roles, which
create an environment of trust and engagement while at the same time giving direction
so the goals can be met.
Leadership involves direction, interaction, behavior and goals on a broader scale and
specific emotions and values for each particular circumstance. If required, the practice
of leading can also be combined with that of serving in order to be more effective in
accomplishing the objectives.
Finally, it is important to consider the substantial association with authority in leadership.
The status of leading implies a position of superiority in which an institution or an
organization establishes hegemony within its domain, sector, or product. (Díez, Soukup,
Micó, Zsupan-Jerome, 2017). This superiority is the power to direct and is an essential
part of leadership.
In the Catholic Church, Paul A. Soukup S.J. relates the idea of soft authority. He explains
that soft authority in religious groups may depend more on personal charism,
professional qualifications, individual knowledge, the practice of ministry, and personal
witnesses (2017). To this he adds that authority not only depends on who has a position
of authority, but on who has a voice, the ways in which people craft messages, the ways
in which those messages fit into the environment, the frequency of relaying messages,
and horizontal communication, which is how people interact with those around them,
independently of how they interact with those at higher levels within the organization
(Soukup, 2017). In this regard, the idea of directive power, whether it is authority, soft
authority or leadership, must be accompanied by effective techniques of a leader.
Ultimately, authority in churches and religions is deeply connected with the kind of
leadership used (Scharer, 2017) and engagement and directness highly depends on the
practice of leading.
1.3. The Digital Approach
As mentioned earlier, the Covid-19 pandemic brought uncertainty and ambiguity, which
are circumstances in which leadership has become necessary for guidance and directing.
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Moreover, the pandemic regulations called for solutions to counterbalance the prohibition
of gatherings and the closing of churches. As a result, technology and digital tools have
been seen as a new way to interact and gather. Hence, religion has adapted to the
pandemic in innovative ways (Campbell, 2020).
The role of communication is a core area in the matter. The challenges that this digital
culture (Campbell, 2020, Hoover, 2016) brings to new leaderships and a redefinition of
the concept of authority are very present in this study. The authority ascribed in digital
practice is one earned in the process of interaction on specific topics or issues, a type of
authority that is more common in oral-dominant communities than in the aloof,
institution-based authority that most churches have carried into the third millennium
(Horsfield, 2015). This actively demonstrates that, although leadership is needed in the
current times, the digital world might become an obstacle in terms of the challenges the
leader and the group face with interaction and perception.
1.4. Purpose and Objectives
These terms cause a critical question to emerge. Who are the Catholic figures that are
leading in Spain and Portugal? In other words, who are the leaders of the Catholic Church
in these two countries and how are they promoting their values? The concept inferred by
these questions constitute both the genesis and the backbone of this study. Hence, the
main objective is to better understand and map the formation of religious leadership in
Spain and Portugal in order to detect initiatives and identify current necessities in the
matter of leadership and recognize how they affect communication.
This serves as an initial exploration on the specific field of leadership in Catholic
communities within Spain and Portugal. The purpose, therefore, of this study is an initial
approach for further research on the topic.
An additional aspect of the study regards the impact of Covid-19 and the consequent
pandemic and lockdown. As a necessity, has Catholic leadership been able to adapt to
the digital world? This is also a topic of further research.
2. Design and Method
The design and method selected and developed for this study were chosen because this
study is exploratory. Leadership initiatives that may be used to enhance communication
with Catholic believers in Spain and Portugal is a premise that is introduced in order to
be tested. As explained in the purpose and objectives, this study is a way to analyze and
identify the current state of the issue in order to become the focus of further research.
The formal object to be studied is the leadership scenario of the Catholic Church within
the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal. This phenomenon includes leadership
initiatives, leadership formation courses and a variety of different leadership practices,
some of them related to communication, management, and even coaching. These aid in
understanding what is being done and where efforts are allocated in religious leadership.
A limited field of study was designed in order to provide clarity for the research. The
groups researched were divided into the existing dioceses of Spain and Portugal. For
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practical purposes, the territories were divided into smaller regions according to the
jurisdiction of specific bishops. Spain has 70 dioceses and Portugal has 20. Hence, the
study used these as a source of knowledge and included related organizations such as
universities and foundations. The study began in August 2020 and finished five months
later in December.
In order to gain the explanatory knowledge needed for this study, a specific methodology
was used. The development stage, or phase zero, required a thorough and
comprehensive understanding of the field of leadership itself and religion. A literature
review was carried out and was a main contributor to the study. This stage was highly
important to acquire the necessary underlying knowledge for the other methodological
stages to be built upon. With this as the base, a three-step process followed. It began
with a netnography (Kozinets, 2010) to objectively map and list existing leadership
related initiatives of Spanish and Portuguese dioceses and similar organizations that
could be found online. This provided a general idea on what is being done. Secondly,
quantitative data was compiled using a survey that was sent to all 90 dioceses and related
organizations found in the netnography. This survey was translated into Spanish and
Portuguese. Thirdly, it ended with a qualitative analysis with 21 individual interviews and
two focus groups, one for each country and language.
3. Field Work and Data Analysis
The field work commenced with a literature review on leadership. The main authors and
publications analyzed were, Bernard Bass’ “The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory,
Research, and Management Applications” (Cambridge Free Press, 2008) and Robert
House, Paul Hanges, Mansour Javidan, Peter Dorfman and Vipin Gupta’s “Culture,
Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies” (Sage, 2004) were
used to understand the concept of leadership. Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and
Annie McKee’s “Primal Leadership” was used to comprehend different leadership styles
and their connection to emotions. Robert Greenleaf’s “The Servant as Leader” (Center
for Applied Studies, 1970) provided a useful theory to apply to religious leadership.
Míriam Díez, Paul Soukup, Josep Lluís Micó and Daniella Zsupan-Jerome’s “Authority and
Leadership. Values, Religion, Media” (Blanquerna Observatory, 2017) was helpful in
grasping the foundation of authority in leadership. In addition, other authors and
publications concerning the pandemic and religions moving into the digital world were
examined. These included Heidi Campbell’s “Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of
Religious Authority” (Routledge, 2021), David Hoover’s “The Media and Religious
Authority” (Penn State Press, 2016) and Peter Horsfield’s “From Jesus to the Internet: A
History of Christianity and Media” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). These served to gain the base
knowledge explained in the introduction and aided in creating the survey and conducting
the interviews.
To map the scenario of what is being done in terms of leadership, a list of initiatives was
compiled through netnographic research. The list shows the initiatives found along with
information regarding their typology, whether they were formation courses, publications,
spiritual retreats, personal accompaniment actions or others, how there are
implemented, offline or online, pre or post Covid-19 as well as other relevant information
including which dioceses or organization carried out the initiative. All in all, 285 initiatives
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from Spain and 33 from Portugal were compiled. It is important to note that all initiatives
that were somehow related to leadership were included.
For the quantitative survey, the questions used related to the existence of leadership
formation initiatives, the skills required to be a good religious leader and the type of
leadership needed in the Spanish and Portuguese Catholic Church. For this last question,
it was useful to refer to Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee’s description
of leadership styles, which have a different effect on people’s emotions. These styles are
visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and commanding (Goleman,
Boyatzis, McKnee, 2002). Moreover, other questions focused on the reality of each
survey-taker in his or her organization, together with personal opinions and perceptions.
It is important to understand that the survey included both open and closed questions.
This gave the survey-takers the opportunity to give their opinions and explain and clarify
their answers, as well as their doubts when it was considered relevant.
All Spanish and Portuguese dioceses were contacted and each was given the survey in
their respective language. In addition to these 90 entities, other related organizations
that provide leadership initiatives found in the netnography were contacted as well. Close
to 100 surveys were sent and 58 completed surveys were received: 31 from Spain and
27 from Portugal.
For the qualitative approach, interviews of 10 relevant actors in the field of leadership
and religion who are impacting and contributing to the growth of leadership were
planned. There were five interviews from Spain and five from Portugal. In light of the
small amount of completed surveys received, the total number of interviews increased
from 10 to 21, 12 from Spain and 9 from Portugal. These personal encounters provided
in-depth and more developed answers to similar questions from our initial survey. The
people interviewed are representatives from exemplary dioceses in terms of leadership
formation, institutes and universities that motivate the knowledge and practice in the
field as well as members from related foundations and key institutions in the religious
scenario in both countries. Contributing to this, two focus groups were created with 11
people from Spain and 8 from Portugal. Some of the people in the focus groups had
previously been interviewed individually. This was done as a way to discuss the topic
simultaneously and in conjunction. The flow of the discussion brought critical topics to
the table such as the concept that should be used to address leadership in the Church,
the type of leadership needed in the Spanish and Portuguese Catholic Church, how this
should take place, and the opportunities that this type of leadership represents.
4. Results
This study has provided key results that should be taken into consideration in order to
understand the final conclusions of the research.
On the one hand, within the Spanish context and in terms of the survey, the initial
element to understand is that the 73.3% of the organizations that answered the survey
affirm conducting leadership initiatives, as opposed to a 26.7% who admit they do not.
Of these, the most widely used style of initiatives are formations, occasional conferences
or talks, retreats, and international experiences, which are listed in order of popularity.
Concerning fundamental concepts, most survey takers agree that the style of leadership
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necessary for the Spanish Catholic Church is a visionary one, closely followed by
affiliative, democratic, and coaching. It is important to note that nobody thought that
authoritative leadership is necessary. The skills most valued in a leader are
communication skills, with 70%, the capacity to influence, inspire and motivate, with a
60%, conflict management, with 53.3%, and the capacity to establish goals, with 50%.
The other proposed skills, which included resilience, personal knowledge, innovation,
assertiveness, and result-orientation received lesser percentages, between 16.7% and
10%. Addressing the issue of Covid-19, 90% of the organizations believe that new
leadership initiatives are necessary in times of crisis and gave the pandemic as an
example.
Within the Portuguese context, the survey explained similar results. 70.4% of the
respondents affirmed to conducting leadership initiatives within their organization. The
most used are formations and occasional conferences or talks. Concerning leadership
styles that the Portuguese Catholic Church ought to follow, the most popular one was
affiliative, followed by visionary, democratic, and coaching. Again, none of the survey
takers thought that an authoritative approach to leadership is necessary. Concerning the
figure of a leader, the skills necessary to be an effective leader were said to be
communication skills, with 81.5%, the capacity to influence, inspire and motivate, with
66.7%, the ability to innovate, with 40%, conflict management skills, with 37% and the
capacity to establish goals, with 33%. This order appears to be the same as the Spanish
survey results. Nonetheless, for Portuguese respondents, innovation is a skill perceived
as being more necessary. Addressing the issue of Covid-19, a similar percentage thought
that leadership initiatives are necessary in times of crisis, such as the pandemic. 81.5%
of organizations believed this to be true.
Qualitative research results were collected using best practices examples. The institutions
that are carrying out best practices in terms of development, encouragement and
promotion of religious leadership in the Iberian Peninsula include dioceses and relevant
religious organizations. They are:
− Diocese of Solsona, in Spain. This is a great example of constant leadership formation.
Autem is the name of the program that this diocese is putting forward for the third
consecutive year. It was conceived with two principles, that the parish needs
transformation and that priests need to be ready to lead. This program forms
leadership and teambuilding within the framework of the 21st century.
− Diocese of Leiria-Fátima, in Portugal. This diocese serves as another example of the
importance of leadership formation within the Portuguese Catholic Church.
Particularly, its school Razões de Esperança, offers a course that combines
fundamental dimensions of the faith with enabling the performance of pastoral agents.
− The organization Pastores Gregis Christi, in Spain. They offer a course in leadership
for priests who want to transform their parish. The course is taught by pastoral
experts, psychologists, coaches, direction consultants and a priest. It offers four
modules of formation as well as parallel personal accompaniment for the participants.
− The Management and Leadership for Ecclesiastic Forepeople Program, in Portugal. This
is a program conducted collaboratively by the Portuguese Catholic University and the
Lisbon Catholic School of Business and Economics. Its main objective is to develop
leadership practices for the entities that are responsible for the functioning of the
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Catholic Church in Portugal by stimulating entrepreneurial attitudes and improving the
use of digital communication technologies. They also focus on team building, among
other skills. This formation is for bishops, administrators, religious institutes, Catholic
schools and other related groups.
− The group Alpha, in both countries. They are present around the world and focus on
organizing sessions to discuss the fundamentals of Christian faith in a welcoming and
deliberative way. They gather together those who are curious into a specific
community and put them into what they call “Alpha Teams.”
5. Conclusions and Discussion
First and foremost, this study found that the concept of leadership has a wide meaning.
Although some organizations had a clear idea and a pre-existing focus on leadership
formation, the research team had to be specific and reiterate the logics of leadership in
religious organizations in order to approach and establish two-way conversations. This
was useful to understand the situation of leadership in religious organizations in Spain
and Portugal and was an initial approach to the final conclusion that there is still a lot to
learn about the importance or benefits of leadership.
Further conclusions show that it is useful to divide them into challenges and proposals.
Regarding challenges, when having to implement leadership initiatives, we have found
that the main obstacle is the lack of time and the lack of internal and institutional
coordination. These two aspects could also be related to the lack of clarity in the concept
of leadership within religion. Moreover, the lack of human resources and investment are
two other challenges that, although not as persistent as the aforementioned, should be
considered as well.
Skepticism plays a role against leadership formation, which poses another challenge.
Although there is skepticism, it cannot be denied that some organizations are pushing
forward leadership formation and developing the leadership in Spain. For this reason, the
last challenge relates to the two opposite realities that there is inequality in these
initiatives. First of all, there is an evident inequality within organizations, as some
assemble and are known for their trust in leadership and others look at it with skepticism.
Secondly, there is also inequality within initiatives that should be considered and,
although we measure initiatives in general, some are solid and consistent programs as
opposed to others that are occasional, sporadic and infrequent. Additionally, a great
majority of the respondents agree that leadership is necessary in times of crisis, however,
this statement shows that, although the respondents are in agreement, only some
initiatives are considered consistent and impactful.
To address these challenges in a general way, a study should be carried out that focuses
on clarifying the concept of leadership, on investing and communicating ecclesiastic
leadership, on improving human and spiritual formation, on improving time
management, vision and coordination, and on uniting in action and accepting and being
conscious of the fact that contributions of leadership do not go against the gospel and
the faith. In addition, for in-depth proposals related to Covid-19, the proposed initiatives
should focus on sharing experiences and reflections, as well as how to manage the
mourning phase, accompaniment initiatives, conflict resolution, crisis management, the
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capacity to create enthusiasm, the renovation and innovation of the service vocation, or
to take advantage and make the most out of this situation, to name some examples.
All in all, it is not that Catholic communities in Spain and Portugal are not engaging in
leadership practices, however, there is room for improvement. As a new field, concepts
should be introduced that emphasize the positive impact of this practice. Moreover, it is
important to remember that leadership formation is indeed something that exists and,
therefore, can be taught and learned through various means. The initiatives that have
already actively implemented leadership, demonstrate useful results for their
participants. They understand that proper leadership can improve the relationship
between the members of these religious communities and increase communication and
engagement.
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OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
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SOCIAL NETWORKS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
IN THE TOURISM SECTOR
DAVID CALDEVILLA-DOMÍNGUEZ
davidcaldevilla@ccinf.ucm.es
Graduate and Doctor in Information Sciences. Graduate in Teaching. Lecturer in the Faculty of Information
Sciences at the UCM (Spain). Lecturer at: U. Complutense, U. Europea de Madrid, IED, ESERP and IPAM.
Index h 17. 6th Spanish author in published works, 13th in cited articles and 20th in citations received out of
747 authors. Secretary General of the Spanish Society for Ibero-American Communication Studies and of the
International Forum on Communication and Public Relations.
ALMUDENA BARRIENTOS-BÁEZ
almudena.barrientosbaez@unir.net
PhD with international mention in Education and lecturer at the Univ. Europea and the Univ. Internacional de
La Rioja (Spain). Master in Protocol Management, Production, Organization and Design of Events, area of
Communication and Master in Tourism Accommodation Management. Degree in Tourism and Teaching. She is
part of the project new values, governance, financing and public audiovisual services for the Internet society:
European and Spanish contrasts (RTI2018-096065-B-I00) of research of the State Programme of R+D+I.
JUAN ENRIQUE GONZÁLVEZ-VALLÉS
jegonzalvez@ucm.es
PhD in Information Sciences and Degree in Journalism. He is a member of the Department of Theories and
Analysis of the Department of Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He is a
member of the Concilium Research Group as well as of the Spanish Society of Ibero-American
Communication Studies and Forum XXI. He was director of the International University Congress on
Communication: Contents, Research, Innovation and Teaching, and is currently a member of its Organizing
Committee and Scientific Committee.
MANUEL BLANCO-PÉREZ
mblancoperez@us.es
Doctor in Communication and Literature. Master in Communication and Culture, University of Seville. Master
in Social Economy. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Marketing and Communication at the
University of Cadiz (Spain) and in Journalism at the University of Seville.
Abstract
Tourism is a social and scientific phenomenon. From here, its knowledge must be approached from a
complete vision and not limited to a single discipline or set of them separately, since it is multidisciplinary.
The role of international relations in tourism is a phenomenon with great economic, social, cultural, and
environmental consequences, which can condition the behavior of tourists and the tourism sector as a
whole. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has affected the entire world population, the main economic
engines of each and every one of the countries and international relations derived from the tourism sector.
The coronavirus has not only affected the people who are under its effects, but it has also changed the
global perception of reality just as the media have been forced to create a new way of communicating.
Meanwhile, social networks have been the fastest and easiest way to disseminate all kinds of information
and misinformation, adopting new formats and new anti-hoax measures (fake news). They have been
effective and it is identified that thanks to the different platforms, citizens have found themselves
somewhat more sheltered, understood and have received information about what is happening around
their lives. Due to the closure of borders and the decrease in flights, worldwide tourism suffers serious
consequences and for all this, the incidence of the coronavirus in the economy and international relations
are protagonists of a difficult reality and a prompt and expected recovery.
Keywords
Comunicación; Turismo; Redes sociales; Relaciones internacionales; Covid-19.
How to cite this article
Caldevilla-Domínguez, David; Barrientos-Báez, Almudena; Gonzálvez-Vallés, Juan Enrique; Blanco-Pérez,
Manuel. Social networks and international relations in the tourism sector. Thematic dossier International
Relations and Social Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit,
https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT21.13
Article received on February 18, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 26, 2021
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Social networks and international relations in the Tourism sector
David Caldevilla-Domínguez, Almudena Barrientos-Báez,
Juan Enrique Gonzálvez-Vallés, Manuel Branco-Pérez
192
SOCIAL NETWORKS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
IN THE TOURISM SECTOR
1
DAVID CALDEVILLA-DOMÍNGUEZ
ALMUDENA BARRIENTOS-BÁEZ
JUAN ENRIQUE GONZÁLVEZ-VALLÉS
MANUEL BLANCO-PÉREZ
1. Introduction
Tourism can be addressed in a multispectral way, from its social aspects, its cultural
importance, its impact on the natural environment, and, of course, its economic strand
(Caldevilla-Domínguez et al., 2020). It is not even limited to be seen as an industry of
the tertiary and free time sector, and tourism is the result of public and private, and
governmental and popular actions. In spite of that, there is limited academic action
regarding this field, thus leading to an analytical gap in the subject and its link to
International Relations. Such gap can be filled with the multidisciplinary contribution
derived from the study of local and/or national tourism, including its economic, cultural,
and other strands, as a differentiating attractive aspect (Martínez-Rolán et al., 2019).
There is also the gap linked to the influence of information and communications
technologies (ICTs): since through their implementation in the tourism sphere, users
with intermediate digital competences (Fernández-Cavia et al., 2020, Chinchay-
Villarreyes et al., 2020) are influencing the industry, specifically by endorsing products
or services via social networks (Matassi & Boczkowski, 2020). In the current digital
context, relation ambits, which a priori have opposite origins, are linked (Ganga-
Contreras et al., 2017), anticipating the multidisciplinarity climate that should
characterize tourism research: The participatory culture of prosuming (Martín-Antoranz
et al., 2020) imposed by ICTs environment (ultimately, the Web is strongly related to
various forms of consumption (Gonzálvez-Vallés et al., 2020), the tourism industry and
the International Relations linked to it. In the first one, there are practices like crucibles,
the collective intelligence and the collaborative culture between users and threats such
as the ones pointed out by Cáceres (2009) and Barrientos-Báez et al. (2018), while the
second promotes the homogenization of productive processes, sacralizing profits and
1
Article translated by Carlos Javier Rivas Quintero (University of the Andes, Mérida, Venezuela).
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business concentration. The third is the maximization of the human relation science,
expressed in its terms of greatest volume and consequences, but also more influenced
by micro-managing. Between these three subjects of study there is a gray area. It is here
where users with intermediate digital competences are influencing tourism industries,
specifically by endorsing products or services via social networks (Matassi and
Boczkowski, 2020, Araújo and González, 2019).
This work partially emerges from reflections on the new media ecosystem and its relation
with one science field –the study of the tourism phenomenon- which has a component in
and impact on International Relations.
In tourism science, the emergence of social networks changed the communicative
paradigm (Caldevilla-Domínguez, 2014), transforming how people from all the countries
and social classes access information, plan, and share their trips, allowing suppliers to
interact dynamically and directly with users, thus facilitating the adaptation of their
activity to the new realities with the implementation of effective feedback. However,
various studies show there is still a lack of knowledge of how some initiatives can lead to
a better use of social networks (Oliveira et al., 2017, Hays et al., 2013, Infante-Limón,
2014). Social networks gain strength from specific environments (Calderón et al., 2017).
This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of social networks’ potential in
tourism and tourism’s relation with International Relations.
2. Design and Method
This article is a narrative review aimed to search and retrieve documents concerning the
implementation of ICTs in tourism promotion and tourism activities that can be linked to
International Relations, to respond to the initial statement. To this end, various sources
from relevant subjects have been consulted in books, articles, studies, and scientific
journals. Criteria for information searching included: studies, articles, and monographs
published until 2020, in Spanish or English, with open access to the full text (with the
possibility of giving way to older material if it provided a relevant theoretical basis). The
exclusion criteria included articles that were markedly opposite to a scientific source,
such as opinion articles, or computer access material produced by users without being
grounded in expertise. The search strategy was based on tourism, International
Relations, and ICTs descriptors, relevant to the subject of study.
3. Development
3.1. Tourism
As a phenomenon, it can be affirmed that tourism has elements and manifestations prior
to its generalization and recognition as a proper economic sector: having produced
business branches very open to asymmetric communication (Navarro Celis et al., 2020),
such as cultural tourism (Araújo and Domínguez, 2012), or entering the thriving
sustainability market (Barrientos-Báez et al., 2020a, León-León et al., 2018).
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The implementation of tourism science with pecuniary purposes to reality has generated
these branches, thus responding to a variety of audiences segmented by economic
criteria (Caldevilla-Domínguez et al., 2019). Due to these factors, tourism phenomenon
is studied multilaterally, resulting in investigative subsections such as tourism
psychology, tourism politics, tourism economy, and tourism sociology, as means to
determine the segments and different types of demand and target audiences.
All this makes it impossible for the definition of tourism to be limited to its economic
strand. A reductionist vision of the tourism theory only to leisure time underpinned by
the fact that tourism requires its practitioners to have time and means to travel, driven
by their searching for entertainment, being these conditioning factors necessary but
insufficient for the study of the tourism social phenomenon.
In 1991, The International Conference on Travel and Tourism Statistics, approved by
UNWTO (World Tourism Organization), signified the zenith of research efforts in the
subject between 1975 and 1985, from both international organizations and interested
countries, with Canada standing out. Basing on previous studies, WTO defined internal
and international tourism, creating a classification of tourism activities. The basic
definition was, “the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their
usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other
purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place
visited (WTO, 1991). Furthermore, Goeldner (2000) defines it as “the processes,
activities, and outcomes arising from the relationships and the interactions among
tourists, tourism suppliers, host governments, host communities, and surrounding
environments that are involved in the attracting and hosting of visitors”. His approach
limits the scope of analysis to the perspective from the country source of tourists, the
relationships among them and the business entities providing services to them.
Regarding its characteristics, the tourism product is mainly “time” for sightseeing, staying
in hotels, and travelling. It is also the product of “seasons”, since certain dates increase
the value of territories (Fernández-Paradas and Sánchez Guzmán, 2018). These time
choices entail a “life section” that is different, enjoyable, and of a leisure or work nature,
based on the enjoyment of experiences in places outside or different from people’s usual
environment. Like any other service, it is intangible and subjective from both sides of the
service chain. The objective is to make the client feel sensations and emotions through
new experiences; with the purpose of achieving that feeling of living something new,
which is why it is essential for the business, and the Academy, to train those in charge
of providing these experiences (Barrientos-Báez et al., 2020b). It is not about offering
people material goods but creating and meeting their expectations of the experiences
awaiting them, the environment they will experience and the memories they will cherish.
Especially, the unique selling proposition is satisfying the expectations that people were
helped to generate. Using tangible goods is an essential part of the process to create the
expectations the client seeks to experience such as those involved in transportation, the
food available for visitors, accommodation amenities, and a very relevant aspect recently,
the safety of the trip, which all combined determines the quality of the service enjoyed
by the traveller. Now more than ever, the market is governed by clients’ public opinions
(Feijoo-Fernández and Guerreo-Cortés, 2018). Other characteristics of the tourism
product that influence service quality are:
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− Expiration: the inability of stocking a service. Service time: either you use it or lose
it.
− Aggregability and modularity: tourism product is formed by “mixing” diverse
“ingredients”, some of which can be replaced with other equal or similar ones.
− Subjectivity, individuality, and immediacy: it is subjective since it depends on clients
and suppliers’ circumstances at the time of the tourism experience taking place. Based
on such circumstances, the level and type of satisfaction will vary from one client to
another.
− Production-consumption simultaneity: the client participates in finishing the product
and is part of its final result.
− Heterogeneity: the product is made up of a myriad of factors, many of which are not
foreseeable or programmable, thus the experience is never exactly the same; for
example, due to the aforementioned simultaneity.
− It is not transportable: the client is transported, not the product.
− Seasonality: subject to fluctuations in demand due to the general and specific weather
conditions.
− Interdependence: with the rest of its sector and related economic areas.
− Easily copied: it is extremely easy for anyone to gain a deep understanding of the
product.
− High fixed costs: the necessary infrastructure to provide the service has to be
constantly maintained in proper conditions, regardless of whether they are being used.
Therefore, we can affirm that the constituent parts of tourism are affected by the very
occurrences and types of relationships that cause and surround trips: among visitors and
entities managing these trips, service suppliers that allow and fill with content tourists’
stay, and legislation applicable in the origin, destination and internationally.
3.1.1. Travellers
WTO has an essential glossary that defines traveller as “someone who moves between
different geographic locations, for any purpose and any duration.” The terms of
international tourism that we have used here are defined by WTO (1991) as follows:
− Visitor: a traveller taking a trip to a main destination outside his/her usual
environment, for less than a year, for any main purpose other than to be employed
by a resident entity in the country or place visited.
− Tourist: A visitor who travels to a country other than that in which he/she has his/her
usual residence for at least one night but not more than one year, and whose main
purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the
country visited.
− Excursionist: a visitor who travels to a country other than that in which he/she has
his/her usual residence and that is outside his/her usual environment, for less than
24 hours without spending the night in the country visited. His/her main purpose of
visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the country
visited.
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3.1.2. Analysis of tourism multidisciplinarity
The different definitions of current tourism are product of constituent principles from
various disciplines.
Precisely, the diversity of conceptual approaches concerning tourism has represented an
obstacle to the creation of a comprehensible theoretical framework to understand and
classify the issues regarding this subject. From economy, sociology, and tourism, there
have only been discussions on the economic strand and the sociocultural impact. This is
due to the preconception that scholars of this phenomenon have tools from other
disciplines to understand it. But this leaves very little room to determine what tourism
per se has to say, as a scientific discipline, about itself as such phenomenon. Studying
tourism from this angle entails acknowledging it has innated means of analysis in those
subjects that are inherent to it. However, as aforementioned, its scholars rely on a
treasure of theories and methods that originated from various other disciplines of social
sciences: politics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, ecology, geography, economy,
history, etc., which are fields of study pertaining to other subjects (Tribe, 1997), and
that are somewhat related to tourism: such as marketing, administration, leisure, and
entertainment, directly linkable to the use of social networks (Parra-López et al., 2014).
Although tourism touches various facets of human life, the economic and commercial
aspects have received a favorable treatment in this sense: probably because they have
constituted a resource for the development of third world countries. A money-making
machine in many economies. This preconception has sometimes become a reality, while
in other cases is still no more than a false promise (Fiorello, 2010; Boccardi et al., 2008).
This has caused the field of economy to be the one in charge of generating the largest
quantity of applicable theoretical-conceptual contributions. Tourism’s socio-
anthropological aspects, which we have also mentioned already, have not been immune
to all this, causing terms related to “subject of tourism”, “role” or “actor” of tourism, etc.,
to be coined. This multidisciplinary intervention in tourism-subject has promoted the
emergence of the concepts of tourism geography, tourism psychology, tourism policy, or
tourism legislation. The qualifier tourism operates, in this case, as the nexus that
connects tourism, geography, and psychology; disciplines that are not epistemologically
related to tourism, but which have had an enormous impact on the initial conception of
professionals in the sector. The noun-adjective tourism must allude to what the whole
name represents, and not partially linked realities. Tourism is a complex and human
phenomenon (Tribe, 1997); hence it needs the participation of the aforementioned
disciplines: not only in an aggregative sense, but also in a way that all the disciplines
involved can benefit from the total contribution. Tourism is a phenomenon that extends
to various sectors of human existence, individually and socially: if tourism has favorable
financial effects upon an area, it would also influence, in one way or another, the social
aspect. Hence, the participation of economy and sociology will be necessary to study its
effects and characteristics. Therefore, it is essential to note how important the economic,
social, political, and environmental configurations are in the creation of tourism’s
theoretical corpus: acknowledging that, in accordance with the context surrounding this
phenomenon, it must be subject of a comprehensive study including all the applicable
disciplines.
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Acknowledging tourism as a subject of a multidisciplinary study must not entail that they
would “confiscate” said subject and, with it, the exclusivity on knowledge regarding this
matter. The sense of education in tourism is to understand, explain, and substantiate
tourism knowledge, but as stated before, from a comprehensive and truly
multidisciplinary perspective. All this without falling, to the extent possible, in partisan
preconceptions associated to these multiple disciplines that, consciously or
unconsciously, could hinder the ultimate goal of multidisciplinarity. Tourism’s scholars
must not limit themselves to the particular approaches of their fields but use the
appropriate contributions of each discipline in a way that the subject under discussion
(tourism) can be reformulated. This interdisciplinarity, of which we are constantly
speaking, gets very close to the concept of hybridization: aiming that this subject cease
to be supported only by a few chairs that are erected in “the” theoretical framework of
tourism. These special academic needs derive from tourism being, in its origin, a subject
of study essentially human, whose activity spectrum permeates diverse layers of the
aforementioned humanity. These factors result in the necessity of disciplinary
convergence in each one of these layers that allow forming an understandable applicable
whole: to address aspects derived from free time, consumption, social trends and cultural
context, individual motivations and views, as well as the very context of tourism activity.
With the latter taking care of its policies, business models, and how they influence their
social environments, its development regarding globalization, sociocultural
characteristics, and the adaptation processes to the modernity of tourist destinations. To
this end, the creation of conceptual-theoretical schemes that define the subject of study,
called “tourism”, are necessary. It should not receive the tittle of science merely for its
theoretical and practical framework combination, nor should its study be limited to an
epistemological question, nor should it be proposed that it be limited to being an ordinary
subject field exclusively oriented toward the execution of the activity and its ramifications
in International Relations, since the main problem it faces is not only its development as
business, but how to understand it and redirect it as an undisputed reality, aiming at the
comprehensive development of destination countries and serving as a positive nexus to
unite nations.
3.2 International Relations
They were initially conceived in an entirely historical-political light, but have increasingly
taken into consideration the economic, cultural, and social components in recent times.
After all, the science of International Relations addresses social relations, whether these
are the relations that originate among individuals, groups of individuals or both, with the
preeminence it gives to the relations between States. There is consensus (WTO, 1991)
that International Relations address a living part of social reality, which makes them a
social science. Arenal (1990) states, “International Relations are configured as an
integration and synthesis discipline of the data provided by other disciplines, while the
objective of its research provides superior content, which grants its special character to
it at the core of social sciences,” implying that International Relations are not limited to
the relations between States, extending to the interactions between people and groups
located in different countries; relations between groups internationally, and not only
between governments.
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This perspective is relevant since practice has demonstrated the necessity to understand
international events in essence, thus allowing attaining categorizations of the expectable
or predictable behavior in International Relations. Some authors argue that International
Relations must be studied as a specialized branch of political science, disregarding the
study of other non-strictly political actors and areas, for example, the geographic
constraints, the ideological phenomena, NGO, the state of public opinion, etc. Although
they have certainly been considered a part of political science, now their interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary character tends to be highlighted.
The scope of International Relations encompasses International Political Economy, Law,
Philosophy, Geopolitics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and of course, Tourism:
with particular emphasis on the analysis and materialization of Groups-State foreign
policy. Rodríguez-Torres and Puerta-Rodríguez (n.d.) state, “Hence, International
Economic Relations are defined as the extension of national economic relations to the
outside, which becomes a clear manifestation of its nature as Social Relations of
Production” (p. 8). And “we must also consider that these Relations are directly influenced
by the political relations that entail the existence of different States, hence they will also
depend on the domestic and foreign economic policy implemented by countries,
constrained at their basis by the different development levels of participants’ productive
forces” (p. 9). It is possible to affirm that economic relations on an international scale,
based on their complex and multispectral nature and based on the sector in which they
develop, are five: commercial, monetary, financial, collaborative/cooperative, and for
economic integration. González-Gómez (1990) states “[…] the discipline of international
relations emerges to satisfy the need of popular masses, on the one hand of
governments, and on the other, to understand the complicated current international
panorama […], therefore, the discipline begins as a science of great powers and to serve
their interests, although in fact it is of interest to all the nations in the world” (p. 3).
Foresight studies of International Relations aim to support the decision-making processes
that enhance the most positive developments of the international scene, minimizing the
negative ones. International Relations, being a science, are not a normative science:
their purpose is not establishing behavioral norms or principles of the actors involved or
individuals per se, being the economic strand important.
3.3. Applied ICTs
According to Araújo and Domínguez (2012) the key to an effective digital communication
lies in “searching ways of managing it and making it attractive to users”, geared towards
generating the need of consuming the product. Tourism is probably one of the activities
that have been influenced the most by Information and Communications Technologies
(Altamirano et al., 2016) after teaching with regard to its previous establishment
(Correyero, 2003). The action of new digital communication technologies permeates the
very existence of travel thanks to the modern Orwellian telescreens: mobile devices with
geolocation applications capable of assisting travellers with vital or minor aspects. Social
networks affect how advertisements are perceived, by facilitating the contrast between
the experience being advertised and the impression of thousands of travellers (Martínez-
Sala et al., 2019). Therefore, we can affirm that the traditional ways of obtaining
information (and even of advertising) have been left behind, with the risks that hoaxes
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entail, a blight on certain economic sectors such the hospitality industry (and certainly
tourism) since sources must be compared and that is hardly ever made (Ruiz Rico, 2020).
The tourist 2.0 is an independent and technologically capable tourist promoter, since they
rely on a collaborative digital community (Sarmiento & Terceño, 2018). Social networks
are an ideal space to research the market and delve into the particularities of users,
especially of digital native adults, from 18 to 30 years of age. “Knowing the personality
of others is an essential ability to have successful relationships” (Martínez-Valerio, 2016),
and within this digital communication context, social networks emerge like an open-door
platform leading to the inner minds of these generations. The daily number of trends that
appear on social networks from which brands could benefit is innumerable; but they must
be assessed professionally to determine which ones concern their audiences and specific
market niches. Tourism sector has made used of the Web 2.0, and especially, of social
networks, making them promotional tools in everyday life, leading to the emergence of
specific social networks for this sector: virtual communities launched by users. For any
tourism institution or company, it is indispensable to know how to operate within the
social networks environment to relate better with its users or potential travellers.
4. Results
The importance of tourism in International Relations is mainly perceived in how these
disciplines are interrelated: something noticeable in the systemic approach and in the
elements that are inherent to tourism: its multidisciplinary, aggregative, dynamic, and
open nature.
The systemic approach is the most appropriate one to understand this “tourism system”
for several reasons: first, because it highlights the interdependence in tourism; various
relevant disciplines working towards achieving a common goal. There is also the open
nature of tourism as a system, having a flexible, dynamic, and changing structure. New
concepts and facts are constantly being implemented to tourism. Additionally, it is
affected by multiple external influences leading to both negative and positive results on
any subject that enters its contact sphere. It is also important to bear in mind the
complexity and variety of the tourism discipline as seen in the varied offer of travel
packages and types of tourism, and as it can be seen in the intense competitiveness
within the sector, including the big companies worldwide.
The way how the COVID-19 phenomenon has boosted the implementation of ICTs and
the even greater growth of Social Networks has generated the acceleration in this
systemic interrelation: thus, enhancing tourism user communities (internationally cross-
cutting communities, with English increasingly becoming the lingua franca) despite the
logical recent decline in the king-strand concerning the study of tourism: the economic
strand.
Therefore, at an international level, there have been digital exchanges of information in
the tourism area, and it has been possible thanks to social networks. Due to them, a
portion of the current pre-COVID international relations has permitted this relation sub-
sphere in the tourism sector to keep on functioning despite the circumstances, promoting
interest, demand, and information for the future. Here lies the importance of international
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Juan Enrique Gonzálvez-Vallés, Manuel Branco-Pérez
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relations for the tourism discipline, as well as part of the added value provided by global
digitalization to it.
5. Conclusions
The international nature of social relations is undeniable, regardless of whom their
protagonists are and whether they take place within a State or, on the contrary, by
breaking its limits. We are speaking of relationships among nations, groups, cities:
between groups and individuals, and between individuals: being tourism a paradigmatic
example of International Relations not directly linked to States of big groups.
International Relations as a science, aim to support the decision-making processes that
enhance the most positive developments of the international scene, minimizing the
negative ones. They are not a normative science (but a science after all) since their
purpose is not establishing behavioral norms or principles of the actors involved or
individuals per se, being the economic strand important.
Meanwhile, tourism is both a newly developed social phenomenon and a science
regarding how it must be studied and treated academically. Thus, knowledge here must
be attained through a real multifaceted approach, without falling in preconceptions
derived from a single field of knowledge; something that is much more effectively
achieved with a systemic approach that allows perceiving how this phenomenon is related
to the rest of reality and sciences. It should not receive the tittle of science merely for its
theoretical and practical framework combination, nor should it be limited to an
epistemological question, nor should it be an ordinary subject field exclusively oriented
toward the practical ambit and its ramifications in International Relations, since the main
problem it faces is not only its development as business, but how to understand it and
redirect it as an undisputed reality, aiming at the comprehensive development of
destination countries and serving as a positive nexus to unite nations.
The role of International Relations within this phenomenon and the tourism discipline
bears a significant economic and social weight, although the current situation of the
tourism-economic activity being at a standstill due to COVID-19 offers the unique
opportunity of studying this phenomenon with relative independence from this variable.
Tourists 2.0 are now active subjects of the communicative process at an international
level in the tourism industry: beyond their traditional importance as “clients”, their
“digital” role now is to be advertisers, promoters, and critics of the products they
consume, and the services being offered to them.
This change of paradigm regarding their inner “I” entails the need of rethinking the
communication strategies based on the new digital environment, given the fact that the
new publics in the sectors are native of it, and have created their own collaborative
communities in it; communities capable of removing a large portion of the reputational
control from the hands of companies, and to keep operating and exercising their influence
during times of recession in the sector.
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