Twitter's Agenda-Setting Role: A Study of Twitter Strategy for Political Diversion

Abstract

This study verified the effectiveness of Donald Trump's Twitter campaign in guiding agen-da-setting and deflecting political risk and examined Trump's Twitter communication strategy and explores the communication effects of his tweet content during Covid-19 pandemic. We collected all tweets posted by Trump on the Twitter platform from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020.We used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis with a fixed effects model to analyze the existence of the Twitter strategy. The correlation between the number of con-firmed daily Covid-19 diagnoses and the number of particular thematic tweets was investigated using time series analysis. Empirical analysis revealed Twitter's strategy is used to divert public attention from negative Covid-19 reports during the epidemic, and it posts a powerful political communication effect on Twitter. However, findings suggest that Trump did not use false claims to divert political risk and shape public opinion.