Donald Trump and COVID-19 on Twitter

Abstract

This chapter asks: How has Donald Trump communicated about COVID-19 on Twitter? How have conspiracy theories influenced his Twitter communication about COVID-19? Utilising critical discourse analysis, it analysed tweets in which Trump communicated about COVID-19 and showed that he used social media to spread conspiracy theories and fake news about COVID-19.

The findings show that Donald Trump uses social media such as Twitter for spreading far-right ideology, conspiracy theories and fake news. He makes use of a variety of linguistic ideological devices. In the context of COVID-19, Trump has spread a variety of conspiracy theories to his millions of followers, which has contributed to the intensification of risks and harms at the time of the worst global health crisis in 100 years.

Citation

Fuchs, C. (2021), "Donald Trump and COVID-19 on Twitter", Communicating COVID-19 (Society Now), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 191-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-720-720211011