López Obrador´s political communication and leadership with his followers through Twitter on Covid-19

Abstract

political communication in moments of crisis require an efficient strategy that guides the citizens on how to act correctly. Nowadays, most leaders use digital social networks as political instruments. President López Obrador is one of the politicians with the most followers (almost nine million) on the digital social network Twitter. The sanitary crisis due to Covid-19 keeps producing repercussions for what has studied the communication of the Mexican president. The objective of this paper is to analyze the leadership and political communication in the Mexican president’s tweets in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The communication constructs of communication, populism, charism, and strategic behavior were used to determine his political communication and leadership style. 631 tweets were analyzed by way of a qualitative methodology and a content analysis where 104 were concerning Covid-19. The results show that president López Obrador mainly uses an informative-communication style about his management with populist features. The paper concluded that the Mexican president didn´t use Twitter as an informative strategy for the health emergency which is the opposite of effective leadership and political communication during the crisis, either as a correct political instrument. In addition, adapting his style to the circumstances may be recommended.