China's Framing of Covid-19 on Twitter: Social Media as a Tool of Digital Diplomacy

In recent years online media spaces have assumed significant communicative, cultural and political relevance all over the world. Such social media platforms as Twitter (t.co) have become critical political spaces for the creation, contestation and dissemination of public information. The advent of new media has both dramatically increased accessibility to unfiltered information, made possible the participation of different actors on a global stage and empowered people to express their opinions. Hence, especially nowadays when the globe is in the grip of the Covid-19 crisis, the narrative on such social media platforms has become vitally important. The coronavirus pandemic has made the world face the inexorable certainty of digital reality, and it has also shown evidence of the need for national actors to participate in all possible forms of communication. As Covid-19 thrusted the world's population into their homes and compelled multiple operations and processes to move online, diplomatic engagements have been primed to fit the order and arrangement of altered circumstances. Thanks to global access to new media, it is possible to raise the degree of global understanding and knowledge about one's country international and domestic identity. Hence, China decided to increase its presence online and spread China's voice internationally. In this context, this research project aims at contributing to recent academic discussion on digital diplomacy and, therefore, on the use of social media platforms as a tool of effective public diplomacy. Recent research has proved evidence of China network building on t.co. However, the analysis of Chinese politicians and journalists' discourse framing on social media has not been yet subjected to further research. Thence, this research study, by benefiting of the diversity of framing theories, closely analyses how Chinese politicians and journalists employ different frames in their discourses on t.co to construct the social reality around Covid-19. By analysing the interaction between Chinese politicians and journalists frames with the American public discourse from 23 January 2020 to 19 March 2020, this research aims at depicting the leverage of influence of Chinese digital diplomacy on the American public discourse on t.co.