Truan N.A.L. & Fischer F. (2023), Die digitale Hashtag-Kampagne rund um #CoronaEltern und #CoronaElternRechnenAb: Twitter-Positionierungspraktiken in der Pandemie

Article

Author(s):
Friederike Fischer , Naomi Truan

Year: 2023

Journal für Medienlinguistik 5(1): 1-33.

Keywords: Twitter, hashtags, COVID-19, pandemic, digital activism, community, protest, positioning
Language(s): German

Abstract:
As kindergartens and schools closed down during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, two hashtags emerged on Twitter: #CoronaEltern (#CoronaParents) and #CoronaEltern­Rech­nenAb (#CoronaParentsDocumentTheCosts). In this paper, we examine the positioning practices around both hashtags as expres­sions of “digital activism” (Joyce 2010: VIII). One characteristic of the hashtag campaign is that political demands are hardly ever made di­rectly. Rather, the participants resort to five main linguistic patterns: (1) they address different target groups; (2) they refer to different protagonists; (3) in the subcorpus #CoronaEltern specifically, they constitute themselves as a collective through (4) the recurring use of first-person narratives; (5) and generalization and typification. Our findings show that #CoronaParents are not just parents in times of a pandemic: #CoronaParents are only those who see themselves as such, participating in an evolving, at times misunderstood commu­nity.

https://doi.org/doi:10.21248/jfml.2023.48

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