Twitter’da Covid 19 Söylemlerinin Derlem Dilbilim Yöntemi ile İncelenmesi
Bu çalışma Covid 19 salgınının Türkiye’de ilk olarak görülmeye başladığı tarihlerde (Mart 2020) konu ile ilgili Twitter paylaşımlarını incelemektedir. Salgının ilk kez Türkiye’de görülmesiyle birlikte sosyal medyada konu ile ilgili yapılan paylaşımların bir kısmı, özel bir yazılım ile bir araya toplanarak 259 bin kelimelik özel bir derlem elde edildi. Bu derlem, Wordsmith adlı derlem dilbilim programı kullanarak ön incelemeye tabi tutuldu. Ön inceleme sonucunda elde edilen kelimeler risk iletişimi alan yazını dikkate alınarak semantik gruplara ayrıldı. Her bir semantik grup kelimelerin uyandırdığı duygular, sosyal ve kültürel bağlam dikkate alınarak incelendi ve raporlandı. Elde edilen bulgular Covid 19 salgını ile yapılan paylaşımların öncelikle bilgilendirme amacını taşıdıklarını vetehlike, güven, endişe ve dayanışma duygularını ifade ettiklerini göstermektedir. Ayrıca paylaşımların önemli bir kısmının sosyal medyanın eğlendirme amacına uygun olarak mizah özellikleri de taşıdıkları saptanmıştır.
The Corpus Linguistics Analysis of Covid-19 Discourses on Twitter
This study aims to examine Twitter discourses on Covid-19 during the first outbreak of the disease in Turkey (March 2020). A portion of Twitter messages shared after the appearance of the disease in Turkey was assembled into a special corpus of 259 thousand words. This special corpus was used in a pilot analysis using a CL software called Wordsmith (Seventh Version). The findings of the pilot analysis were categorised into semantic units vis-à-vis visavis the literature on risk communication. Feelings aroused by each semantic unit were examined in consideration of the social and cultural context and the results were reported. The findings reveal that Twitter messages as to Covid 19 are primarily aimed to inform as well as denote such feelings as threat, confidence, concern and solidarity. Also, a considerable amount of Twitter messages are found to possess humourous features in line with the entertainment objective of social media tools.
With the spread of Covid-19 (or the Coronavirus) across the globe, news related to the pandemic has begun to dominate the traditional and new media in Turkey since the emergence of the first cases in the in the spring of 2020, deeply affecting the psychology of individuals as well as the whole society. In the first week of February, 2020, the Health Minister of Turkey, Fahrettin Koca, started to share informative videos and infographics about the new Coronavirus on his social media accounts. These early posts were aimed at explaining what the virus is and the measures to be taken. Some of them were prepared in response to misinformation on social media such as the claim that mouth washing with salty water prevents the virus. In the following days, both through the social media accounts of the Health Minister and the institutional accounts of the Ministry of Health informed the society on Covid 19 and responded to issues worrying the nation. Throughout the process, the decisions reached in the scientific board meetings and the developments about the course of Covid 19 in the country have been regularly reported through traditional as well as new media channels. In this context, institutions and news sources that are cognizant of the importance of social media in terms of getting news and sharing information have used social media widely and as effectively as possible.
In addition, people whose communication habits have changed for a while since the development of Web 2.0 (Interactive Web) have sought refuge in social media during the pandemic, especially during the quarantine periods, to get and share news, and of course for having fun and escaping from the grim reality. For this reason, this study tries to reveal the linguistic features and discourse patterns of the posts shared on Twitter in Turkey in the early phase of the Covid- 19 outbreak. The findings are interpreted to understand how Twitter plays a role in risk communication, considering the risk communication literature. To this aim, a corpus of Twitter posts in the early phases of the pandemic was compiled. This special corpus was analyzed using Corpus Linguistics (CL) tools, first by looking at frequencies and then by examining the semantic categories emerging from these lists vis-à-vis the literature on risk communication.
The findings of CL analyses reveal that most of the Turkish Twitter messages regarding Covid- 19 fall into the semantic category of ‘information.’ The posts in this semantic category include both news about the course of the pandemic and updates on the health status of individuals. The posts containing the measures taken or desired to be taken regarding the pandemic were examined under the semantic category of ‘measure.’ It has been found out that threats and danger perceptions related to the pandemic are conveyed through the posts in another important semantic category, i.e. ‘threat and danger.’ The posts in the ‘trust / concern’ category reflect the users' perceptions of trust in the measures taken regarding the pandemic as well as a distrust in the official institutions and their insufficiency in taking the necessary measures, all in all leading to an atmosphere of fear. Posts in the ‘solidarity / assistance’ semantic category express the wishes of the users and their positive thoughts about the pandemic. Finally, this study confirms that the ‘entertainment’ function of Twitter has also been a significant aspect of Twitter use throughout the pandemic, which is one of the most important purposes of social media use in general.
As approaches to risk communication are changing in the world due to the transformation of new communications and technologies, countries need to pay attention to this transformation. As Gamhewage (2013, 2014) explains, the most striking elements in this transformation are the loss of trust people have in health authorities, and the easiness of obtaining and sharing information on the Internet. With these transformational challenges, risk communication plays an important role in controlling and managing health crises. At this point, public relations have played a critical role in managing the risk related to Covid- 19. In addition, Tirkkonen and Luoma-aho (2011) believe that real-time dialogue via social media can contribute to building trust and putting the public into action. However, the literature examining risk communication in the West Nile Virus epidemic reminds us that strong negative emotions such as fear, insecurity and anger prevent effective communication in times of crisis. As a matter of fact, in international health crises such as Covid- 19, where high levels of uncertainty and concern prevail, misleading news (disinformation / infodemia) circulating on social media is one of the main obstacles to healthy crisis communication. In these cases, risk communication can add value to the society by accepting uncertainty and building trust, and can significantly support organizations' public relations in delivering important messages to the public and dealing with negative emotions.
