Tweeter-in-chief: Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s use of Twitter

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Sobel Cohen ◽  
Karen McIntyre

Rwanda has received international praise for its rapid development and is said to be undergoing a ‘technology revolution’ at the hands of President Paul Kagame who has been described as a ‘Digital President’. This quantitative content analysis of Kagame’s official Twitter account analysed the first ten years of his tweets and found that he primarily tweets in English, with a positive sentiment about cross-government and cross-border interactions and, in doing so, presents Rwanda as a progressive, democratic player that is connected multilaterally to both African and global affairs. Throughout the decade, Kagame’s tweets evolved from being domestically focused on self-promotion to more globally focused on foreign engagement. While these findings could be indicative of a semi-authoritarian state, they also point to the presence of ‘Twitter diplomacy’ and the use of soft power tactics, which become stronger and clearer in the latter part of the decade.

2020 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
Song Linlin ◽  

Since the establishment of the China (Heilongjiang) pilot free trade zone, the development of cross-border e-commerce with Russia has continued to increase speed and quality. With its geographical advantages and its comparative advantages in the Internet field, Heilongjiang Province promoted the rapid development of the Internet economy in Russia, fostered a new digital trade format represented by cross-border e-commerce, and promoted online and offline collaborative promotion of customs clearance logistics and financial services. The paper expounds foundation and development status of Heilongjiang Province’s cross-border e-commerce, analyzes in integrated development of digital economy with the Heilongjiang Province’s cross-border e-commerce with Russia, and further puts forward prospects and recommendations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 004728162110078
Author(s):  
Shanna Cameron ◽  
Alexandra Russell ◽  
Luke Brake ◽  
Katherine Fredlund ◽  
Angela Morris

This article engages with recent discussions in the field of technical communication that call for climate change research that moves beyond the believer/denier dichotomy. For this study, our research team coded 900 tweets about climate change and global warming for different emotions in order to understand how Twitter users rely on affect rhetorically. Our findings use quantitative content analysis to challenge current assumptions about writing and affect on social media, and our results indicate a number of arenas for future research on affect, global warming, and rhetoric.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (s1) ◽  
pp. 765-787
Author(s):  
Alfonso Corral ◽  
Leen d’Haenens

AbstractThe aim of this article is to analyze how the Spanish newspapers covered an international event such as the Egyptian spring from 2011 to 2013. From the perspective of the representation of Arab-Islamic issues, this study carries out a quantitative content analysis on the four reference newspapers in Spain (ABC, El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia) to find out whether there was an Islamophobic or Islamophilic treatment during the Egyptian revolution. The results of the 3,045 articles analyzed show that Spanish newspapers were remarkably interested in Egyptian events and that cultural discourses were not relevant in the coverage. However, it is necessary to specify these outcomes by newspaper, because each paper proposed its own take on the matter based on information provided by press agencies.


Author(s):  
Bárbara Castillo-Abdul ◽  
Daniela Jaramillo-Dent ◽  
Luis M. Romero-Rodríguez

The current media environment is complex and has important effects on all aspects of life, including beauty and health. In this sense, YouTube has become one of the main contexts for the dissemination of tutorials and content related to medical procedures such as the application of Botox. Thus, the present study constitutes the first exploratory analysis of YouTube videos in Spanish related to this procedure. A preliminary analysis of 221 YouTube videos yielded a final sample of the 50 most viewed videos within this genre. The analysis was carried out through a quantitative content analysis assessing the popularity of the videos, contact and emotive strategies by the creator, the credibility conveyed, and the characteristics of information about the procedure itself. Results suggest that these influencers align with mainstream Internet celebrity culture in practices that aim at increasing their following and views, as well as calls for subscriptions and visits to other platforms and profiles. Moreover, they include different strategies to establish their credibility but emphasize personal experience. The positive portrayal of the procedure, including positive emotions and content that highlights the benefits, is interesting and supports the commercial nature of much of the content.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne M. Almgren ◽  
Tobias Olsson

Abstract Social plugins for sharing news through Facebook and Twitter have become increasingly salient features on news sites. Together with the user comment feature, social plugins are the most common way for users to contribute. The wide use of multiple features has opened new areas to comprehensively study users’ participatory practices. However, how do these opportunities to participate vary between the participatory spaces that news sites affiliated with local, national broadsheet and tabloid news constitute? How are these opportunities appropriated by users in terms of participatory practices such as commenting and sharing news through Facebook and Twitter? In addition, what differences are there between news sites in these respects? To answer these questions, a quantitative content analysis has been conducted on 3,444 articles from nine Swedish online newspapers. Local newspapers are more likely to allow users to comment on articles than are national newspapers. Tweeting news is appropriated only on news sites affiliated with evening tabloids and national morning newspapers. Sharing news through Facebook is 20 times more common than tweeting news or commenting. The majority of news items do not attract any user interaction.


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