Joe Biden Vs Donald Trump: the Impact of Coronavirus on the U.S

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FACULTY OF SOCIAL STUDIES

Joe Biden vs Donald Trump: The Impact of Coronavirus on the U.S. Presidential Election in 2020

DIPLOMA THESIS

BC. NATÁLIE CHLUSTINOVÁ

Supervisor: Mgr. Miloš Gregor, Ph.D.

Department of political science Political science

Brno 2021

Bibliografický záznam

Autor: NATÁLIE CHLUSTINOVÁ Fakulta sociálních studií Masarykova univerzita Katedra politoligie Název práce: Joe Biden a Donald Trump: Vliv koronaviru na prezidentské volby v USA v roce 2020 Studijní program: Politologie Studijní obor: Politologie Vedoucí práce: Mgr. Miloš Gregor, Ph.D. Rok: 2021 Počet stran: 129 Klíčová slova: Prezidentské volby 2020, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, koronavirus, krizová komunikace, kampaně, swing states

Bibliographic record

Author: NATÁLIE CHLUSTINOVÁ Faculty of Social Studies Masaryk University Department of political science Title of Thesis: Joe Biden vs Donald Trump: The Impact of Coronavirus on the U.S. Presidential Election in 2020 Degree Programme: Political science Field of Study: Political science Supervisor: Mgr. Miloš Gregor, Ph.D. Year: 2021 Number of Pages: 129 Keywords: Presidential election 2020, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, coronavirus, crisis communication, campaigns, swing states

Abstrakt

Tato práce si klade za úkol zjistit, jakým způsobem koronavirová krize ovlivnila kampaně a výsledky prezidentských voleb v USA v roce 2020. Kvantitativní analýze předchází obsahová analýza, kde je popsána krizová komunikace Joa Bidena a Donalda Trumpa, a to za pomoci využití čtyř ele- mentů krizové komunikace - co se ví, co se neví, co se dělá, co by lidé měli dělat. Kvantitativní analýza potom pomocí zpracování dat určí, zdali počet nakažených koronavirem, či úmrtí na tuto nemoc, ovlivnilo výsledky voleb v jednotlivých okresech tzv. swing států.

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine how the coronavirus crisis impacted campaigns and results of presidential election in the U. S. In 2020. Firstly, there is the content analysis, where Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s crisis communication is described by four elements of crisis communication - what is know, what is not known, what is being done, what should people do. Then, there is the qualitative analysis, which shows, if number of people infected by coronavirus or deaths on this disease impacted the results of the election in each county in swing states.

Čestné prohlášení

Prohlašuji, že jsem diplomovou práci na téma Joe Biden vs Donald Trump: The Impact of Coronavirus on the U.S. Presidential Election in 2020 zpra- covala sama. Veškeré prameny a zdroje informací, které jsem použila k se- psání této práce, byly citovány v textu a jsou uvedeny v seznamu použitých pramenů a literatury.

V Brně 18. 1. 2021

NATÁLIE CHLUSTINOVÁ

Declaration

I declare that I have developed diploma thesis named Joe Biden vs Donald Trump: The Impact of Coronavirus on the U.S. Presidential Election in 2020 independently and have only used the resources listed in the literature.

In Brno 18. 1. 2021

NATÁLIE CHLUSTINOVÁ

7 Poděkování

Touto cestou bych chtěla poděkovat doktoru Gregorovi za vedení mé magisterské práce. Můj dík mu patří také za podporu po celou dobu studia, kdy mi nejednou pomohl splnit si sen a posunout se dál v mých zkušenostech a znalostech v oboru politologie. Poděkování patří i všem dalším doktorům, profesorům a učitelům, kteří mi pomohli posunout se a nabýt potřebné znalosti. Za studium jsem poznala spoustu skvělých přátel, kterým chci také touto formou poděkovat za neustálou podporu a skvělé vzpomínky. Dále děkuji mému příteli, který mi poslední dva roky pomohl hledat motivaci ke studiu a jeho podpora se nedá slovy vyjádřit. Tohle všechno by se ovšem nikdy nestalo, kdybych neměla moji rodinu, která mi vždy veřila, že každou zkoušku zvládnu. Speciálně chci poděkovat mamce, taťkovi, babičkám, tetám, strýcům, sestrám, bratrancovi, ale i dědům - kteří bohužel během mého studia odešli… Celé rodině děkuji, oni ví. Miluji vás a děkuji Bohu, za tu nekonečnou lásku.

8 Acknowledgement

My gratitude goes to doctor Gregor, who was supervising this thesis. I also want to thank him for support he gave me during my studies, so I could make me dreams come true and gain skills and knowledge in the field of political science. My gratitude goes also to every single one of doctor, professor and teacher, who I have met and who taught me things I needed and wanted. During my studies, I have met a lot of new friends, who were always very supportive. We have so many memories and I will always treasure them. I want to thank also to my boyfriend, who always helped me to find motivation when I lost it. I would never be able to accomplish university, if I did not have my family. They always believed, that I will pass all the exams successfully. I want to mention my mum, my dad, my grandmothers, my aunts, my uncles, my sisters, my cousin, my grandfathers - who passed away during my studies, …. I want to thank all of them, they know. I love you and thank God for your unconditional love.

10 Table of content

1. Introduction 15

2. Theoretical part 18 2.1. Political marketing, communication and campaigns ...... 20 2.2. Crisis 30 2.3. Crisis communication ...... 32 2.4. Chosen elements of political crisis communication for the research of U. S. presidential election in 2020 ...... 41 2.4. Defining swing states ...... 49

3. Methodology 55 3.1. Meaning of the research ...... 55 3.2. Questions and hypothesises of the research ...... 57 3.3. Design of the research ...... 59 3.4. Methods and data of the research ...... 60 3.5. Limits of the research ...... 71

4. Analytical part 73 4.1. Donald Trump ...... 75 4.2. Donald Trump’s position towards the Pandemic ...... 76 4.3. Crisis communication of Donald Trump ...... 79 4.4. Joe Biden ...... 90 4.4. Joe Biden’s position towards the Pandemic ...... 91 4.5. Crisis communication of Joe Biden ...... 94 4.6. Comparison of crisis communication ...... 104 4.7. Pandemic and the election results ...... 109

5. Discussion 113

6. Conclusion 114

11 7. Sources 117 7.1. Books, academic publications ...... 117 7.2. Websites, videos, journalist articles and polls ...... 122 7.3. Law documents ...... 128

Total count of characters including white spaces: 146 010

12 List of pictures

Picture 1: Newman’s Model of Political Marketing………….…..23 Picture 2: Social media analytics framework in political context..26 Picture 3: Model of political communication…………………….30 Picture 4: The phases of disaster management…………….……..41 Picture 5: Swing states 2020 and early voting……………………68 Picture 6: Data……………………………………………………70 Picture 7: Graph about distribution of Trump’s Twitter posts……84 Picture 8: Graph about distribution of Biden’s Twitter posts.……97

13 List of tables

Table of conceptual model for content analysis………………….65 Table 1: Correlation coefficient - People infected by COVID-19 and results of the election 2020…………………………………………….108 Table 2: Correlation coefficient - Deaths of COVID-19 and results of the election 2020………………………………………………….109 Table 3: Index of determination - Deaths of COVID-19 and results of the election 2020…………………………………………….……110 Table 4: ANOVA Significant - Deaths of COVID-19 and results of the election 2020………………………………………………….111 Table 5: Coefficients - Deaths of COVID-19 and results…….111

14 . 1. Introduction

This thesis is focused on the presidential election during Pandemic 2020 in the United States. It has three main topics which are interconnected - political communication, elections and Coronavirus. Pandemic in 2020 has caused many changes in all spheres in the world, also in politics. Candidates in their political campaigns always use several techniques, platforms and forms of political communication. However, the crisis changes the way political actors communicate, which will be also proven by this work. According to Drylie-Carey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo, experts who wrote about COVID-19 and social media communication strategy, it is necessary to study and do research about public communication in context of the crisis. They speak about the benefits it brings, such as slowing the spread of the virus and therefore reducing the death rate (Drylie-Carey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo 2020: 1). Firstly, I would like to introduce the structure of the thesis. There are three main parts, which are theory, methodology and analysis. Methodology part is based on the information from the theory and text in analytical part com- bine sources from both, theory and methodology. At the beginning of the theoretical part, I found necessary to explain terms political marketing, political campaign and political communication. These three phenomenon are sometimes used in the same context and I find it crucial to distinguish them from each other by their definitions and explana- tions. Also, they will be used in the analytical part often, so I want reader to be confident while diving deeper into it. Then, there is the chapter about crisis communication and how it changes the way political communication in the campaign is. The main theoretical

15 . frame in the thesis is from authors McLean and Ewart, who wrote the book about political leadership and how the crisis communication should look like. They argue that political authorities should take on a significant public communication role, because they want to avoid operational matters (McLean and Ewart 2020: 132). Concepts of communication in crisis will be described, which will be important for methodology. In the literature, there are many concepts of crisis communication, but every disaster needs a little bit different framework (McLean and Ewart 2020: 46). To cover Trump’s and Biden’s political crisis communication in their campaigns, there will be four key elements such as what is known about disaster, what is not known about it, what is being done and what action various public should take (McLean and Ewart 2020: 137). In the middle of the thesis, there is methodology part, which includes chapters such as meaning of the research, question of the research, design of the research, methods and also its limits. Here, it starts to be separated into two parts, because thesis includes two types of research methods. Firstly content analysis, where positions towards the crisis and candidate’s communication will be described by using the elements from McLean and Ewart. The main question here is: , “How the coronavirus crisis impacted results and political communication in campaigns of each candidate during the U. S. presidential election in 2020?” I already mentioned that there has been many academic publications and articles about crisis communication. However, by crisis has been usually meant war or natural disaster. Therefore, it is very important to analyze communication in the campaigns during Pandemic 2020 and find how this unexpected situation changes the way politicians communicated. To demon-

16 . strate the concept of crisis communication more particularly, I write about the case study when Donald Trump got inflected by COVID-19. It happened one month before the Election Day (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). This event did not mean changes in the campaign for him only, but also response from the another candidate, Joe Biden, was expected. And finally second method in the thesis is quantitative, more particularly the regression analysis will be used by SPSS program. This part of methodology helps the analysis to find out if there is the relationship between results of the election and coronavirus crisis, while using two different variables - number of infected people by COVID-19 and deaths on that disease. I choose this addition to complete the analysis. I wanted to provide also quantitative data and follow the content analysis. Data which allow me to measure the relationship are results of the election in each county in swing states, and also data about coronavirus from the website of Center of Dis- ease Control and Prevention. This analysis answers the questions about the relationship between the crisis and who won the presidency. There are not many findings about it so far, since the topic is very current. Swing states were chosen, because those are states where both candidates have usually equal chances to get elected. For this reason, at the end of theoretical part, there is also short chapter talking about them. Defining them, but also explaining how some state can be swinging during one election period and few years later, it can become clearly Democratic or Republican. For 2020, there was not yet any academic publication, so list of the swing states for the most current election was used by source New York Times. It includes Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nebraska, Florida and Ohio (New York Times 2020).

17 . 2. Theoretical part

Theoretical part, in other words literature review, includes summary of scholarship related to the question of the research (Williams 2014: 13). But also, there are concepts introduces, which are put into broader context. Main question of the content analysis is: ,,How did the coronavirus crisis impact political communication in campaigns of each candidate during U. S. presidential election in 2020 on Twitter? And how did the crisis impact the results?”. For this reason, the first part of literature review focuses on political marketing, more specifically on defining this term, as well as communication and campaigning in the US. It is important to understand each of these three terms, because they are often mentioned together. Political marketing is unforgettable part of presidential election in the U. S., as well as campaigns. This thesis analyzes crisis communication of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, while focus in the content analysis is put on social media communication. For this reason, I explain the importance of new technologies and social media in the campaigns in theoretical part. Later on in this part, there is the theoretical concept used from experts in the field of political science, which will be crucial for the analysis. This framework of crisis communication helps to understand the key characteristics , principles and elements of creating the message in the time of disaster. Also, I will explain why I have chosen the particular concept for the purpose of this work. There are also main terms explained which are connected to this topic, such as crisis, crisis communication or social media in context of this topic. There is also part which talks about fake news, because crisis is always fol-

18 . lowed by a huge need for information, so it is a good opportunity to create fake news (Montesi 2020: 1). Which leads us to the question of truth, which may be very difficult to find in the time of crisis. I show some examples of crisis to demonstrate, that it has many different forms. This fact can also help to understand, why I have chosen the particular concept for the analysis. Many authors in their theories and characteristics about the crisis communication speak about general facts. It is often addressed to any institution, organization or authority, who deal with the crisis. However, I found the concept, which refers specifically to politicians. Moreover, this publication is very current, McLean and Eward published it in 2020. Last chapters of the theoretical part focus on defining swing states, which are the states where the biggest battles of the election take place. This terms has been familiar for Americans and people in general, but every election there may be different swing states important. So this part will focus also on finding the correct swing states for U. S. Presidential election in 2020. I explain why New York Times is relevant and good source for it. I also mention a little bit from the history and explain, why swing states are so important for the candidates. In the quantitative analysis, I use data from counties in swing states.

19 . 2.1. Political marketing, communication and campaigns

Political marketing

Political marketing connects two disciplines - political science and marketing. Before acknowledging any definition, understanding both terms separately is unavoidable. Political researchers specialize in institutional relationships, the legislative processes or public policy. On the other hand, marketing scientists focus on campaigns, strategies or management. Looking for the theory of political marketing, it demands “greater speciality at the conceptual level” (Butler & Collins 1999: 55). In 2012, Roman Chytilek, Otto Eibl, Anna Matušková and other experts of political science wrote in their book “Theories and methods of political marketing”, that marketing techniques are more often visible in political spheres than before. Political campaigns seem to be more professional and compact. The discipline of political marketing is still evolving, but there is already many concepts and theoretical frameworks focused on political marketing. That is also the reason why there is many researchers who put their effort to that phenomenon (Chytilek, Eibl & Matušková 2012: 5). It also leads to the fact, that there is not just one definition which would answer the question what political marketing is. Political scientists who specialize in this field always provide more definitions than using just one, because it gives the opportunity to the reader to have objective view rather than create only subjective opinion. Also, how to explain this term depends on the decision, what interpretation is aimed to be answered (Ormrod, Hen- neberg and Shaughnessy 2013: 9).

20 .

Sometimes, there is a need of definition with the focus on a narrow interpretation and it includes political marketing as a set of activities. On the other hand, there is also possibility to look at it from the philosophical perspective (Ormrod, Henneberg and Shaughnessy 2013: 9). For the purpose of this thesis, the biggest concern is put in the first approach, when political marketing is viewed as a set of tools and activities. Lees-Marshment says that political marketing is the study of how politicians or candidates interface with their electorates (Lees-Marshment 2005: 3). One of the greatest experts on marketing, Philip Kotler and Neil Kotler explain it similarly: “Political marketing, the making of successful candidates and causes, is a major growth, industry affecting virtually every citizen and institution” (Kotler & Kotler 1999: 3). In the same chapter it continues: ,”Candidates have to view their campaigns from the point of view of the outcome for voters” (Kotler & Kotler 1999: 3). So there is a lot of attention put on the candidates on one side, and on audience on the other side. Another way how to look at political marketing is from different approaches. In the first case, there is the political party or candidate, which first of all wants to know what voters need and then create values or political program. Here, the market is very important at the beginning to analyze voters’ needs. Second approach is different. In that case, political actors think about political marketing as a set of tools and approaches to show what they have prepared for the audience. Comparing to the first approach, here “the party is leading the market” (Gregor & Eibl 2019: 2). And again, there is also the connection between two sides, political candidates and voters. Political actors want to spread their political messages and awaken the emotions within the audience. To reach that, with the help of

21 . experts, they use modern and professional techniques (Gregor and Eibl 2019: 2). Even though there is many researchers talking about this phenomenon, Bruce I. Newman’s concept of political marketing is seen as one of the most thorough model of all discussed so far, which is describing the marketing approach in political behaviour (Cwalina, Falkowski and Newman 2011: 45). More specifically, Newman describes how process of marketing campaign and those of political campaign are connected. In the picture 1, there is Newman’s model of political marketing. There is shown, that campaigns go through four stages, from preprimary stage to the general election stage (Cwalina, Falkowski and Newman 2011: 46).

Picture 1: Newman’s Model of Political Marketing

Source: Cwalina, Falkowski and Newman 2011: 47

22 .

To conclude this subchapter, I redefine what was written at the beginning. Political marketing have been viewed from the perspective of two disciplines in the past - political science and marketing. However, in the course of time, which was also a little bit explained, important differences have emerged and political marketing became separate branch of science. It has its own subject of matter, methodology and research (Cwalina, Falkowski and Newman 2011: 41).

Political campaign

Campaign can be seen as the specific period of time when candidate promote their activities. There is usually1 the beginning and the end of it, and by the end is meant the Election Day. During this time, political actors try to create their image and demonstrate their programs (Pavlová and Matušková 2012: 159). David M. Farrell, who is British political scientist, define campaign as the process, in which candidates want to get as many voters as possible. Successful campaign should be well organized and attractive for supporters of the politician (Pavlová and Matušková 2012: 159). From one point of view, presidential campaign in the United States can be identified also as national conversation. This phrase was used by the scientist Robert E., Jr. Denton in his book The 2012 Presidential Campaign : A

1 Some campaigns have no end and these are called permanent campaigns. It means that these politicians or political parties always work on getting the attention from media and voters (Eibl, Kóňa 2012: 216). So it is the process of continuing transformation. From this point of view, government always have to control if their action goes hand to hand with public popularity (Cwalina, Falkowski and Newman 2011: 50).

23 .

Communication Perspective (Denton 2013: 2). The author says, that the campaigns ”are highly complex and sophisticated communication events: communication of issues, images, social reality, and personas. They are es- sentially exercises in the creation, re-creation, and transmission of significant symbols through human communication. As we attempt to make sense of our environment, political bits of communication comprise our voting choices, world views, and legislative desires” (Denton 2013: 2).

Campaigns, technologies and social media

Campaigns did not always have the same form. They were evolving through years and have huge historical background. However, the length of the thesis is limited, so the focus is put on the present and recent past. The big campaign transformation came hand to hand with discovery and revolution of technologies. It shortened and made more effective all political messages, but also brought new ways and platforms where and how to communicate. Advertisements, which are seen in TVs and other technologies, last not as long as before. Voters can watch video spots which say the information in 30 seconds. Also, new media brought more negativity to the campaigns, which is cased also by media, who create negative picture about the candidates (Shea and Burton 2006: 4). There is many platforms and options how the political communication through the campaign can be implemented. In this context, in modern world, the internet and social media got bigger attention and relevancy when it comes to any political campaign. There are more and more experts and scientists, who speak about social media, such as instrument which is capable

24 . to connect people (Dang-Xuan and Stieglitz 2014: 1277). Linh Dang-Xuan is a researcher from University of Münster and he published several works on this topic. In January, 2014, together with Stefan Stieglitz, they released the article about social media and political communication. They saw many papers analyzing, monitoring or collecting data from Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, but according to authors there was the lack of systematic approaches, so they wanted to fill this gap. Therefore, Dang-Xuan and Stieglitz proposed a methodological framework, which applies on analysis about social media in political context (Dang- Xuan and Stieglitz 2014: 1277). The framework is illustrated on the picture 2. It shows different approaches or methods.

Picture 2: Social media analytics framework in political context

Source: Dang-Xuan and Stieglitz 2014: 1288)

25 .

Another scientists who specialize in this field is Philip N. Howard. He writes in one of his research about algorithms, bots, and political communication in the US 2016 election ”Automated political communication in- volves the creation, transmission, and controlled mutation of significant political symbols over expansive social networks” (Howard 2018: 90). Ac- cording to him, there are many advantages to communicate campaign messages through social media. One of them is, that candidates can create any reality and the persona they want. For example, in presidential election 2016, Trump seemed to be successful in understanding different minority communities while analysing his Twitter account. For example, after Nevada caucuses in 2016, people different race, ethnicity and from various minority communities tweeted in his support (Howard 2018: 81). In 2016, presidential election in the United States gave social media much bigger power in the campaigns than they had before. Until then, political messages presented through mass media were recognised as more powerful than these written on social media. Trump changed this trend. Morris proved it in his research. He asked people how they feel when they compare political messages from headlines in newspaper USA Today and Twitter posts. Findings of this academic article show that: “as more people use social media, political campaigns may rely less on the traditional media and more on social media platforms like Twitter to connect with voters and influence public perceptions of the candidate” (Morris 2017: 464).

26 .

Political communication

Political campaign evolution is connected to the evolution of political communication, so I need to explain the history briefly here. Humans are in the fourth age of political communication now (Blumler 2016: 26). However, there are three more periods of political communication known before fourth age, which are important to demonstrate here. These three ages pre- ceded the time where we live now. In the first age, most of the political communication was based on relatively strong political institutions and their values. There was not much space to create any more information which would be communicated, so for politicians it was relatively easy to communicate in the media (Blumler 2016: 23). Second age is characterized by limited channel network television which became the most important platform for political parties and others to communicate. People could watch how the power of this new medium brought the opportunity to channel advocacy or report events (Blumler 2016: 24). In the third age of political communication, there is five main characteristics - ,,intensified professionalizing pressures; increased competitive pressures; anti-elitist populism; centrifugal diversification; and changes in how people receive politics” (Blumler 2016: 24). ,,Bifurcated efficacy” is one of the formative features of the fourth age. It means that people can experience high levels of efficacy as a result of being able to connect with each other so easily, for example through email or social media such as Facebook or Twitter. On the other hand, it is very difficult to connect their discourses, feelings and ideas with the institutions of governance. ,,The widespread prevalence of a sense of political inefficacy in the latter respect remains an obdurate problem of democracy” (Blumler

27 .

2016: 29). In forth age, technologies are unforgettable part. To understand political communication, it is necessary to permanently study and watch the evolution of new technologies and media. This applies not only for experts and scientists, but also to all institutions and organizations which have political interests. This new platform for political communication is not anyhow structured or cohesive, but it surely brings new opportunities to express and inform (Blumler 2016: 26). In the summarisation, it is important to say that the bifurcated political communication system of the fourth age is different in many ways from its predecessors. “Where a relative uniformity, coherence and simplicity once prevailed, now everything seems to be laced with complexity, multiplicity, variety and cross-currents” (Blumler 2016: 28).

It is also necessary to point out, that political communication does not always have to be part of political marketing, as it may seem like. Communi- cation is present also between politicians, citizens, media or even as a form in itself, because political communication research is relevant field in modern societies. In the research, it is very interdisciplinary and comprises scholars from a wide range of theoretical approaches, different methodology, academic disciplines etc (Reinemann 2014: 1). Political communication ,,is concerned with the communicative processes related to the distribution of power, the formation of collectively binding decisions, and the authoritative allocation of values in society” (Reinemann 2014: 1). When political communication is the part of campaign, strategies before and also after the election, always depend also on mass media. They has also big influence in communication and how political campaigns are seen. For this

28 . reason, one of the most visible research question in this field asks what impact political campaigns have on formulating voter’s opinion, with the focus on the topics which are communicated through media. However, research in political communication is usually done in context of political campaigns (Petrová 2012: 261). In other words, media also distribute messages from politicians. It is one of the elements according to Negrine. He writes, that for political communication, there are key elements, which are media, content, influence of political institutions and other political and social actors who create messages. Also audience is very important. Ralph Negrine came up with these elements, which are also captured on the third picture (Cwalina, Falkowski and New- man 2011: 54).

Picture 3: Model of political communication

29 .

Source: Negrine 1994: 13

Ralph Negrine continued to write about political communication, because in 2007 he published the book focused on its professionalization. In this work, he wanted to point out that professionals took over all communicative matters. By professionals he means the perception managers, the spin-doctors, the pollster, the consultants, the media trainers, the PR experts, and also the marketeers (Negrine 2007: 180).

2.2. Crisis

Crisis has many definitions. Chaos theory, for example, says that any kind of disaster influence people in their every day life. What that means is that the crisis is also followed by uncertainty and interactive complexity (Reynolds and Quinn 2008: 13). Crisis are intense, sometimes extraordinary situations. However, there is more similarities within the crisis situations than it usually seems like. Some political professionals view campaign crisis as complex, interactive events (Garrett 2010: 8). Another definition says that crises are, in effect, “what we make of them; and what we make of them determines how we respond. This is as true of the present crisis as it is of more obviously path-shaping moments of political and institutional change” (Hay 2012: 23). Also, terms crisis and disaster does not mean the same according to all authors who specialize in this field. Crisis may mostly refer to corporation’s issues. The biggest threats for them are damaged reputation or brand image. On the other hand, disaster result in significant death and destruction. The main goal while the disaster appears is saving lives or property (McLean

30 . and Eward 2020: 41). However, scientists, media or politicians use words crisis, disaster, but also catastrophe, interchangeably McLean and Eward 2020: 42). There is not one definite agreement about it. So for the purpose of this work, I use the terms disasters, catastrophes, and crises interchangeably. It is also to meet the challenge of definitions. Simon Weschle in his research from 2019 quote Lijphart who said that external threat leads to internal unity. According to him crisis brings better cooperation and understanding between societal cleavages (Weschle 2019: 1099). Within the publications about the crisis, the biggest concern is usually put into war or disasters such as terrorism. These are “the most obvious candidates for external threat”, Weschle wrote in 2019 (Weschle 2019: 1100). However, he agrees, that there are other possible crises, for example in economic sphere (Weschle 2019: 1100). But there are many scientific publications which prove that crisis can have uncountable forms. In 2009, for example, there was the crisis around peanut butter in America. First of all it is necessary to say, that peanut butter has become essential food for most American citizens over the years. The sale of this butter is 900 million dollar a year, in 2009 was written. However, in the same year, the crisis began, because people started to get sick after consuming products with peanut butter, later on deaths were reported by media (Littlefied and Sellnow 2015: 25). According to research from Littlefield and Sellnow, Peanut Corporation of America did not handle the crisis well. One of the reason is, for example, that they released first press three day after the investigation began. In the crisis, it is too late (Littlefied and Sellnow 2015: 33). This is just a short example, that there is a lot of ways how the

31 . crisis can be and for this reason, it is very important to choose right theoretical concept and framework to study particular crisis.

2.3. Crisis communication

Crisis communication is usually associated with how authorities respond to the crisis. The focus is put on public statements and the actions. The belief is that how the crisis communication is used by the authority, it has important ramifications (Coombs 2009: 1). In other words, crisis communication is the process of providing facts to the public about an unexpected emergency which happened and it require an immediate response (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018: 4). Researcher Duncan Koerber believe in tight connection between crisis communication and the audience. The response to whatever is happening should be chosen according to what is acceptable in politician’s community (Koerber 2014: 311). Barbara Reynolds and Sandra Crouse Quinn point out that it is necessary to create empathetic style of crisis communication, which engenders public’s trust. Also, politicians should avoid any actions which would cause any damage. Instead, they need to take a positive action (Rey- nolds and Quinn 2008: 13). McLean and Eward came up with the concept of disaster management, which helps to go through the crisis. There are four phases, which are mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery (McLean and Eward 2020: 45). Political actors are involved in all phases, but in some more than in others. In the first phase, they want to reduce the impact of crisis. Second phase includes plans, exercises or relevant information. In the responsive phase,

32 . politicians warn, people are evacuated and mobilisation of emergency resources is present. The last phase, recovery, focus on rebuilding and providing assistance for those who need it (McLean and Eward 2020: 45). Also it it necessary, that those who are communicating in the various phases of a crisis have to be known by the public as credible sources of information. In this vulnerable period of time, ,,the focus should be put on the right source providing the right message at the right time” (McLean and Eward 2020: 140). However, politicians often do not have any other option than to talk about the crisis, because there are expectations and demands from people and media (McLean and Eward 2020: 143). Communicators should also think about what kind of language they use. In other words, it needs to be understandable for the audience. Scientists Shulman and Bullock did research about using scientific jargon2 while informing about COVID-19. They focused on this topic, because usually the advice is to avoid jargon when communicating any topic to public from the scientific perspective (Shulman and Bullock 2020: 1). In the United States, news rapidly informed about the virus, vulnerable people and causes of this disease. Policy related information were also a big topic, such as economic impact etc. For this reason, COVID-19 information became complicated, scientific, political, economic, but it is also important that it was unfamiliar to the present study (Shulman and Bullock 2020: 2). The experiment examined effect of jargon on three groups of people and the results show that science communicators, during times of crisis, do not need to change the way they communicate, because their language in the crisis is

2 Jargon can be defined as the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group, so for this reason it may not be understandable for broader audience (Shulman and Bullock 2020: 10).

33 . acceptable by the public. The reason is, that in the crisis, people have bigger motivation to process information even if it is communicated in jargon (Shulman and Bullock 2020: 7).

34 .

Crisis and information

Crisis brings a lot of questions to people, so they are looking for the answers. In this part of the chapter, I would like to examine how important information are, who should be presenting them and what challenges it brings. One of the threats which can come with the crisis is fake news. Michaela Montesi, who published the article about crisis of COVID-19 in 2020, speaks exactly about this problem. According to her, the phenomenon of Pandemic was so new, so logically there was huge need for the information. On the other hand, it was also a good opportunity for fake news (Montesi 2020: 1). In her research, she analysed fake news from the perspective of information behaviour in context of coronavirus in Spain. Her findings show, that misinformation are usually based on the absence of cognitive au- thority3 (53, 7 %). These articles get power from criticizing ideas, values, political parties etc, which is also called affective authority4 (40, 7 %) (Montesi 2020: 1). However, there is something very positive in the results. Even though these fake news may be morally wrong, majority of them are not dangerous for people’s health or safety. In data, only 17 out of 214 show some characteristics which may cause some health or safety problem to humans. To name

3 Cognitive authority refers to the information source which is based on collective acceptance of its relevance in some community (Montesi 2020: 5).

4 Affective authority use specific techniques while presenting information. “(1) whether the news discredited people, ideas or movements in favour of others that were supposedly common to the recipients of the hoax; (2) if coarse or offensive language was used; and (3) if additional sources were mentioned or opportunities for further study were offered” (Montesi 2020: 5).

35 . some of them, information about supposed vaccine. People may believe the marketing strategies to sell the vaccine, even though it may include fake news and eventually endanger people’s health (Montesi 2020: 7). Amant is also one of the researchers who published the article about COVID-19 and crisis communication in 2020. He puts focus on scripts, how they should be created in order to be effective. Technical communicators can use scripts as develop materials to help maintain calm in crisis situations. The author talks about four main points. (1) Find places where the scripts are needed and who are the listeners. (2) Make sure that expectations will be find, so there is need for surveys or focus groups to analyze prepared materials. (3) Have ready materials which would include new or modified scripts for interacting in certain settings. Finally, (4) coordination across organisations and institutions are necessary, because they have to share script materials to provide the same information to the audience (Amant 2020: 5).

While talking about information and how they are spread, there is also the question about emotions, which are clearly unforgettable part when speak- ing about the crisis. Communicators are not only influenced by what audience want to hear, but audience is also behaving according to what information they read and consume during the crisis. Some news, even if they are true or fake, can be presented in such an emotional frame and then affect people. The experiment from Kim and Cameron focused on different kinds of news read by people in one company. They found out that “participants exposed to anger inducing crisis news read the news less closely and had more negative attitudes toward the company than those exposed to sadness- inducing news” (Kim and Cameron 2011: 826).

36 .

Another negative emotion which may be present while consuming the information is fear. Amant talks about it in his concept about scripts. He concludes that scripts can really help to understand where this fear comes from, so communicators can easily use rhetoric they need for the audience (Amant 2020: 6). Fear, uncertainty, lack of knowledge, and information seeking behaviour also case that misinformation are being spread more and more in the time of disaster (Sell, Hosangadi and Trotochaud 2020: 2). On the other hand, some studies also focus on positive emotions during the crisis. To be able to imagine them, positive emotions include gratitude, love and interest. The studies show, that positive emotions do much more than just feeling good in the present moment. There is the evidence, that it helps in the crisis to control the attention more and process important and self relevant information easily (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh and Larkin 2003: 366). Another effect, which positive emotions have is, that people feel more creative, knowledgeable, socially integrated and healthy (Fredrickson, Tu- gade, Waugh and Larkin 2003: 367). Based on the above, truth5 is very important element in the time of crisis. Not only because people seek to read more and more information, but also because fake news may be really dangerous, as the crisis is connected to the health of people.

5 Our image of the world, of space, time, things, relationships, and everything else, does not picture “true” real world. In other words, we should never believe, that what we think about the world is suppose to be the same as the real world itself. We can never compare our image with reality. But, we can compare our image with the future expectations (Swazo 2002: 20). Then, if our perspective of the future gets real, we can talk about the truth, because we believe something and it is also reflected in the world. Sometimes, and it is very common in crisis, we may expect something and it does not happen. Then we have to reconstruct our vision of the truth (Swazo 2002: 21).

37 .

Crisis communication and social media

Social media have increasing role in the social construction of the crisis communication. For communicators, social media have many advantages comparing to mass media. It is effective communication tool, which is more interactive, dialogic and faster for interaction with audience (Schulz, Utz and Göritz 2011: 20). However, sometimes it is interconnected, because those who have account on Twitter, share links from newspapers websites to inform their followers (Schulz, Utz and Göritz 2011: 25). The World Health Organization has advised governments all over the world to take proactive steps and communicate with the public about Pandemic situation, as the sharing of critical information about the epidemic can slow or even stop the spread of the disease and also motivate public to collabo- rate with the government. Social media, in this case, serves as a major communication platform for the government and public health authorities to provide timely health information to the public (Ngai, Singh, Koon and Lu 2020: 3). Research from 2020 about communication and COVID-19 confirm all written above: “social media platforms such as Twitter have been a critical tool in this process, providing a communication channel that allows both rapid dissemination of messages to the public at large and individual-level engagement. Message dissemination and amplification is a necessary precur- sor to reaching audiences, both online and off, as well as inspiring action” (Sutton, Renshaw and Butts 2020: 1). Considering all social media platforms, Twitter is the most frequently used social network by 97 % of the 193 member states of the UN. The second place is taken by Facebook. When coronavirus crisis have began, all kinds

38 . of content, such as videos, pictures and written posts, started to appear more. Usage of social media increased by 33 % during the Pandemic 2020. Moreover, Twitter, again, was the main social network where authorities were communicating (Drylie-Carey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo 2020: 9). Drylie-Carey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo explain the power of Twitter: “It can be considered as a relevant channel for communication with the target audience during epidemic outbreaks and other health emergencies. By ensuring effective and responsible messages, politicians have the capaci- ty to play their leadership role in the present and future global health challenges” ((Drylie-Carey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo 2020: 9). This platform is a relevant source of the information also for this thesis, because Donald Trump and Joe Biden use it for the communication with their supporters. However, the topic of fake news have been already discussed, it is necessary to explain this topic even here with the context of social media to examine, that there are also some challenges and disadvantages. Research from 2020 called “Misinformation and the US Ebola communication crisis: analyzing the veracity and content of social media messages related to a fear-inducing infectious disease outbreak” analyzed tweets with the words “ebola” in a period of time from September 30th to October 30th, 2014 (Sell, Hosangadi and Trotochaud 2020: 3). From all tweets, findings showed, that 5 % were false, 5 % were partially false and in 15 % them it was impossible to ascertain the truth. Then 37 % of tweets were non factual statements or opinions. Finally, 38 % of tweets were true (Sell, Hosangadi and Trotochaud 2020: 6). In this thesis, it will be interesting to see, how fake news were spreading in both accounts, Trump’s

39 . and Biden’s. Misinformation and its impact on public perspective is a growing problem in the public health field. It affects all types of disease events and there are some evidences, such as localized outbreaks of measle or regional outbreaks of Ebola. Authours in their work even wrote, that fake news will potentially have significant impact on pandemics (Sell, Hosangadi and Trotochaud 2020: 9). Since many publications speak about the problem of true and false information while critically communicating on social media, the focus will be put there, in analytical part, as well. Even though there is this problem of fake news, social media should be unforgettable part of communication during the crisis. Specifically talking about coronavirus situation, selecting suitable communication strategies can foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise people’s awareness of the disease and also motivate them to follow a preventive orders. So the final statement is, even if there is so many misinformation, at the end, sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus (Ngai, Singh, Koon and Lu 2020: 1).

40 . 2.4. Chosen elements of political crisis communication for the research of U. S. presidential election in 2020

CDC refers to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data for the quantitative analysis were used from this CDC source, but the main theoretical concept for the content analysis was used by different source. And in this chapter, I will explain why and who’s concept will be used. However, six principles of Effective Emergency and Risk Communications (CERC) by CDC will be implemented into the chosen concept of crisis communication. Health communicators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have published work named “CERC as theoretical framework for research and practice” (Veil, Reynolds, Sellnow and Seeger 2008: 26). This “guide” is from 2008 and also should serve mainly to health professionals, while communicating about public health in emergency situations. That essay focuses on CERC as a general theoretical framework for explaining how health communication functions within the contexts of risk and crisis (Veil, Reynolds, Sellnow and Seeger 2008: 26). CERC (Crisis and emergency risk communication) published also “Crisis emergency and risk communication by Leaders to Leaders”, but it is even older, from 2001. It is the instructive document, which describes, what leaders should do in the crisis (Reynolds 2001). However, it is 20 years old document, so for this reason, I decided to work with the most recent concept of what politicians should do when crisis appears. McLean and Eward specialize in crisis communication through years and published the book with the instructions what politicians should do, in 2020.

41 .

Picture 4: The phases of disaster management

Source: Mclean and Eward 2020: 46

Scientiests McLean and Eward in their book ,,Political Leadership in Disas- ter and Crisis Communication and Management” from 2020 also explain, that every disaster attract different theory, because every single one is uni- que. For the purpose of this thesis, the theory about how the politicians

42 . should communicate when disaster comes will be used. Another theories or concepts focus more on the crisis communication as the complex phenomenon. McLean and Eward explain what politicians specially should do in four steps. These are four elements which are crucial (McLean and Eward 2020: 137):

• What is known about the disaster;

• What is not known;

• What is being done about it;

• What action various publics should take.

Jim Featherstone, who is expert on crisis leadership from Harvard Kennedy School, came up with similar elements of the crisis - what happened; what is being done about it; what can citizens do or not to do to support those effort (McLean and Eward 2020: 137). But the first four elements will be crucial here, so there is their deeper description.

What is known

Coronavirus crisis became Pandemic in 2020, because it expanded globally. Institutions, organisations, governments and other world and nation authorities must reacted, so they informed population about the disease (Drylie-Ca- rey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo 2020: 1). The question here is also where to find the sources of information and who should be responsible to speak about them. In a developed society, those in charge of crisis communication are specially trained public relations experts. Even in a government, these authorities should be capable to provide

43 . quantitative-analytic approach. This approach would help to exercise polite al power in the policy-making process (Chen 2012: 464). CERC published six principles (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018: 3), which may be implemented into this concept. First two relate to what is known:

1. Be first - crisis is time sensitive, so the communicators have to give a big attention to timing to share the information. Moreover, for members of the public, the first source of information very often becomes preferred source in the crisis (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018: 3).

2. Be credible - CERC also points out that honesty and truthfulness should not be compromised during crises (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018: 3). Politicians often struggle with this second point, meaning that they do not want to confirm that any information are missing or unknown. But if they want to communicate effectively with the audience during the crisis, they need one thing from them - trust (McLean and Eward 2020: 138). Trust is one of the key terms for the crisis, although in that difficult time it might not be very easy for the officials to gain it among people. When there is a disaster, trust is imperative. Ho- wever, for many reasons, people start to question expert’s and politician’s information. Critical time is usually tightly connected with diseases or disasters which bring a lot of deaths, so it is obvious that this topic have a lot of suspensions from all people (Reynolds and Quinn 2008: 13).

44 .

What is not known

Authors McLean and Ewart also point out that is it extremely important to avoid making promises in the time of crisis. When politicians are not sure about some information or steps which may be taken, they rather should not speak about it. On the other hand it is suggested to use empathy words to give faith to people, such as ,,we are going to be ok, or we are going to get through this” (McLean and Eward 2020: 139). CERC also includes empathy as the one of the principles:

3. Express empathy - “crises create harm, and the suffering should be acknowledged in words. Addressing what people are feeling, and the challenges they face, builds trust and rapport” (U. S. De- partment of Health and Human Services 2018: 3).

4. Be right - another principle talks about being right. Even if some information are missing, communicator needs to inform about the steps which will be taken to fill these gaps (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018: 3).

What is being done

During the time of crisis, all action cannot wait until everything is perfectly prepared. In that difficult period of time, there is no space to think too much. People are waiting for the information, otherwise they would feel mislead. It is necessary to say what is being done, what considerations are on the table etc. (Bauma 2019: 106).

45 .

It is very difficult to measure the success or failure of the crisis communication. That disaster is hard to handle first of all, so there will be always result which includes success and failure to some degree. Activities, interactions, frequency of decisions and other things which needs to be done indicate, that no political actor is capable to do it fully effective or ineffective. Even when the actor refuse to talk to media or some other steps, there is always some crisis communication. On the other hand, if politician, organization or that persona who is dealing with the crisis does everything according to the plan, there will always be something what could be done better (Peculjija and Cosic 2019: 39). This perspective demonstrates, that the goal of the thesis is not to decide, which candidate used better or more effective crisis communication. It would be difficult to decide. The main goal in content analysis is to compare the way Trump and Biden were communicating in the crisis, more specifically in this subchapter to see, what actions both men initiated. CERC also call fifth principle “Promote action”:

5. Promote action - people need to hear what action will be taken in order to stop the crisis. They should gain the feeling, that the authorities have control over the situation (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 2018: 3).

What action people should take

During and after crisis, the communication with the sufferers is very important and have to be coordinated. However, communication also with other actors is necessary, and crisis always have many of them. It includes families, authorities and survivors, but also organizations and companies. Au-

46 . thorities should attempt to communicate through campaigns, public information or other efforts (Bauma 2019: 103). Message is the crucial thing to tell people what to do in the crisis. However, ,,designing messages is a fragile task and possibly the most cum- bersome taskduring the entire process” (Bauma 2019: 104). So this process is not easy. Bauma names five key factors which cannot be ignored while message is being formulated. It is simplicity, consequence, keypoint, credibility and tone (Bauma 2019: 105). Even though Bauma says, that message should be simple and speaker have to avoid scientific terms, not every expert agrees with that. Here, I would like to remind the research about jargon, which was mentioned in the chapter of crisis communication. It concludes, that people do not mind to listen and read information even in scientific words, because the crisis gives them bigger motivation (Shulman and Bullock 2020: 7). Finally, it is necessary to show respect, as CERC mentions in the last point:

6. Show respect - politicians need people to cooperate in the crisis. If they want the rules to be followed, they have to show then the respect. People feel vulnerable in that difficult times. “Respectful communication promotes cooperation and rapport” (U. S. De- partment of Health and Human Services 2018: 3).

By the end of this chapter, I would like to also list five things, which have to be avoided in crisis communication. It is the list of CERC (U. S. Depart- ment of Health and Human Services 2018: 8), but I also talked about all these unwanted parts and techniques of crisis communication in the theoretical part above:

47 .

1. Mixed messages from multiple experts

2. Information released late

3. Paternalistic attitudes

4. Not countering rumours and myths in real-time

5. Public power struggles and confusion

So this chapter brought the idea of conceptual framework of crisis communication, which shows how it needs to be applied by political authorities. Also, I provided how communication during disaster should not look like. Together, it brings key elements to my conceptual model, which will be set in methodological part.

48 . 2.4. Defining swing states

Political preferences on the map in the United States change in time. In 1904, the map was divided into two parts and it was easy to say which state is voting for which party. Back then, Democratic candidate won all states on the south, while Republican candidate won rest of them. However, individual circumstances had changed this distribution of votes. It was in 1930s, when Republican northeast has changed and Democratic candidates started to have relevant position as well. The transformation on south was later, after the presidential election in 1964, when Republicans started to carry off most of the states over here (Karas and Kupka 2005: 35). In the United States, political scientist came out with the term “red” and

“blue” states. In red states, Republicans6 tend to win and Democrats7 lead in blue ones. There are also some characteristics of specific voters, such as lower education and higher religion in red states, while more liberal and multicultural inhabitants support Democrats. Typical red states are for example Alaska, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma or Utah. On the other hand prevailing number of Democratic supporters are in Hawaii, Oregon, New

6 Republican Party was established in the middle of 19th century by initiative of people who were against slavery and supporters of free colonization. Today, it is seen as conservative, right wing party. The rhetoric is that individuals are responsible for their own destiny. Traditional values are fundamental (Karas and Kupka 2005: 4). 7 Democratic Party was established in 1792, when Thomas Jefferson founded the party. Today, it is supported by voters who prefer more left wing policy, comparing to the policy which is presented by Republican party. However, it clearly is not left wing party as social democratic parties are in Europe. Generally, Democrats are more liberal when it comes to non economic issues than Republicans (Karas and Kupka 2005: 4).

49 .

York, Massachusetts or California. (Karas and Kupka 2005: 36). These information apply to the beginning of 21. century. Swing states are those which don’t fit to the box of “red” or “blue”. Those are the most competitive ones, where Democrats and Republicans change their position in election victory. In 1936, the term swing state was firstly used by New York Times. This phrase appeared only in four articles in that year, but it was becoming more and more visible later on (Hecht, Schultz 2015: 1). The lack of media interest in swing states lasted until 1990’s. Between 1924 and 1960, there was only 10 uncompetitive states. In 1988, number changed and only 14 states were projected as competitive. So the term swing state was becoming more and more visible and between 1988 to 1996, New York Times increased the usage of “swing states8” by 200 % (Hecht, Schultz 2015: 1). Since then, we know, that number of swing states depends each elections on many factors, such as changing demographics and policy preferences of electorates, political position of presidential candidate or their quality and campaigns (Hecht, Schultz 2015: xviii - introduction). Scott McLean wrote in 2017 that there are ten swing states in the United States and the rest of them are those “red” or “blue” ones. Usually, Democ- ratic or Republican candidate knows, that it will be easy to win in some of those forty one contests. On the contrary, swing states, also called battleground states, are the most competitive ones (McLean 2017: 34). However, every presidential election is different, so the swing states may change.

8 In 2000, American television journalist and lawyer Tim Russert started to use the word “swing state” interchangeably with “battleground” or “purple state”. He chose the colour purple to examine, that this state is not clearly liberal or conservative, left of right, or Democratic or Republican (Hecht, Schultz 2015: xiv - introduction).

50 .

Every year may bring new state and delete one from the list of the most competitive place. McLean says that there are three characteristics, which help to understand this phenomenon and explain why those ten states:

• Firstly, the swing state is usually competitive and the battle is usually very tight. For this reason candidates put much more effort to their campaigns in those places. The difference in election result in majority of elections is somewhere around 5 % only and it should be a rule since 1988. • The next characteristics are that “in most elections since 1988, the state’s popular vote predicts the Electoral College winner.” • And the last one refers to the fact, that swing state should actually swing. It means that since 1988 candidates from both parties has been changing the winning position (McLean 2017: 35).

There is the list of ten swing states, which were selected by specific methods by McLean in 2017:

• Florida • Iowa • New Hampshire • Nevada • Ohio • Colorado • North Carolina • Virginia • Michigan • Pennsylvania

51 .

• Wisconsin • Arizona • Maine • Minnesota

However, those data, which the author used, are from 1988 to 2012, so some swing states for 2020 presidential election may differ. Schultz and Jacob wrote book “Presidential Swing States” in 2018, where they include: Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Maine and Minnesota. Authors describe four criteria, while three of them are the same with McLean’s set up. So the factors are bellwether status, how competitive the states are, “flippability”, but also perception as a battleground (Schultz, Jacob 2018: 2). For the purpose of the thesis, the most recent data will be used. There was described, how some swing states may differ through years and that is why for the purpose of this thesis, list of ten swing states for 2020 from New York Times will be used. In 2020, for example, one of the most important swing states was Georgia, which is not even in Schulz and Jacob's list above. But the main reason to use New York Times as the primary source of swing states in 2020 is, that New York Times was the first source of the term “swing state” in 1936. New York Times also made the term more visible and known in the U. S. and later on all over the world. For this reason, this media platform became relevant, when talking about swing states through years. According to New York Times, there is 10 most important states for the election battle (New York Times 2020):

52 .

1. Wisconsin 2. Texas 3. Georgia 4. Michigan 5. Pennsylvania 6. Arizona 7. North Carolina 8. Nebraska 9. Florida 10.Ohio

Swing states and presidential electoral system Big focus on each state, more specifically, on swing state, is relevant for candidates during their campaigns. One of the reasons is the electoral presidential system in the United States, which also plays a big role here. It is the result of long historical process, as well as system of electoral college is. General rules of the election are set in the Constitution of the United States. At the end of 18th century, the country was large, but there was not many inhabitants. Direct voting would be too difficult because of the organization of elections back then, but also because it seemed to be too risky. “Fathers” of the constitution believed that candidates will always be special personas, who would not need political campaigns, would not belong to any political party etc. (Karas and Kupka 2005: 4). This theory is impossible today, because campaigns became essential part of the presidential election. This system was evolving in 19th century, when it became more familiar with what we know today. One of the changes was, that electors were voted directly by people, so the whole process got democratized. The new system

53 . was formed, where electors give the vote to the candidate, which gained the most votes in particular state. It refers to majority electoral system, where electoral college is one “step” in the electoral process (Karas and Kupka 2005: 4). So in this presidential electoral system, there is also the possibility, that the candidate with more votes from people does not get elected. There is the evidence from presidential election in U. S. in 2016. It showed that winning popular vote is not enough. Back then, Hillary Clinton got 2.87 million more votes nationally than Trump, but she still lost. He won the electoral college by a 304 - 227 vote. So it is important to get the right states to reach the majority in electoral college. So candidates also give the importance to swing states by number of electoral votes they can there get (Congressional Digest 2020: 3). Some publications even speak about state-by-state contest rather than national contest. Underscoring this fact, rules for voter eligibility are mainly set by each state individually. Who can vote, how and where is the decision of each state (Hecht, Schultz 2015: x - introduction). However, I explained above, that the contest in each state is different.

54 . 3. Methodology

3.1. Meaning of the research

Synonyms for meaning of the research are explanation, importance or expected impacts and findings of the study. (Punch 2008: 105). I think just the theoretical part give a lot of meaning to the research, as I wrote about the importance of good crisis communication, which can safe lives, about big power of social media platform for communication or necessary need to look for the truth in the difficult times. But I still want to explain more in details why I have chosen this topic. Firstly, there is the importance of this thesis, because it covers the most recent presidential election in the United States and this election is always watched not only by U. S. citizens, but all over the world. Moreover, in the same year, coronavirus crisis started, so it also changed the rhetoric of political campaigns and brought new perspective on crisis communication. Crisis as Pandemic has not only become new topic for politicians in the campaigns, but it may also have the impact on the election results, as the other topics have been shaded. By the Election Day, it was the second highest daily number of COVID-19 cases. In numbers, it was about 9.4 million reported Covid-19 cases in the U.S. and at least 232,635 deaths (Higgins- Dunn 2020). Even though the topic is relatively current, there are already publications and researches focused on this issue. However, it is still not enough to cover the whole analysis with these sources, so I work mainly with primary sources which are available, such as information from social media etc., and I will describe it in the chapter about data in more details. This fact also

55 . shows the importance to fill the gap within academic publications. The thesis has the main aim to analyze political communication which was seen through the campaigns from each candidate in the context of coronavirus and find if it impacted how Americans voted for the president. The conceptual model for the crisis communication which I provide may be helpful to anybody who would like to analyze crisis communication during the electoral campaign as well. There are many theories and concepts of crisis communication, but they are often very broad or addressed to be used by any authority, such as politician, businessmen or experts. I took the concept of crisis communication specially for politicians, but also added six principles from CERC. There will be analysis of techniques which were used by Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In other words, theoretical concepts of crisis communication will be implemented in real political campaigns during the Pandemic. With the content analysis, I will be able to see similarities and differences in crisis communication which were used by both candidates during the U.S. presidential election in 2020. Moreover, the president has big power in political system of the United States and electoral campaigns are always watched by millions of Ameri- cans. It changes mood within the society (Sheets, Domke, Wells et al. 2011: 771). However, crisis may change the whole rhetoric. While during the electoral campaign candidates communicate in the way, which is suitable for them, in the crisis, the communication has different characteristics. In difficult times, it is important to speak clearly, truthfully and immediately as I explained in the theory. For this reason, it will be interesting to see how Donald Trump, and also Joe Biden reacted to the situation or how it impacted the way they spoke about different issues.

56 .

Another big relevance to this topic has been given also by media and there are some examples. Fox News wrote that coronavirus is the campaign issue: “It could also be a factor” (Fox News Poll 2020). The guardian claims that: “It has changed the issues, the way the fight is fought and quite possibly the outcome” (Smith 2020). However, the outbreak of Pandemic has shown, that social media are one of the best, if not the best, tools for crisis communication. Candidates could share their messages whenever they wanted. On the other hand, there was the risk, that more fake news will be created. This thesis set one of the secondary goals to examine the danger of fake news and their usage by both candidates. If nothing more, I hope that the thesis brings at least more visibility to the topic, because understanding the crisis communication during the electoral campaigns seems to be important for the candidates to speak effectively, but also for voters to recognize the relevant information, to not forget about other campaign topics and the most importantly, many deaths may be caused by terrible crisis communication.

3.2. Questions and hypothesises of the research

There is primary research question and then also secondary research questions. Primary, also called general, question, is usually very broad. That is why there are also secondary questions, which help to answer one main question (Punch 2008: 40).

The primary research question of this thesis for content analysis is:

57 .

PQ1: How the coronavirus crisis impacted political communication in campaigns of each candidate during U. S. presidential election in 2020 on Twit- ter?

Secondary questions for this part of the analysis in the paper shall read as follow: SQ1: What was the position of both candidates towards Pandemic 2020? SQ2: How was the coronavirus reflected in political communication of the campaigns considering both candidates? SQ3: How were elements of crisis political communication from McLean and Eward fulfilled by Joe Biden and Donald Trump? SQ4: Donald Trump got infected by COVID-19 one month before the Elec- tion Day. What changes it cased in his campaign? How Joe Biden reacted in his campaign? SQ5: Did candidates use consistent crisis communication at different platforms they shared information about the Pandemic?

When positions towards the Pandemic and crisis communication of both candidates will be described, there will be the place for quantitative analysis. The goal is to find out, if one of the independent variables had impact on who won in each county in swing states. Hypotheses are:

H1: Counties of swing states with more cases of positive people on COVID- 19 rather voted for Joe Biden. H2: Counties where more people died on COVID-19 rather voted for Joe Biden.

58 .

H0: Variables number of people infected by COVID-19 and number of deaths do not have impact on the winner in each county.

3.3. Design of the research

In the design of the research, there are two main information where the focus will be put on. Firstly, about the period of time and secondly, about states. The length of this thesis is limited, research cannot analyze campaigns from their beginning. For this reason, the biggest focus is put on one month of campaigns before the Election Day, which is always the first Tuesday in November9. In 2020, it was November 3rd. However, it still seems too broad, so I choose the case study, which is the situation one month before the Election Day - Donald Trump got infected by COVID-19 in October 2nd, 2020 (Facebook Donald Trump 2020). This situation help to understand what crisis communication steps Trump, but also Biden took not only in context of whole Pandemic, but also in the “crisis in crisis” when Trump tested positive.

When it comes to the question of swing states, these were described and chosen for the quantitative analysis. Those are the most competitive ones from the United States and their description is in the theoretical part. The rest of the states, which are not swing states, are recognized as Republican or Democratic from the historical perspective. States, in which results of the

9 Election Day, day when Americans vote president is always the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November. It is federal law since 1845 (Statutes at Large 1845: 721).

59 . election will be analysed are Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Penn- sylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nebraska, Florida and Ohio.

3.4. Methods and data of the research

There are two methods of the research in this thesis. The first one is the content analysis, which also includes case study and serves as the written description for understanding how was the crisis seen in the communication of campaigns of both candidates. Then, it follows with the quantitative analysis through regression. Separately, there are descriptions how both methods will be used:

Content analysis

This method helps to describe and analyze the elements of crisis communication in the campaigns of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. According to scientists Wimmer and Dominick, it is the method of studying and analyzing communications in a systematic, objective, and quantitative manner, which lead to measuring variables (Wimmer and Dominick 1996: 170). In this part of the analysis, there will be the focus on the whole country. In other words, these elements will be analyzed in context of national electoral campaign of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In this thesis, there is no space to analyse campaigns in each swing state separately, although swing states will be used for the regression. In the content analysis, elements of crisis communication from McLean and Eward will be implemented to the campaigns. These were already introdu-

60 . ced and more explained the theoretical part (McLean and Eward 2020: 137):

• What is known about the disaster;

• What is not known;

• What is being done about it;

• What action various publics should take.

To fulfill these elements, data used will be based on the primary sources. There has been described the position of social media in the campaigns, so one of the biggest source will be Twitter, to analyze the crisis communication. There is the evidence, that Twitter has been ,,an object of investigation on different occasions” when it comes to crisis communication (Drylie-Ca- rey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo 2020: 2). Also, official speeches of both candidates, which will be usually found on official Facebook pages or other primary sources. Another sources are statements from their official websites. In needed, information from relevant media and other sources. It all will be covered in one month before the day of the election. After these elements will be fulfilled, I will compare their techniques of crisis communication. I find necessary to explain how both candidates look at the problem coronavirus. It will help to understand what differences Donald Trump and Joe Bi- den had in their communication. However, it is very broad topic, so there is the case study chosen in the whole crisis, which will help to focus on the particular problem.

61 .

Case study in content analysis In the research of crisis communication, there is many techniques and methods which may be used. But it is common, that scientists usually choose one incident in the whole crisis and describe its background and the context which is needed for the purpose of the work (Kyoung An and Huei Cheng 2010: 70). This thesis will also apply this method. Some experts even argue, that case study is the main research method in research of crisis communication. A case study is defined as a type of study that focuses on a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context (Kyoung An and Huei Cheng 2010: 69). Some works have the main aim to create the theory which would fit into the crisis situation which has been analysed. Other works focus more on finding the efforts of various crisis strategies, which are effective on audiences. Last not least, there are also studies aimed to understand how different actors perceive crisis communication, for example media (Kyoung An and Huei Cheng 2010: 70). It was already described, at the beginning where content analysis was explained, that there will be the general overview of both candidate’s perspective on the crisis from the point of view of four elements of McLean and Ewart. However, to be able to compare Trump and Biden’s crisis communication styles more specifically, it is necessary to pick one particular event. Therefore, in the case study which was chosen, there will be focus on Trump’s infection of COVID-19 and how he reacted in the campaign. But also how Joe Biden responded. This situation happened one month before the election and it connects the most important topics in this thesis - coronavirus, campaigns, crisis communication and elections.

62 .

The analysis of this event have no aim to create the theory, but rather to see what strategies both actors used in context of crisis communication. The case study of Trump’s infection of COVID-19 brings the opportunity to study the crisis communication in depth, which is more possible when choo- sing the particular situation in the whole crisis (Kyoung An and Huei Cheng 2010: 69). Even though the content analysis got more specific, there are the indicators, which will help to frame this topic and focus on subtopics even more while analyzing both candidates. The indicators for content analysis, where positions towards coronavirus of Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be described, are: the key words, which I will be looking for at their Twitter, such as crisis, COVID-19, Pandemic or any other content connected to the coronavirus crisis and the fact, that Trump got infected. As I already mentioned above, another primary sources will be used to compare, if the communication of both candidates was the same on all platforms I analyze. But still, the key framework here are four elements of Mc- Lean and Eward. So the big focus will be put on the action - what restrictions Trump’s administration brought and what restrictions Joe Biden speaks about. Information and data - what data each candidate use to spread the information about the Pandemic, what they say and what they do not say. It also includes fake news about COVID-19 used in campaigns. Next, what American people should do - face masks, social distancing, stay at home order etc. Additional topic I would like to focus on is health care system - how is it communicated by each candidate. And the last one is the information number of cases and deaths. These all indicators will be applied on the period of time with the beginning of Trump’s infection. For better understanding of data, method and design, there is the table exa-

63 . mining the content analysis:

Table of conceptual model for content analysis:

Time frame: October 2nd, 2020 - November 3rd, 2020

4 elements of 6 principles Platforms/ crisis Topics analyzed by CERC sources communication

What is Be first known Be credible Position towards the crisis

Trump’s infection Primary sources: Express Official websites What is not Information empathy Twitter known Be right Fake news Candidates do not want to say Secondary What is being sources: Promote action Restrictions done Facebook Health care Media Numbers of deaths Other sources if and cases needed

What action Show respect people should take

Source: Author

64 .

Regression analysis Secondly, there is also regression by program SPSS used for the purpose of deeper analysis. First part, content analysis, will help to understand what positions both candidates had towards the coronavirus crisis. According to these information, there may come up some hypothesis and expectations, that coronavirus and its communication in the campaigns might have impacted the result of the election. So the goal is to find, if there is the relationship between the result of the election and two variables - number of people infected by COVID-19 and deaths on COVID-19. This question has been asked many times in different sources. Even though my hypothesis refers to the fact, that Pandemic crisis will bring more votes to Joe Biden, there were also some sources which say the opposite. According to the poll from Fox News published on July 19, there was the prediction, that the coronavirus crisis helps more to Donald Trump. First of all, they assumed that Democrats are more scared of the disease, so that is why they rather stay at home (Fox News Poll 2020). Howev- er, this poll did not consider the fact, that people are able to vote by mail, which turned out as very acceptable for a lot of voters of Biden. I also found one research already published, which is focused on the effect of COVID-19 to presidential election in the U. S. in 2020. Their findings confirm, that COVID-19 had effect on the results of U. S. presidential election in 2020. More specifically, the fact, that there were infected people by the coronavirus caused, that Trump got lower number of votes. They also found, that the effect was stronger in swing states and in states where Trump won his presidency in 2016 (Baccini, Brodeur, and Weymouth 2020: 19). But I want to point out that authors Leonardo Baccini, Abel Broudeur and Stephen Weymouth use different data, design of the research and most im-

65 . portantly, the dependant variable, comparing what I use in this research. While mine is the winner of the election, either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, they compare the results of Trump’s votes from the election in 2016 and in 2020.

But going back to my method, I chose linear regression, because dependent variable is winner of the election. It is nominal, but also dichotomous variable, because it acquires two values - 1 or 2. While 1 means that winner in the particular county was Joe Biden, and 2 means that winner was Donald Trump. Because the dependent variable acquires values 1 or 2, I chose coefficient Kendall’s tau_b to see the correlation. This will help me to see, if any relationship between dependant and independent variable is proven and then I can continue with the regression.

Variables

There are three main variables. The first variable in this analysis is dependant and refers to the result of the election. This variable may acquire different values and these are in numbers, which shows how many votes Don- ald Trump and Joe Biden got. It is the cardinal variable. However, for the purpose of the thesis, I recoded this variable to nominal dichotomous with values 1 and 2, where meaning is victory for candidate who won in the particular county:

• Value 1 means victory for Joe Biden • Value 2 means victory for Donald Trump

66 .

Then, there are independent variables and their effect on the election results will be tested. The first one examines number of people infected by COVID-19 by selected day. This day which was chosen is October 28th, but more information about it is bellow in the chapter about data. The second independent variable is how many people died on COVID-19 in each county by that day. Variables will be analyzed in 10 swing states, while each of them has different number of counties. All of them were put in one dataset. There is the number of counties each of them has: (thefactfile.org 2020):

• Wisconsin - 72 • Texas - 25410 • Georgia - 159 • Michigan - 83 • Pennsylvania - 67 • Arizona - 15 • North Carolina - 100 • Nebraska - 93 • Florida - 67

• Ohio - 88

These states were selected for the analysis, because they are the most competitive ones, so both candidates should have the same chance to win.

10Texas has the most counties from all states in America. There is also county with the smallest population, only 86 people lived there in 2017. It covers about 671 square miles. But it is still not the smallest by size - that is in the state is Rockwall, which has 149 square miles (Hlavaty and Chronicle 2017).

67 .

This fact helps to avoid the variable which would prefer one candidate more than the other, just because of the state preference in the past.

Data There are three important sets of data. The first one is about the number of people infected by COVID-19 in each county in swing states, and the second about how many people died on that virus. Both were collected from the website of Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is a national public health institute in the United States (CDC official website 2020). The information about how many people was infected in each county and also the information about deaths were chosen to be analysed by October 28th, 2020. It is five days before the Election Day, but people could already vote by then. In the United States, it is called early voting. In 2020, these votes reached over 50 % of the more than 136 million total ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election. Data from each swing state about early voting comparing to 2016 total votes are visible on the picture 511 (Kirby and Molla 2020).

11 Minessota is here recognized as the swing state in 2020. This thesis works with swing states which were listed according to New York Times, where Minnesota is not included and is replaced by Nebraska. However, the picture 4 is here not to introduce swing states, but rather to demonstrate that more Americans voted early in 2020 than in 2016. And also for this reason, October 28th will be analyzed with the data about how many people were infected. It is five days before the Election Day.

68 .

Picture 5: Swing states 2020 and early voting

Source: vox.com

Another important data are interpreting results of the elections in each county. Data were collected from website politico.com. There are links to see the results at each state (Politico 2020). But again, the concern was put on 10 states, which were according to New York Times swinging in 2020. Data were collected to the table in Excel program and then used in SPPS program for the regression.

Operacionalization of variables

Both independent variables needs to be operationalized. Number of cases or deaths in each county may differ while comparing how many people live in that county. For this reason, I added the information about number of inhabitants. Data used for this purpose are from website of United States Census,

69 . who's mission is “to serve as the nation's leading provider of quality data about its people and economy” (U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division).

Picture 6: Data

Source: Author, the whole table with my data is available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k5JgO0TQWb_QD6a7stok- zg94Vr6lbRQ8h2t1YOXr_A/edit?usp=sharing .

Then, I chose to count, how many people was infected and dead on 10.000 inhabitants in each county. So I got new operacionalized variables which I use to get the results. .

70 . 3.5. Limits of the research

Before the beginning of the analysis, there will be limits and challenges of the research described. This research is subject to several limitations. Firstly, I would like to focus on the content analysis. It focuses on national campaigns where crisis communication is analyzed. On the other hand, regression is applied on swing states. In the length of this work, it was not possible to analyze local crisis communication used in each swing state, rather I focused on the problem which has been seen on the national level, such as infection of Donald Trump. And for the regression, I wanted to avoid the fact, that some states are much more likely to be Democratic or Republican, so I chose to analyze the data from swing states. Moving on to the regression analysis, there are some challenges and limits as well. In every elections, there is always many variables, which have the impact on the results. It is impossible to include all of them or to avoid third variable influence while using some defined variables. The awareness of missing other variables is present in this research. To name one of them, economics may have the influence on the results of the election as well. Or many other variables, which are connected to how people decide to vote. However, the main goal of the thesis is not to find that coronavirus was the only variable for elections 2020. The purpose of this work is to see if there is even the relationship between coronavirus and results in swing states in context of how many people were infected by COVID-19 or died on that disease. Another problem may be found in the data. When considering how many people were infected by COVID-19, these numbers are analysed only in one particular day. But the numbers were changing every day. However, the sit-

71 . uation around coronavirus was not getting better from October 28th until the Election Day on November 3rd. Also, I would like to say that data about deaths on coronavirus has also some limits. People might get more immune to increasing numbers of deaths, so lower numbers in spring might cause bigger impact on what people thought about the campaigns and the elections. Also, how many people are infected depends on the frequency of testing, which can be also different in each county. When it comes to the data about results of the elections, there was not systematic table or list of the votes each candidate get in swing states. The results from the counties were together found only on website politico, where each state had the needed information. However, I rewrite data about Don- ald Trump and also Joe Biden from each county in swing state, which includes 1996 numbers. It is a big amount of data, so no mistake in data cannot be guaranteed. There may be some mistake because of technical or human reason. Finally, quantitative analysis tend to simplify the reality, because it is too difficult to understand it from this perspective. On the other hand it allows me to analyze big number of data.

72 . 4. Analytical part

Candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden had different opinion about the whole situation around Pandemic. For example, Joe Biden was rarely seen without face mask and provided full program describing how to combat coronavirus and prepare for future global health threats (Joe Biden official 2020). On the other hand Donald Trump was very skeptical about the whole situation. For this reason, there was much misinformation used in his political communication during the campaign. In the analytical part of the thesis, there will be separately described how each of the candidate used the crisis political communication in their campaigns. It starts with the short introduction of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, to explain their background a little bit. It follows with their positions towards the coronavirus crisis and then there is the space to continue with the framework of four concepts of crisis communication. After examining the main opinions of both candidates about the crisis, the analysis continues with the situation, when Donald Trump got infected by COVID-19. His crisis communication toward this event is described, but also Biden’s reaction. This part of the analysis helps to understand the differences in the positions towards the crisis and how both handled switching from “regular” campaign communication to crisis communication. But it also proves, how big topic coronavirus was in campaigns in the elections 2020. Understanding crisis communication and its usage can even help to stop the crisis and safe people’s lives. One of the methods which help me to dive deeper into the topic is, that I use different platforms to see the coherence of the communication. So official positions of Biden and Trump are described according to their official

73 . websites. However, official information do not always have to follow what is happening in reality. Various studies speak about an increase of usage of social media and mainly Twitter, due to its accessibility and immediacy. The activity on social media may give politicians the power to reduce citizen anxiety, inform, detect peaks at an early stage, and minimise virus propagation. Twitter also offers a horizontal communication environment which contrasts with the traditional vertical structures prevalent in the communication of the crisis situation (Drylie-Carey, Sánchez-Castillo and Galán-Cubillo 2020: 2). So to understand every day crisis communication, mainly data from social media such as Twitter and Facebook will be used. When both crisis communications will be described, then there is the space for the analysis where data about presidential election results and COVID-19 information will be used. The effort in that part is to find out, if there is the relationship between results of the elections in swing states and number of cases of people infected by the disease or deaths on coronavirus. More specifically, data from each county in the swing states will appear here. These findings are the addition element to the content analysis. Find- ings of the thesis will answer the questions of the research and also approve or disapprove hypothesises. The crisis can surely become the topic in the electoral campaigns, but the question here is, how candidates use it to create unity between their voters, or how it can be one of the impacts of the results of the election.

74 . 4.1. Donald Trump

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. Currently, he is the 45th President of the United States, he won the elections in No- vember 2016 and took the office on January 20, 2017 (Biography 2020). In 2020 presidential elections, he was presumptive Republican nominee, because he got majority of pledged delegates in March 2020. Comparing to primaries in 2016, he was re-nominated much faster, back then it happened in late May in North Dakota (Borenstein and Colvin 2020). Even before Trump’s presidency in 2016, media talked about him, because his name was marked as a brand with many businesses, for example Trump Financial or Trump Entrepreneur Initiative. Celebritization can be also connected to his persona. In 2008, The Celebrity Apprentice (TV reality show) started and it broadcasted entertaining contest presented by his face. So it also helped him to become well known for many people all over the United States (Duignan, Brian 2020). There is the evidence, that Trump was thinking about the presidential candi- dacy way before he actually did it. From 1980s, he said many times that he wants to run for the president. His party affiliation was not always Republi- can. In 1999, he switched his voter registration to Reform Party, but later rejoined Republican Party again (Duignan, Brian 2020). In election 2016, he focused his campaign on middle class, conservative Americans. There was several topics he spoke about, but few of them were seen more frequently, such as anti-immigration rhetoric or criticism of Barack Obama’s politics. Trump also belong to the category of those who use anti-establishment rhetoric (PolitiFact 2016). The electoral campaigns are usually target to arise the emotions within the voters (Gregor & Eibl 2019: 2). Trump is specific in this sphere, because he

75 . is never afraid to use also negative emotions, such as aggressive way of expression (PolitiFact 2016). Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, even though Hillary Clinton got almost three million more voters. It is cased by electoral system (Norris and Inglehart 2018: 331). During his presidency, he got some labels. Many experts, such as psycholo- gist, agreed, that he might have some behaviour disorder. Others also speak about his tendency to be authoritarian president. It is possible to say, that even before he was elected, he had been seen as such a different candidate. However, even some people who saw him negatively, at the end voted for him for many reasons (Kivisto 2017: 1).

4.2. Donald Trump’s position towards the Pandemic

Donald Trump has the official website https://www.donaldjtrump.com, which he was also using for his campaign. People could read about him, how to donate or watch what events are planned. However, there is no article, page or any other information about coronavirus and Trump’s plan how to handle the crisis (Donald Trump official website). Then, there is the White House website, where the information about current president and his views on the crisis were described. There is more articles with divided information about coronavirus, but there is also the list of restrictions and actions which were taken to stop spreading the virus by president (White House 2020):

• Took early action to cut off travel from China • Built the world’s leading testing system from nothing • Enacted mitigation measures to slow the spread

76 .

• Mobilized public and private sectors to secure needed supplies • Took action to protect vulnerable Americans • Launched effort to deliver a vaccine and therapeutics in record time • Provided support to workers and businesses • Paved way for reopening to get America working again • Surged resources to hot spots as they arose • Confronted China as origin of the virus while Democrats and media cowered

On October 27th, which was few days before the Election Day, there was the article published which includes some data about the crisis. When it comes to numbers, Trump was referring to the fact, that less people died on COVID-19 in America than in Europe. Also, that the United States has among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country. More specifically, according to the best estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 99.997 percent of American people aged 19 and younger who contracted coronavirus recovered fully, 99.98 percent of those aged 20 to 49 made a full recovery, and 99.5 percent aged 50 to 69 fully recover (White House 2020). Trump points out that it is necessary to follow scientific data and information. Article on website of White House says that: ,,President Trump is following the science by protecting the vulnerable, preventing hospital over- crowding, and saving lives while ending harmful lockdowns” (White House 2020). On the other hand, looking at more communication platforms, there has been many records when Trump was saying false information about coronavirus situation. For example, he said multiple times, that deaths by suicide will expand, if the economic shutdown continues. He added that it would cause more deaths than coronavirus (The Atlantic 2020).

77 .

Or Trump also said many times, that: ,,Children are virtually immune to COVID-19.” Which may be dangerous claim, because there is no scientiﬁc proof that it is the truth. Children are less likely to get infected according to studies from China and United States, but it still does not mean that they are immune at all (The Atlantic 2020).

Next words about the crisis from Trump were: ,,A CDC12 study shows that “85 percent of the people wearing masks catch” the virus” (Atlantic 2020). The CDC reacted to this claim and they said, that there are studies about face masks, but they never suggested that people who wear them get the virus at higher rates than others (The Atlantic 2020). On the other hand, fake news were not just heard from Trump’s side, but he often called media those, who create fake news. On October 28th, he wrote on his social media: ,,Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media. They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people” (Facebook Donald Trump 2020). One of the restrictions which every individual can make was to wear face mask. On September 29th, at the ﬁrst presidential debate before the election, Donald Trump said that people should wear masks when needed. But later on, he claimed that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the leading U.S. ofﬁcial on infectious diseases, had initially said that masks are not good, so Trump changed the opinion about it (Victor, Serviss and Paybarah 2020). However, Cleve- land Clinic said it is required to wear masks at the debate, Donald Trump

12 The CDC refers to the part of the U.S. Public Health Service of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). It is the shortcut for the Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention (Dictionary.com 2020).

78 . ignored it (Bradner, Mucha and Sullivan 2020). Face masks are just one example from the whole rhetoric Trump was expressing. His skepticism about coronavirus have been seen when looking at most of the restrictions. Anoth- er situation was, when he returned to White House from the hospital, after he was inﬂected by coronavirus, he suggested people to not be afraid and ,,to get out there” (Holland, Alper 2020).

4.3. Crisis communication of Donald Trump

Even though main position views on the Pandemic from Donald Trump were described according to “official statements” from White House website, this chapter will prove or disclaim his oneness of communication on the other platform - Twitter. In this chapter, I will mainly speak about crisis communication on social media from the day he announced his infection by COVID-19 until the day he recovered. Also, the fact, that campaigns were running is necessary to have in the mind. One month before the election, on October 2nd, president Donald Trump got infected by coronavirus. This news were visible in media and on social media all over the world. For many experts, the question was, how he will communicate this crisis. This question is relevant also for this analysis. I will look into the topic when Trump got inflected and use this situation as the starting point of crisis communication of social media to fulfil my conceptual model of crisis communication described in methodology part.

79 .

What is known

Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump got infected by disease COVID- 19. This information appeared on his Twitter on Friday, October 3rd, 2020. President was 74 years old when this information was revealed, which means that he belongs to high risk group. Also, some would classify him as obese. Melania was 50 years old when she got infected. His whole Tweet was: ,,Tonight, @FLOTUS13 and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). Donald Trump has been very active on his social media through the coronavirus treatment. Even though he said that it was possible to stay isolated in White House, he rather went to the hospital. He has posted his first video message from Walter Reed hospital on Twitter only two days after he found out to be infected. In the video, he was in his suit and said: ,,I came here, wasn’t feeling so well. I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back. I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). On October 5th, he quoted in his tweet the article from New York Post “You see it in enthusiasm for the President outside Walter Reed Hospital. You see it in Registrations, from Florida to Pennsylvania & West Virginia, where Republicans are outstripping Democrats by 2 to 1. If the President bounces back onto the campaign trail, he will be an….” (Twitter Donald Trump

13 FLOTUS is an acronym for First Lady of the United States. It's relatively often used and well known in the United States. First Lady Melania Trump uses the Twitter handle @FLOTUS, while Michelle Obama just used @MichelleObama (Dictionary.com 2020).

80 .

2020). In this post, he points out, that the campaign had to “slow down” at least, because of his disease.

However, there were mostly another topics he was talking about in tweets while he has been treated. He was mainly reacting to something important what was discussed in media in context of the election or said by the other candidate, Joe Biden. On October 5th, he tweeted: "Virginia Voters! Your Governor wants to obliterate your Second Amendment14. I have stopped him. I am the only thing between you and your Second Amendment. Working hard in Virginia. It’s IN PLAY. Better Vote for your favorite President, or wave goodbye to low taxes and gun rights!” (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). Taxes are always one of the topics connected to economics, which is being discussed during the presidential campaigns. It is interesting to watch, how Donald Trump “was mixing” electoral campaign communication15 and crisis communication on his Twitter. So I explained, that there were tweets with the crisis communication only and these, which are recognized as part of the campaign only. However, there are tweets, where crisis, campaign and elections are connected. On October 7th, Trump posted: “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY. HOPE YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING. VOTE NOW!” (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). In numbers, Donald Trump posted 289 tweets and retweets since he got infected until he announced to be recovered on October 11th. To understand

14 The Second Amendment is in the Constitution and speaks about the right to keep and bear arms (Constitution Annotated 2020).

15 By electoral campaign communication I refer communication connected to election, but without the context of Pandemic.

81 . what importance Donald Trump gave to crisis communication about coronavirus, I divided those 289 tweets and retweets into five groups, most of them I mentioned above. He actually posted 289 times, but he deleted 4 tweets which he never posted back, so I was analyzing 285 tweets and retweets. Here are five groups of posts: 1. Coronavirus, Trump’s infection and topics related to this crisis. 2. Topics connected only to campaigning and elections. 3. Tweets and retweets which include information about coronavirus and are also considered as part of the campaign and elections. 4. Links he refers to and I cannot categorize, because his Twitter was suspended16 and I cannot get access to it. 5. Another posts, which are usually retweets about current topic in media, retweets which show support to Trump etc.

1. category - COVID-19 Examples of the posts:

October 8th: “The Gallup Poll has just come out with the incredible finding that 56% of you say that you are better off today, during a pandemic, than you were four years ago. Highest number on record! Pretty amazing!” (Trump Twitter Archive) October 9th: “Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!” October 11th: “A total and complete sign off from White House Doctors

16 Part of the analysis is based on the source of official Twitter of Donald Trump. However, I did not have the whole work ready yet, when Twitter decided to suspended his account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” (Twitter Inc. 2021). For this reason, there are two sources, sometimes it is Twitter Donald Trump, in other cases it is Trump Twitter Archive.

82 . yesterday. That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it. Very nice to know!!!” (Trump Twitter Archive)

I found 16 tweets and retweets from this category out of 285.

2. category - Campaign Examples of the posts:

October 7th: “VOTE TRUMP CALIFORNIA!” (Trump Twitter Archive) October 7th: “Wow!!! NOW DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIG- GEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!” (Trump Twitter Archive)

I found 202 tweets and retweets from this category out of 285.

3. category - COVID-19 and campaigning together Examples of the posts:

October 7th: “RT @IngrahamAngle: Your future under Biden: "Rolling lockdowns' will become norm in Wales.” (Trump Twitter Archive) October 8th: “Joe Biden has no plan for Coronavirus - ALL TALK! He was a disaster in his handling oh H1N1 Swine Flu. He didn’t have a clue, with his own Chief of Staff so saying. If he were in charge, perhaps 2.2 million people would have died from this much more lethal disease!” (Trump Twit- ter Archive)

I found 13 tweets and retweets from this category out of 285.

83 .

4. category - Links I was not able to categorize these posts, because there is usually only link, which is not possible to open. Example:

October 7th: “https://t.co/CuRSrTGQ8V" (Trump Twitter Archive)

I found 45 tweets and retweets from this category out of 285.

5. category - Other topics Examples of the posts:

October 7th: “Was just briefed on Hurricane Delta, and spoke with @Gov- Abbott of Texas and @LouisianaGov John Bel Edwards. Please heed the directions of your State and Local Officials. We are working with them very closely — please be prepared, be careful, and be safe!” (Trump Twitter Ar- chive)

I found 59 tweets and retweets from this category out of 285.

For better imagination, I created the graph, where it is visible, that Donald Trump was communicating mainly about the campaign issues, which were not even connected to the coronavirus or Pandemic, while he was going through his coronavirus experience.

84 .

Picture 7: Graph about distribution of Trump’s Twitter posts17

Source: Author, graph was created on the website https://www.canva.com/.

I also created one subcategory while analyzing, because I found that there is a lot of it. It may intermingle through all categories mentioned above. It is the criticism of Joe Biden, Democratic Party or another personas connected to that, such as Barack Obama. There was 69 tweets and retweets out of 285 which were including negative message about the politicians or party from Trump’s Twitter. In percentages, it is 24 % of negative posts towards the other candidate. In this chapter about “What is known”, I also have to mention the principle of CERC “to be first” with the information during the crisis. It seems like

17 I distributed the tweets by subjective selection with the guidance of 5 categories I created for this purpose.

85 .

Twitter is great platform to spread the information very fast. President did not wait until somebody find out that he has the virus, he rather said it and made sure to inform regularly about his health situation to stay credible, which is the second principle of CERC crisis communication. On the other hand, the credibility goes hand to hand with the next principle of CERC which is to be right. Trump did not always spread the right or true information, which I analyze in the following subchapter. The most important fact I see here, that Trump did not give as much attention to the coronavirus crisis as may be expected. He separately tweeted about COVID-19 only 13 times out of 285 during the period when he was infected. Moreover, when he posted something about the crisis, it was to remind people that it is not that bad, that flu kills more people than coronavirus or to inform that there is work going on to stop the crisis, even though he did not mention specific steps. To conclude this subchapter, Trump’s treatment lasted ten days. For the purpose of his communication, it fitted well with the messages he was saying about coronavirus - that people should not be afraid of it.

What is not known

In this subchapter, I would like to focus on the facts, which Trump tweeted about and were false or questionable, at least. On October 6th, Donald Trump wrote: “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” (Twit- ter Donald Trump 2020). However, according to researchers, it was very

86 . confusing for people - there was still not enough information, but it was not relevant to compare coronavirus, which was new disease, to flu (Brooks 2020). Another point of view on this topic is, that Trump uses the term “fake news” often during his crisis communication. On October 27th, he tweeted “Until November 4th., Fake News Media is going full on Covid, Covid, Covid. We are rounding the turn. 99.9%” (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). His message about coronavirus in this context stayed the same, because he was constant- ly making sure not to spread the fear within American people. It would be difficult to include all fake news or questionable information about Trump’s infection, but it is important to say, that Trump was not always saying the truth, on the other hand there were also misinformation about him. When he announced to test positive on COVID-19, on Twitter appeared posts from verified accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers who were supposed to be Republican supporters. They have spread a baseless rumour that Donald Trump was somehow deliberately infected with Covid-19 at some point during the debate, which happened week before he announced to be infected (BBC 2020).

Looking at CERC principle “to be right”, Trump did not succeeded in all his posts. The whole problem of fake news used by authority is explained in theoretical part. I would like to just point out here, that fake news may be morally wrong most of the time. Another level of danger brings the fact, that information are connected to health issues. Misinformation in the case of coronavirus may endanger human lives. Another principle, which I included in this subchapter is “to express empathy”. Considering the period from his infection to his recovery when he

87 . posted 285 times, there is no expression of empathy towards the coronavirus crisis. In comparison, from October 7th to October 9th, he tweeted 4 times about the hurricane Delta, which was another crisis that came up that time as well. And in this case, his tweets much more empathic than when he writes about COVID-19. Hurricane Delta caused 3 deaths (Nbc News 2020).

What is being done

The fourth element “what is being done” may be considered as the same like the fifth principle of CERC “promote action”. At the beginning of this chapter, I described the list of Trump’s steps and restrictions from White House website. However, considering period of the analyzed time here, I did not find any posts focusing on the action. Another point of view is to look specifically at Trump’s infection and what actions were taken to “solve” this problem. Within 10 days and 285 tweets and retweets on his Twitter, there was only 13 of them mentioning coronavirus separately from the campaign. At the beginning, he announced to be infected, to be isolated. Later on, he admitted to go to the hospital and shared what drugs he was taken. Then, 10 days later, he concluded with the information being negative and immune (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). So some action people could watch in the context of him having virus, but not information about steps to stop spreading coronavirus.

88 .

What action people should take

Again, considering posts from October 2nd to October 11th, there was not much about what action people should take. Donald Trump continued with his skeptical rhetoric towards the whole situation. Through his posts he was rather trying to awake courage and braveness in people rather than fear.

89 . 4.4. Joe Biden

Joe Biden, by name of Joseph Robinette Biden, was born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was a Democratic nominee in presidential election 2020. In life, his first experience with politics happened in University of Delaware, where he studied political science. However, his political career started very early, because he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 at the age of 29, becoming the fifth youngest senator in history. He was reelected six times, which means that he became Delaware’s longest- serving senator (Encyclopedia Britannica 2020). However, in his political career, he is mostly well known for being 47th vice president of the United States in the Democratic administration of president Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. At the beginning, Biden was not interested, but his mother’s opinion influenced him. She saw the big opportunity for his son. The thing was, that Biden never had boss, so there was the uncertainty if it is really for him. Finally, he took the job, because there was the agreement with Obama, that Biden will have an extraordinary level of involvement in policy making and decision making (Hook 2020). On Ja- nuary 12, 2017, at the end of Obama’s presidency, Biden got Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is unusual honour and it shows how close the relationship and cooperation between them was (Encyclopedia Britannica 2020). When Democratic Party started with the selection process of their presidential candidate for 2020 election, Joe Biden had relevant rivals. After the first democratic debate in June 2019, Joe Biden started to be criticised a lot, because his performance was disappointing for many people. His biggest competitor was Bernie Sanders, who had considerable chance to become

90 . party’s nominee after the first three nomination contests in early 2020 (En- cyclopedia Britannica 2020). Primaries in South Carolina at the end of February were important for the race, because many candidates dropped out and by the beginning of March, there was only Sanders versus Biden in primaries (Encyclopedia Britannica 2020). Then, coronavirus situation changed the whole game. It postponed primary elections all over the country. But finally, in April 8, 2020, Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee (Krieg, Nobles, Grayer 2020).

4.4. Joe Biden’s position towards the Pandemic

Firstly, I would like to introduce the information from ofﬁcial website. Joe Biden has the whole plan there, which shows how he and Kamala Harris18 would beat the coronavirus. He also often refers to this link on his Twitter, which will be shown bellow. There are seven main points which should have the attention (Joe Biden official website 2020):

1. Fix Trump’s testing and tracing fiasco, which means Biden wants free testing for all Americans.

2. Fix personal protective equipment (PPE) problems for good. Biden says that it is important to have sources of the most essential equipment in the United States and not depend on other countries.

18 Kamala Harris is a Democratic candidate for vice president in presidential election 2020. She is the first woman, first Black woman, first woman of South Asian descent, and first daughter of immigrants who was ever elected to national office in the United States (Joe Biden official website 2020).

91 .

3. Provide clear, consistent, evidence-based national guidance. It will help communities, such as families, schools, small businesses etc., how to handle Pandemic.

4. Plan for the effective, equitable distribution of treatments and vaccine.

5. Make sure that older people and other at high risk are protected.

6. Rebuild and expand the defenses that Trump has dismantled to predict, prevent, and mitigate pandemic threats, including those coming from China.

7. Face masks. It is a big issue for Joe Biden. He was rarely seen without the mask during his campaign. He refers to the scientific information how important face masks are to safe lives. In his program, Biden wants every American to wear a mask when they are around people outside their household. Also, every governor should make that mandatory in their state. And finally, local authorities to also make it mandatory to buttress their state orders.

One of the topics he mentioned in context of COVID-19 is the truth. Ac- cording to Biden, it is necessary to restore trust, credibility, and common purpose. In other words, only experts should speak about the crisis and communicate real information to American people. Scientists and public health leaders should be providing regular guidance and deliver timely public health updates. It would also help to stop fear and chaos within public (Joe Biden official website 2020).

Crisis brings a lot of opportunities to create fake news, as it was explained in theoretical part. There is a big effort from public to get the information,

92 . so authorities must provide them. Joe Biden was marked as the one who spread fake news by media few times as well. Joe Biden had labelled the coronavirus crisis a Pandemic as early as January and he said that there was the chance to stop it at the beginning and not wait until Pandemic takes over. However, experts from FactCheck.org said, that there is no evidence about him saying this information in January. The first evidence of Joe Biden saying something to Pandemic was in March, when he pointed out how important face masks are (abc.net 2020).

On his website, there is not only plan of actions which would be necessary to take if he get the office. There is also timeline from January, where voters can see Biden’s real steps and efforts to stop spreading the virus (Joe Biden official website 2020). He explains what he has done. But mainly, he reacts to Trump administration and how they handle the crisis. On May 11, for example, Joe Biden criticized Trump for pushing a false choice between protecting health of Amer- ican people and the economy. Also, Biden informed that Trump failed in leading the national response to re-open safely and sustainably (Joe Biden official website 2020). However, there is not only criticism, because Biden also provides his solu- tion to what is going on. On September 8th, he released “Roadmap”, which explains how to safely and effectively reopen schools. It includes five step roadmap, which is supposed to help local decision-making authorities whether to reopen schools or not yet (Joe Biden official website 2020). The first key element is to get the virus under the control, which would be possible by more testing or to provide face masks for all at schools. Another elements which are crucial to know if to reopen are guideline from the na-

93 . tional level, possibility to get emergency fundings to public schools, making sure that the educational quality is the same during the crisis, which is connected to the last point, that Biden wants to close the COVID-19 educational equality gap (Joe Biden official website 2020). Joe Biden did not criticise only Trump’s response to Pandemic, but also what impact it had to economics. On Election Day, November 3rd, Biden tweeted: ,,Here’s the truth: Donald Trump inherited a growing economy from President Obama and me. And just like everything else he’s inherited in life, he squandered it” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

4.5. Crisis communication of Joe Biden

The starting point for the analysis of crisis communication of Joe Biden is the same like in the chapter of Donald Trump - October 2nd, 2020. In the period of time when Trump got infected until he recovered on October 11th, I will analyze also Biden’s tweets and retweets and see, how much attention he put into the crisis and how he communicated it. Again, the table of conceptual model of crisis communication is used as the framework for this analysis.

What is known The Democratic nominee with his wife, Jill Biden, publicly wished health and safety to Trump and also Melania Trump when they found out that president’s family got infected (Bradner, Mucha and Sullivan 2020). Candidate for vice-president Harris also said that together with her husband, they are sending prayers for the president. Last not least, Barack Obama, who was supporting Joe Biden in his campaign, also reacted to the situation: ,,It’s important I think for all of us to remember that even when we’re in the midst

94 . of big political battles with issues that have a lot at stake, that we’re all Americans and we’re all human beings, and we want to make sure every- body is healthy” (Mason 2020). Kamala Harris and Barack Obama were often visible on Biden’s Twitter. He usually retweeted Harris’s tweets, while posts with Obama were informing about the support towards the candidate (Twitter Joe Biden). It is interesting to see, how the official plan about beating coronavirus from Biden’s website was connected to his Twitter crisis communication. Big relevance had been given not science at his website, but also on Twitter. In the analyzed period of time, Biden devoted several posts to the importance of relevant data. On October 6th, he tweeted: “October 6 - Listen to the scientists.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). In the context of CERC principle “to be credible”, Biden seemed to follow experts and their recommendations how to handle the crisis and also shared this information with the public. The second principle of CERC, which I placed in this subchapter is to “be first”, which seems easy with the social media platforms. Biden often communicated the messages in context of current situation and need of information from public. Moving on, I would like to show some numbers. Between October 2nd and October 11th, Joe Biden posted 171 tweets and retweets in total. I also divided them into four categories. I did not use the category “Links” as in the case of Trump’s posts, because I could recognize all Biden’s messages and categorize them.

1. category - COVID-19 Examples of the posts:

95 .

October 2nd: “I’m happy to report that Jill and I have tested negative for COVID. Thank you to everyone for your messages of concern. I hope this serves as a reminder: wear a mask, keep social distance, and wash your hands.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). October 6th: “Folks, we can save nearly 100,000 lives by the end of the year if everyone wears a mask in public. Do your part. Protect your neighbors. Wear a mask.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

I found 9 tweets and retweets from this category out of 171.

2. category - Campaign

Examples of the posts:

October 3rd: “I’m running as a Democrat, but I will be an American president. Whether you voted for me or against me, I will represent you.” (Twit- ter Joe Biden 2020). October 3rd: “One month until Election Day. Let’s do this, America.” (Twit- ter Joe Biden 2020). October 7th: “7th Climate change is already here, and ignoring science won't make it go away. If we give the Trump Administration another four years, we'll lose irreplaceable time to combat it.” `Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

I found 113 tweets and retweets from this category out of 171.

96 .

3. category - COVID-19 and campaigning together Examples of the posts:

October 2nd: “Donald Trump will do everything he can to distract from the fact that because of his failed COVID-19 response:

- Over 200,000 Americans have died - 26 million are on unemployment - 1 in 6 small businesses risk permanent closure

We can’t let him” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). October 3rd: “Thank you, Grand Rapids, for a great afternoon. From the virus to the economy, we face immense challenges as a nation. But if we come together and act as one America, we can and will overcome them.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). October 6th: “The pandemic is not a red state versus blue state issue. The virus doesn’t care where you live or what political party you belong to.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). October 11th: “One in five small businesses have closed.

More than 25 million Americans are on unemployment. Millions are at risk of losing their homes.

But President Trump doesn’t seem to care. He only cares about how he and his wealthy friends are doing.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). October 11th: “When President Trump was told one thousand Americans were dying every day from COVID-19, he shrugged it off and said, "it is what it is."

97 .

It is what it is? This president doesn't even pretend to care about the Americans he swore to serve. It's disgraceful.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

I found 47 tweets and retweets from this category out of 171.

4. category - Other topics19

Examples of the posts: October 6th: “I couldn’t let #WorldTeachersDay go by without celebrating the best teacher I know. Jilly, the way you’ve worked tirelessly and passion- ately for your students year after year continues to inspire me.”

I found only 2 tweets and retweets from this category out of 171.

I again created the graph, where it is visible, how many posts were connected to the crisis comparing to campaign messages only.

98 .

Picture 8: Graph about distribution of Biden’s Twitter posts

Source: Author, graph was created on the website https://www.canva.com/.

According to my data which are pictured in the graph, Biden did not waste a lot of posts to inform about anything else than campaign issues or coronavirus crisis. 66 % of the distribution falls under the campaign issues, where he usually informed people in particular states that early voting started, how to vote or the reasons to vote for him. On the other hand, 32 % of posts were somehow connected to coronavirus crisis, in the campaign context or without. In the case of Biden, I also analyzed how many posts were criticising his election rival. There was 24 tweets and retweets focused on negative message about Trump and his work. It represents 14 % of all posts from October 2nd to October 11th, 2020.

99 .

What is not known Even though Joe Biden refers to the science quite often in his tweets, which gave the credibility to the communication, media questioned few information released from him anyways. Joe Biden and his wife got tested when Trump said he tested positive publicly and announced to have negative tests. However, according to MIT Medical, it is possible that it takes even several days for the virus to be detected. Also, Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert said, that "If Biden was infected during the debate on Tuesday, you wouldn’t expect him to be positive on Friday.… I am more interested in how he tests tomorrow and Sunday and Monday” (Mason 2020). Biden then got tested also on Sunday and again, negative (Reuters 2020). Biden kept his seriousness about the virus which is also proven by the fact, that all people from the campaign who attended the first presidential debate were tested. However, there was no evidence of positive result (Mason 2020). From the opposite perspective, Joe Biden did not use the term “fake news” even once in the analyzed period of time. It seems like he rather focused on the relevant information, which are scientifically proven. But as I already mentioned, he criticised Trump in his tweets, where he pointed out few times that Mr. President does not share enough information about the crisis and how serious it is (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

What is being done

100 .

It is interesting to see, how the official plan about beating coronavirus from Biden’s website was connected to Twitter communication. As I described 7 points of Biden’s plan above, I would like to place some of them here. In the first point, he criticized Trump how testing was being provided to American people and said it should be for free. Looking at his tweets and retweets, there was 24 times (out of 171 tweets and retweets) criticism towards Trump’s administration and how his position towards the crisis (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). On October 5th, he tweeted: “Now that President Trump is busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask him to do this: Listen to the scientists. Support masks. Support mask mandates nationwide.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). Considering “what is being done” from Joe Biden perspective, he often used the link of his website COVID-19 plan to support some of his tweets. On October 5th, one of the posts was: “Joe Biden’s jobs and economic recovery agenda is built on the proposition that we must build our economy back better than it was before the COVID-19 crisis.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020) and the link was included there as well. It proves, how consistent in his crisis communication Joe Biden was. Few days later, on October 8th, Joe Biden used another negative message about Trump: “We’re eight months into this pandemic and Donald Trump and Mike Pence still have no plan to deal with COVID-19. He’s still hoping it will just “disappear.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). So not only that Biden was providing his “plan of action”, but he also made sure to remind people that Trump ignores the crisis, because he does not have any plan.

101 .

What action people should take The last principle of CERC is to “show respect”. In context of what action people should take, Joe Biden informed regularly about the crisis update with the numbers of cases and deaths. Also, how people lost their job because of the Pandemic and what changes should be made in the health care system to provide treatment to all Americans (Twitter Joe Biden 2020). The respect had been definitely shown to people, as well as the requirements how should people behave in that difficult time. One of the most repeated information on Twitter was about the need to wear face mask. In addition, Biden also wrote about social distancing or washing hands as the necessary part of coronavirus prevention. This was also one point of his plan from the website and he stayed consistent in this also on social media. His crisis communication on Twitter looked like this:

October 2nd, 2020: “I’m happy to report that Jill and I have tested negative for COVID. Thank you to everyone for your messages of concern. I hope this serves as a reminder: wear a mask, keep social distance, and wash your hands.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

October 3rd, 2020: “Be a patriot. Do your part. Wearing a mask will protect you. But it will also protect those around you — your mom, your dad, your son, your daughter, your neighbor, your co-worker. Don’t just do it for yourself. Do it for the people you love.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

October 6th, 2020: “Masks matter. They save lives.” (Twitter Joe Biden 2020).

102 .

So if there is the question from McLean and Eward’s concept - what action various publics should take, there are two perspectives how to look at it from Biden’s point of view. First of all, he sees necessary to follow all restrictions and people have to be responsible in that difficult time. The second technique he was using was the criticism of Trump. So if people wanted to solve the crisis, the simplest answer from Biden was - vote for me and not for Donald Trump. It became the topic of the campaign and both candidates used it as their advantage.

103 . 4.6. Comparison of crisis communication

By the comparison of crisis communication of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I will be able to answer the question of the research: “How the coronavirus crisis impacted political communication in campaigns of both candidates during U. S. Presidential election in 2020?”. To answer my question, I introduced the positions towards the Pandemic from official websites and then compared it to the crisis communication used on Twitter.

What is known Donald Trump and also Joe Biden provided the plan how to stop spreading the coronavirus. Joe Biden published it on his official website, while Donald Trump‘s position toward the Pandemic was available on the White House website. According to my data above, Donald Trump was taking the situation much more skeptical, because Joe Biden spoke about the crisis as a serious problem. There are two reasons from description of their position toward the Pandemic. Firstly, Joe Biden kept consistence in his crisis communication, because he often shared coronavirus links from his website on Twitter. On the other hand, in Donald Trump‘s crisis communication was missing the connection between what was written on the White House website and his Twitter posts. Secondly, the big issue in crisis communication are data and relevance of information. Joe Biden regularly shared numbers of cases and deaths on COVID-19 to prove the seriousness of the crisis. Donald Trump used numbers to keep enthusiastic communication to people. On October 27, on the White House website were published numbers of cases and deaths, but it concludes that less people died in America than in Europe. Trump was not a

104 . fan of economic shut down, because according to him, more people would die by suicide, or it would lead to another problems (The Atlantic 2020). Even though the White House website assures people, that Donald Trump is following scientific facts and recommendations, his communication on Twitter proved the opposite. He refused to wear a face mask many times, or he compares coronavirus to flu in one of his Twitter posts, which is according to experts incomparable (Brooks 2020). The most alarming information I found was, that Trump was expressing bigger empathy to people because of the hurricane, which caused four deaths. Comparing to coronavirus crisis, it is really very small number, because by the Election Day, there was about 9.4 million reported Covid-19 cases in the U.S. and at least 232,635 deaths. So generally, both candidates had different opinion about the whole situation. In the theoretical part, there is the quotation from Lijphart who said that external threat leads to internal unity. According to him crisis brings better cooperation and understanding between societal cleavages (Weschle 2019: 1099). In context of the election, crisis such as Pandemic, was the opportunity for both candidates to create crisis communication which their voters will relate to the most. In the presidential election 2020, Trump and Biden were competing each other, so their opposite rhetoric about the crisis helped to lead to internal unity within Democratic or Republican voters. These two “units” had their own truth about the different topics connected to the crisis.

As I already mentioned data I analyzed from Twitter, I would like to compare posts of Trump and Biden here more in details. In both cases, I divided

105 . tweets and retweets from October 2nd to October 11th into 4 categories20. The focus was put not only to the coronavirus crisis as the whole, but also to “crisis in crisis”, which in my thesis is Trump’s infection of the virus. During the analysed period of time, there was 285 posts on Trump’s Twitter and 171 posts on Biden’s Twitter. Only 10 % of Trump’s tweets and retweets were informing about coronavirus crisis, whereas 32 % Biden’s tweets and retweets were focused on the topic of the crisis.

What is not known

I would like to point out one more time, that in the time of crisis specifically, it is necessary to provide relevant data, as one of the principles from CERC says “to be right”. However, both candidates used misinformation or questionable messages, at least. The difference in this subchapter is, that Donald Trump often tweeted about “fake news”, usually in context of media who share false articles, according to him (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). Even though I showed in my data, that a candidates put the attention to the crisis on their Twitter, it is impossible to say that they covered all questions from public. Taking into account Trump’s infection and his reaction to it, people should not be scared of it (Twitter Donald Trump 2020). However, he does not provide the statistics about the seriousness of the disease and from his point of view it seems easy to recover, which is not always the truth. Another big topic in the United States is health care, which may not be

20 In case of Trump's tweets and retweets, I used 5 categories. One is called “Links” and it includes posts, which I was not able to categorize. On his Twitter, it would be visible, what message those posts were referring to. However, I had to analyze posts from the website with the archive of his Twitter, because the official Twitter account of Donald Trump has been suspended.

106 . available to all Americans in the same scale like president gets. He has got- ten the best medical care imaginable, with every necessary resource of the public and private sector being put towards keeping him safe and recovered as soon as possible (Robinson 2020). So both candidates had different view on the crisis. And it was also the reason to criticize each other sometimes. Biden mentioned on his Twitter few times, that Trump fails in handling the Pandemic or that he does not provide relevant data. On the other hand, Donald Trump criticized Biden for his exaggerative opinions about the crisis. President also accused the Democra- tic nominee few times that he will shot down the county if he gets elected. He said that at first presidential debate. This information has never been uttered by Biden (C-SPAN 2020). This chapter may seek to list what information had been missing in their crisis communication. However, the candidates were using different platforms for communication, not only Twitter. For this reason, I can only compare the amount of information both shared on that social media platform. And data proves, that Joe Biden informed about the crisis more, in much more regular frequency.

What is being done

Another proof, that Donald Trump did not take the crisis communication as the priority is the fact, that he did not put too much attention to the steps which should be taken. In his rhetoric, it even seemed mostly like he underestimate the whole situation, he did not see the reason for lock downs and mostly criticized Biden or Democrats for radical restrictions in some states (C-SPAN 2020).

107 .

In Biden’s case, there is absolutely opposite approach. His plan how to beat coronavirus was published on the website, with the specific timeline, steps and actions. The consistency was also proven by sharing this information on Twitter, so his interconnectedness across the communication platforms were visible in the context of crisis.

What action people should take In this last subchapter about the action people should take, I would like to again confirm, that Donald Trump was not very serious about the basic restrictions, such as wearing face mask, social distancing or watching hands. Between October 2nd to October 11th, there was no evidence of this information on his Twitter. On the other hand, Joe Biden was regularly remin- ding people to follow these restrictions to safe their own, and also other people’s lives.

In the following chapter, there is the regression, which has the goal to find out if coronavirus had the impact on election results. I feel confident to say, according to my content analysis, that people who believed in seriousness of Pandemic, who were following restrictions, who somehow got in touch with the virus personally or from the stories of somebody they know, people who did not underestimate the crisis, they would rather vote for Biden. And those, who did not believe in the seriousness of the crisis, those who did not agree with restrictions and more agree with Trump’s point of view on the situation, would rather vote for him21.

21 Of corse there is many other variables which have the impact on the voter’s decisions. Those are mentioned in the chapters “Limits of the research” and “Discussion”.

108 . 4.7. Pandemic and the election results

Number of people infected by COVID-19

When analyzing infected people by correlation with Kendall’s tau_b22, the key is to look at coefficient number higher than +-0,3. Because if the value is from +-0,3 to +-1,00, the relationship between variables is expected. However, we can see in the table 1, that the correlation coefficient is -0,155. For this reason, there is not proven connection between independent variable of infected people and dependant variable winner of the election, so it will not be further analyzed.

Table 1: Correlation coefficient - People infected by COVID-19 and results of the election 2020.

22 I chose Kendall’s tau_b, because my data have 998 cases.

109 .

Source: Author

Deaths on COVID-19 When analyzing deaths by correlation with Kendall’s tau_b, there is again important to look at coefficient number higher than +-0,3. The number, as we can see in the table 2 is -0,283. This correlation coefficient I consider as significant, because it is close number to +-0,3. So this independent variable will be included in further analysis.

Table 2: Correlation coefficient - Deaths of COVID-19 and results of the election 2020.

Source: Author

Next step is the regression. The first thing which is important now is index of determination. In table 3, it is written under the R Square, so it is 0,154. This number means that independent variable explains 15,4 % variance of dependant variable.

110 .

Table 3: Index of determination - Deaths of COVID-19 and results of the election 2020.

Source: Author

So the analysis continues to see the number of significant. The value is 0,00, which means that it is statistically significant and it proves that this model is appropriate to predict dependant variable.

Table 4: ANOVA Significant - Deaths of COVID-19 and results of the election 2020.

In table 5, there is also significant 0,00, so independent variable which is deaths on COVID-19 has the statistical impact on the fact, how people voted in each county. Looking at Unstandardized B helps to describe the effect

111 . of how many people died on COVID-19 on who won the election. When the value of independent variable will be increased by one unit, the value of dependent variable will increase of -0,01. In other words, if there is more people dead on COVID-19 in the county, there is a higher chance for Joe Biden to be elected.

Table 5: Coefficients - Deaths of COVID-19 and results

Source: Author

112 . 5. Discussion

The thesis shows the importance of the crisis communication and how it changes the way politicians communicate during the election period of time. I analyzed crisis communication of Donald Trump and Joe Biden mainly on Twitter. The findings show the differences between their rhetoric, however, it cannot be stated as their general opinions or crisis communication. There is many platforms and ways where and how candidates express crisis communication and in the length of the thesis, it was impossible to include all platforms. In the further research, it would be interesting to see also their crisis communication in media, in their campaign speeches, in debates, to create the whole picture of their crisis communication and mainly see the consistency of it. I choose social media platform for the analysis, because crisis communication needs to be fast in informing public and Twitter gives that opportunity to the candidates. The content analysis has proven that coronavirus crisis had become the topic in the presidential campaigns in the U. S. in 2020, so with the regression analysis I wanted to see if there is the relationship between deaths or cases and results of the election. However, I am aware of many limits of this part of the thesis. Including control variables or measuring the impact in time of crisis would improve the findings. However, the main goal was to find if there is the relationship between coronavirus and how people in each county of swing state voted. The data about demographic information or other variables which influence the election result would be helpful for further research.

113 . 6. Conclusion

The coronavirus disease has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments and people worldwide. For this reason, effective government communication with the public is of crucial importance (Ngai, Singh, Koon and Lu 2020: 1). In this thesis, concept of crisis political communication in political campaigns by McLean and Ewart with six CERC principles were implemented into the case of Donald Trump and Joe Biden before the U. S. presidential election in 2020. Perspectives on the coronavirus crisis from each candidate was introduced, while also crisis communication on their Twitter was analyzed. Now, I would like to focus on the primary question of the research and conclude the answer.

How the coronavirus crisis impacted political communication in campaigns of each candidate during U. S. presidential election in 2020?

Coronavirus became the topic of the campaigns. Firstly, I showed the official positions towards the Pandemic. Donald Trump did not put too much effort to create complex plan how to beat the virus and he did not even mention this topic on his official website. On the other hand, Joe Biden had the whole plan on his website, as well as timeline what steps and when should be taken. Crisis communication of both candidates was analyzed more deeply on social media platform - Twitter. From my selected period of time, there was 10 % of Trump’s tweets and retweets and 32 % Biden’s tweets and retweets connected to the crisis communication. Mainly in case of Trump, this findings are alarming. Looking at the content, Trump’s shared information were

114 . not even empathetic, most of the time skeptical towards the situation and not relevant or covered by scientific data. He expressed more sadness and empathy when hurricane Delta caused four deaths, than when he was talking about the Pandemic.

To answer my research question, the coronavirus crisis impacted political communication in campaigns of each candidate during U. S. presidential election in 2020. Crisis communication became the opportunity to create the unity within voters. Considering my theoretical framework - conceptual model of crisis communication, which I set for my analysis - Joe Biden followed elements and principles of crisis communication more than Donald Trump. My data show, that Joe Biden often referred to science, he encouraged people to follow the restrictions, he was sharing the advantages of wearing face masks often, he set the whole plan how to stop spreading coronavirus on his website, which he often linked in his tweets, he shared facts regularly and kept empathy in his rhetoric.

Regression analysis

Also, there was the analysis with the goal to find out if there is the relationship between results of the election and two variables connected to coronavirus crisis. The first one is number of people infected by COVID-19 and the second was number of deaths on this disease. Using regression analysis, the first independent variable appeared to not correlate with the results of the elections, while the second one proved the relationship. In other words number of people infected by COVID-19 in all counties in

115 . swing states had no impact on who won in these counties. On the other side, relationship between how many people died in counties and who won there, was proven. However, I need to underline here the fact, that there is many limits, while using this method. Most of them I explained in this thesis.

If reader would take one thing from this research, I want one fact to be re- membered. The crisis usually cause deaths. In context of Pandemic, a lot of people died. Effective crisis communication, which would be based on strong theoretical framework, can not only solve the crisis, but the most importantly safe human lives. This thesis has proven, that Joe Biden, who was following model of crisis communication much more than Donald Trump, won the election. It is not the only reason, but in the uncertain time in the world, what 2020 surely was, it can have a big impact.

116 . 7. Sources

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7.2. Websites, videos, journalist articles and polls

• Abc.net. 29. 10. 2020. Donald Trump has made many false coronavirus claims, but some of Joe Biden's are wide of the mark too. Available from: (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-30/coronacheck-us-election-donald-trump-joe-biden-fact-check/12826498). • BBC. 2020. False coronavirus claims and rumours about Trump. Avail- able from: (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-54387438). • BBC. 2020. Covid: Trump describes his illness 'a blessing from God’. Available from: (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54455040). • Biden, Joe. @JoeBiden. 3. 11. 2020. Here’s the truth: Donald Trump inherited a growing economy from President Obama and me. And just like

122 .

everything else he’s inherited in life, he squandered it. Twitter: (https:// twitter.com/joebiden/status/1323400746939883522). • Biden, Joe. @JoeBiden. 2. 10. 2020. I’m happy to report that Jill and I have tested negative for COVID. Thank you to everyone for your messages of concern. I hope this serves as a reminder: wear a mask, keep social distance, and wash your hands. Twitter: (https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/ status/1312065485400346625? ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1312 065485400346625%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A %2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2020%2F10%2F02%2Fpolitics%2Fjoe- biden-coronavirus%2Findex.html). • Biography. 2020. Donald Trump Biography. Available from: (https:// www.biography.com/us-president/donald-trump). • Borenstein, Seth. Colvin, Jill. 17. 5. 2020. Chicago Tribune. President Donald Trump clinches the Republican Party presidential nomination. Available from: (https://www.chicagotribune.com/election-2020/ct-nw- trump-republican-nomination-20200318-23zngzowknbi3kjo7hg7wo2kaq- story.html). • Bradner, Eric. Mucha, Sarah. Sullivan, Kate. 2. 10. 2020. Biden calls Trump's positive test a 'bracing reminder' of seriousness of coronavirus pandemic. CNN: (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/02/politics/joe-biden- coronavirus/index.html). • Brooks, Brad. 13. 3. 2020. Like the flu? Trump's coronavirus messaging confuses public, pandemic researchers say. reuters.com. Available from: (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mixed-messages- idUSKBN2102GY).

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• Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. 2020. Coronavirus (COVID-19). Available from: (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019- ncov/index.html). • ClickOrlando. 2020. Florida health experts report 4,115 new COVID-19 cases, 66 deaths. Available from: (https://www.clickorlando.com/news/ local/2020/10/28/florida-health-experts-report-4115-new-covid-19-cases- 66-deaths/). • Constitution Annotated. 2020. Second Amendment. Available from: (https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-2/). • C-SPAN. 29. 9. 2020. First 2020 Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Youtube. Available from: (https://www.youtube.- com/watch?t=3403&v=wW1lY5jFNcQ&feature=youtu.be). • Dictionary.com. 2020. FLOTUS. Available from: (https://www.dictionary.com/e/acronyms/flotus/). • Dictionary.com. 2020. CDC. Available from: (https://www.dictionary.- com/browse/cdc). • Duignan, Brian. 11. 6. 2020. Encyclopedia Britannica. Donald Trump. Available from: (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump). • Facebook Donald Trump. 2020. Available from: (https://www.facebook.- com/DonaldTrump). • Encyclopedia Britannica. 2020. Joe Biden. Available from: (https://www.- britannica.com/biography/Joe-Biden). • Encyclopedia Britannica. 2020. Joe Biden. Available from: (https://www.- britannica.com/biography/Joe-Biden). • Fox News Poll. 19. 7. 2020. Blanton, Dana. Fox News Poll: Biden holds lead over Trump as coronavirus concerns grip nation. Available from: (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-biden-holds-lead-over-

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trump-as-coronavirus-concerns-grip-nation?fbclid=IwAR3EwlcJVgIw- GiopMOLAV-ObmlE8l2Ua3m0HFWgabgtfWSklGb2MLouUnA8). • Higgins-Dunn, Noah. 4. 11. 2020. U.S. reports second-highest daily number of Covid cases on Election Day as scientists warn of a dangerous winter. cnbc.com. Available from: (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/us-reports-second-highest-daily-number-of-covid-cases-on-election-day-as- scientists-warn-of-a-dangerous-winter.html). • Hlavaty, Craig. Chronicle, Houston. 7. 6. 2017. Weird Texas: The story of the least populated county in Texas and the United States. chron.com. Available from: (https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/ Texas-Loving-County-least-populated-in-America-11202366.php). • Hook, Janet. 19. 5. 2020. Los Angeles Times. From ‘shotgun wedding’ to political romance: How Obama picked Biden for vice president. Available from: (https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-05-19/biden-experience-obama-shapes-selection-running-mate). • Joe Biden official website. 2020. Battle for the soul of the nation. Avail- able from: (https://joebiden.com/covid-plan/). • Joe Biden official website. 2020. A presidency for all Americans. Avail- able from: (https://joebiden.com/presidency-for-all-americans/). • Holland, Steve. Alper, Alexandra. 6. 10. 2020. 'Don't be afraid' of COVID, Trump says as he returns to White House that is stalked by illness. Avail- able from: (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump/ dont-be-afraid-of-covid-trump-says-as-he-returns-to-white-house-that-is- stalked-by-illness-idUSKBN26Q0CS). • Kirby, Jen. Molla, Rani. 3. 11. 2020. 9 questions about 2020’s record- breaking early vote, answered. vox.com. Available from: (https:// www.vox.com/21527600/early-vote-explained).

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• Reuters. 5. 10. 2020. Biden tests negative again for coronavirus on Sun- day: campaign. Available from: (https://www.reuters.com/article/us- health-coronavirus-biden-test-idUSKBN26Q00H). • Robinson, Nathan. 6. 10. 2020. Trump says 'don't be afraid of Covid'. That's easy for him to say. Available from: (https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2020/oct/06/trump-says-dont-be-afraid-of-covid-thats- easy-for-him-to-say). • Smith, David. 25. 7. 2020. The Guardian. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this': how coronavirus turned the US election upside down. Available from: (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/25/coronavirus- trump-white-house-election-2020). • Tampa Bay Times. 2. 10. 2020. Is Trump telling the truth about his positive coronavirus test? Here’s the evidence. Available from: (https://www.- tampabay.com/news/health/2020/10/02/is-trump-telling-the-truth-about- his-positive-coronavirus-test-heres-the-evidence-politifact/). • The Atlantic. 2. 11. 2020. All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus. Available from: (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/ trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/). • The Fact File. 2020. List Of U.S. States And Number of Counties In Each. Available from: (https://thefactfile.org/us-states-counties/). • Trump, Donald. @realDonaldTrump. 3. 10. 2020. Tonight, @FLOTUS23 and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER! Twit- ter: (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1311892190680014849? ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1311

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892190680014849%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A %2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-us-canada-54381848). • Trump, Donald. @realDonald Trump. 9. 3. 2020. So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that! Twitter: (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/ 1237027356314869761?lang=cs). • Twitter, Inc. 8. 1. 2021. Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump. Available from: (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html). • Victor, Daniel. Serviss, Lew. Paybarah, Azi. 2. 10. 2020. In His Own Words, Trump on the Coronavirus and Masks. Available from: (https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-masks.html). • White House. 27. 10. 2020. President Trump’s Coronavirus Response Has Saved Over 2 Million Lives and Outperformed Other Nations. Available from: (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president- trumps-coronavirus-response-saved-2-million-lives-outperformed- nations/). • White House. 27. 10. 2020. President Trump’s Historic Coronavirus Re- sponse. Available from: (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-trumps-historic-coronavirus-response/).

7.3. Law documents

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• Statutes at Large, 28th Congress. 23. 1. 1845. Acts of the twenty-eight Congress. Available from: (http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsl/ 005/0700/07590721.tif)

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