From the consensus to the polarisation on the covid crisis: Political campaigns, media coverage and Facebook reactions in Greece

During the first period of the coronavirus pandemic, Greece has emerged as a surprise since the outbreak appeared to be far more limited than what was expected especially after the long period of the debt crisis. The governmental strategy had been developed under an unprecedented political and social consensus. During the first period of the crisis (March-June 2020) the governmental campaign (Stay at Home-Stay Safe) was supported by one positive and one negative underlying messages. The positive activated the feeling of social responsibility: I stay home to protect others. The negative activated the feeling of fear: I stay home because an invisible enemy is out there threatening me. Both were highly influential messages, especially when supported by the government campaign and the cultivation of fear and panic in the news coverage. During the second and the third period of the crisis (2021-2022) the governmental strategy was focused on the vaccination campaign. Therefore, the high case fatality ratios and the long lasting lockdowns transformed the political and social consensus to a polarized political and social reaction. The paper builds upon the political parallelism hypothesis to understand how governmental campaigns, newer and older media and social reactions converge and compete in the production and articulation of hegemonic and counter discourses in order to take up a more integrative concept of the framing strategies of actors and explain mechanisms of consensus and polarization. This attempt brings in light some interesting assumptions concerning the process of frame building through a process of “frame competing” and “frame alignment” during periods of crisis in order to understand how political, social and media actors with unequal resources develop frames about an issue and try to establish these in the public discourse. Our scope is to examine how, in Greece during the two periods of coronavirus crisis, the process of building consensus or polarized frames by media actors, political actors and social actors through social media (Facebook comments) fed the public discourse. We will treat the above hypotheses using frame analysis as a methodological tool. Our data consists of a. the prime minister speeches for the Covid (addres to the Nation, parliament, announcement of measures) b.12.000 article of online editions of newspapers and c. Facebook comments on selected articles. All coding will be based on dictionary political text analysis and on a mix of inductive and deductive qualitative and quantitative content analysis. Our scope is to find the find the line from the political to the media and then to the social frame building process. Our main research questions are: RQ 1: What were the dominant and critical frames used to coronavirus discussion? We focus on the frame building process and especially on the competitive frames promoted by political, media and social actors during the two covid periods. RQ 2: To what extent those frames interacted in order to create generic frames? We focus on the frame alignment process as an integrated approach trying to understand the multiple interactions creating consensus and polarized frames.