Universities and communication: role of Twitter during the beginning of the Covid-19 health crisis

Abstract

The crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic has affected (among other organizations) universities, because their usual activities have been modified. Social networks, in particular Twitter, have experienced an increase in use. The aim of this research is to analyze the behavior of Spanish universities on Twitter during the period between 1 January and 30 April 2020. The corporate accounts of all Spanish universities were monitored, the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs: commitment, followers, tweets, favorites, and retweets) were analyzed, and finally, a sentiment analysis of the tweets with the greatest impact was carried out. In addition, this study proposes the ECCD model (educational, cooperative, corporate and informative), which is capable of categorizing the type of information issued by universities in crisis situations. This article shows the relevance of Twitter as a communication channel in critical situations, as well as the increased commitment of the digital community to university accounts. It also demonstrates how the positive polarity of messages issued by privately owned universities increases in crisis situations. Finally, this article highlights different behavior between the pre-Covid-19 compared with the pandemic stage.