Analyzing the communicative strategies of Egyptian political influencers: content and discourse analyses of Twitter accounts

Abstract

The advantages of social media platforms as interactive information sources raise the importance of examining how they are used by political digital opinion leaders to influence public perceptions. Twitter, especially, played a major role in Egypt’s January 25 revolution facilitating news dissemination, public discussions and debates. Analyzing the communicative strategies of two Egyptian political influencers –Ammar Ali Hassan and Ezzedine Fishere– ten years after Egypt’s political change, and the role they play in public discourse through their Twitter accounts, this research offers an overview of the current role played by Egyptian digital political influencers in influencing public opinion. Focusing on the content and discourse of their tweets for two months, October and November 2019, the digital political influencers were selected based on the number of followers divided by the amount of interactivity on their tweets, such as retweets and favorites. The unit of analysis is the tweet that received the largest amount of interactivity. Results showed that both influencers had a unidirectional opinion strategy. While Hassan’s tweets, @ammaralihassan, seemed purposeless, not yielding any clear and valuable content to the reader, Fishere, @FishereEzzedine, was more outspoken and clearer in his communicative strategy, using evidence in defending human rights in Egypt and the Arab World. The analysis indicated more fact-based tweets by Fishere, who seems to play a more significant role in his communication network, despite minimal interaction.