A Link Communities Analysis of the UK Instagram Covid-19 Searchable Metadiscourse

Abstract

Many studies focus on utterances included within specific hashtags. This approach does not adequately acknowledge the fact that social media discourse is distributed across a wide range of hashtags. To assess such ‘width of discourse’, we examine the extent to which dominant hashtags in the UK Covid-19 Instagram discourse connect with hashtags related to different aspects of social life. A network of Instagram hashtags (31,742 nodes and 107,367 edges) constructed using #nhsheroes, #captaintommoore, and #carehomes as key access points was analysed. Results showed that top nodes in the network representing these and other topics related to the pandemic are highly intertwined. Moreover, results revealed that despite connections among each other, hubs in this network tend to connect more with low degree frames, connecting secondary hashtags to the Covid-19 searchable discourse. Results revealed that a diverse set of local structures consisting of secondary frames are nested within pandemic related communities.