This study examines how emergent Twitter publics are organised and engage with political scandal and personalisation during Covid-19 in the UK. The analysis is centred on a series of media events around Chief Adviser to the then-UK Prime Minister, running from May 2020 to May 2021. The samples comprises original tweets that contain key hashtags, amounting to 38,326 items. These are subject to topic model analysis to identify semantic fields, before using critical discourse analysis. We find hashtags help constitute emergent Twitter publics, and that tweets follow conversational patterns and conspire in tactics of intertextuality. Dissention to government conduct engages resourcefully with the affordances of Twitter: constituting publics, shaping discourse, and articulating with parallel discussions on political performance. Further, a computational approach can systematise the identification of domains of discourse and relevant lexical sets, providing an evidence-based understanding of even novel and emergent political discourses in online discussion.

中文翻译：

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政治丑闻引发的推特公众崛起

本研究探讨了英国 Covid-19 期间新兴 Twitter 公众如何组织并参与政治丑闻和个性化。该分析集中于 2020 年 5 月至 2021 年 5 月期间围绕时任英国首相首席顾问的一系列媒体事件。样本包括包含关键主题标签的原始推文，总计 38,326 条。在使用批判性话语分析之前，这些内容需要经过主题模型分析来识别语义领域。我们发现主题标签有助于形成新兴的 Twitter 公众，并且推文遵循对话模式并共谋互文策略。对政府行为的异议巧妙地利用了 Twitter 的功能：构建公众、塑造话语，并与政治表现的平行讨论进行衔接。更远，