Legitimation by Digital Discourses

Abstract

In October 2019, a wave of protests took place in Ecuador. During this crisis, the governmental Twitter accounts played a fundamental role in broadcasting rival narratives. The objective of this research is to analyze and contextualize the communication strategies that were spread during the protests to answer the question: How was legitimation built/destroyed by governmental Twitter accounts? To accomplish this objective, multimodality ruled the investigation as it allows understanding how text, video, and image interact. Protest events analysis (PEA) theory was used. Additionally, critical discourse analysis was developed with four main categories of study: (1) redistribution vs. recognition, (2) unified political discourses, (3) legitimation vs. non-legitimation, and (4) tone of the speech. The authors conclude that authority can use storytelling to determine which processes can be catalogued as legitimate.