Motivation, metaphor and manipulation: the framing of public debates and the shaping of public responses through leaders' speeches during the evolving COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

COVID-19 is a societal grand challenge - a new quality of problem that is highly complex, unstable, difficult to predict, intractable and without simple solutions. These problems are also referred to as wicked problems. They challenge political leadership worldwide: as a new quality of problem, they require a new quality of solutions from leaders with a new quality of mindset. Established modern technocratic mindsets, or postmodern populist mindsets appear ineffective, whereas a proposed new metamodern empathetic mindset appears more promising. During COVID-19, political leaders’ public speeches impacted public responses such as compliance with health regulations. A core characteristic of societal grand challenges is their grounding in subjective perceptions and values, rather than objective facts. Leaders’ speeches reach and impact diverse populations differently, and the recognition of a values-based discourse adds to the complexity of a research design fit to address the various dynamics at play between political leaders and the audiences they are addressing. This is being explored through quantitative and qualitative software-aided text analysis of five speeches each by ten male and ten female heads of state during 2020/21 (total corpus 195,000 words). Research questions address 1. linguistic styles on syntactic, lexical and semantic level 2. alignment with gender and established leadership types 3. discourse style and outcomes (health, economics) Findings from digital text analysis through Sketch Engine (tagging and concordance software) reveal distinct syntactic and semantic patterns. Qualitative metaphor analysis explores this further and relates results to leadership types and conceptions of knowledge, such as the modern technocratic type, the postmodern populist type, and the newly evolving metamodern empathetic type which seems better suited to current and future societal grand challenges. Creation and interpretation of new knowledge: an expanded political leadership type and communication concept for a world of wicked societal grand challenges proposes a metamodern conception of knowledge, distinct from modern and postmodern conceptions of knowledge. The corresponding leadership type is characterized by empathy, intellectual humility and collaborative sense-making. During COVID-19, this was more present in female, than in male leaders. There is some indication that this leadership and communication style resulted in overall better societal outcomes (measured in health and economic metrics).