Narrative Dynamics in Times of COVID‑19 on Facebook: A Quantitative–Qualitative Analysis of Slovak Political Actors

The study focuses on the political communication of Slovak political actors on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on identifying the major narratives present in political communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, with specific regard to antipandemic measures and reflection on their significance in the process of framing public debate, focusing on the most active political actors in the online information environment of the Slovak Republic. The ambition of the research is to examine how individual political representatives and political entities communicated the topic of the pandemic, what types of narratives they used, and to what extent these narratives were successful in generating interactions and shaping political discourse. The research design combines quantitative and qualitative content analysis of posts published on Facebook between 2020 and 2021, with particular attention paid to categories of narratives related to vaccination, testing, masks, treatment, and antipandemic measures. The analysis focused on the frequency, structure, and interactivity of individual narratives and compared the sentiment of communication "in favor" and "against" measures as an indicator of attitudes toward the government's management of the pandemic. The results show that social networks—especially Facebook—played a key role in political communication during the pandemic. The discourse was characterized by a high degree of personalization, emotionalization, and polarization. The most successful narratives in terms of generating interaction were those that questioned the legitimacy of the measures. In terms of actors, representatives of the then opposition and anti-system entities dominated, as they were able to effectively address the audience through conflictual and mobilizing narratives. The study confirms that the pandemic crisis created strategic space for the rise of populist and antigovernment rhetoric and accelerated the shift of political communication to the online environment. The results point to the continuing one-way nature of political communication on social networks, low levels of citizen participation, and an increased risk of misinformation spreading. The findings contribute to the understanding of how political communication works in crisis situations and offer a theoretical and empirical basis for further research on digital politics, crisis management, and hybrid information threats.