Tweeting the Pandemic: Universities and Epistemic Leadership in Times of Crisis

The Covid-19 outbreak might be considered a watershed event which disrupted multiple timescapes on global scale. In a matter of weeks, citizens and well-established institutions found themselves struggling for survival in a radically transformed environment. Within this context, the present chapter proposes a data-driven reflection on how major UK universities managed their public outreach during the first six months of the pandemic. Through the analysis of their Twitter activity, this study describe how different communication strategies were employed by universities to reposition themselves in a context of crisis and how these strategies constructed different forms of leadership. Finally, the chapter argues that post-pandemic universities should design and implement long-term communicative strategies aimed at establishing themselves as major epistemic leaders.