Talking About What Would Happen Versus What Happened: Tracking Congressional Speeches During COVID-19

Abstract: In counterfactual thinking, an imagined alternative to the reality that comprises an antecedent and a consequent is widely adopted in political discourse to justify past behaviors (i.e., counterfactual explanation) or to depict a better future (i.e., prefactual). However, they have not been properly addressed in political communication literature. Our study examines how politicians used counterfactual expressions for explanation of the past or preparation of the future during COVID-19, one of the most severe public health crises. All Congressional speeches of the Senate and House in the 116th Congress (2019-2020) were retrieved, and counterfactual expressions were identified along with time-focusing in each speech, using recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The results show that counterfactuals were more practiced among Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House. With the spread of the pandemic, the use of counterfactuals decreased, maintaining.... https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/6153

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Talking About What Would Happen Versus What Happened: Tracking Congressional Speeches During COVID-19 ; volume:9 ; number:2 ; day:01 ; month:12 ; year:2021 ; Journal of social and political psychology ; 9, Heft 2 (01.12.2021)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Park, Rinseo ; Baek, Young Min

Further information

• DOI: 10.5964/jspp.6153
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022010804125897898417
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:25 AM CEST