Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted the attention of social scientists to the study of the role
and influence of archetypes on public opinion. Ukrainian politicians have been informing citizens
on social networks about the fight against the pandemic. It was presented as a feat, the salvation
of not only the nation, but also of the world. Politicians have been independently constructing an
image of the hero who helps to create a vaccine or arrange its supply and save the country’s
population. To establish the archetype of the hero through the discourse of vaccination, this article
analyzes the strategies of constructing the archetype of the “country savior,” using the Greimas
actantial model. As a result, the actantial categories were discovered by using computer semantic
analysis of tweets. The authors found that politicians used the archetypes of the saviorindustrialist
(Viktor Medvedchuk), savior-inspirer (Volodymyr Zelenskyy), and savior-patron
(Petro Poroshenko). A method for measuring negativism and its intensity in the messages of
politicians was also proposed, and it was found that the government officials perceive the
situation in a more positive way, while the opposition mostly negatively. It was also found that
the amount of negativism and its intensity can be interpreted through the actantial models.
