  Doctors and nurses in these weeks are busy in the trenches, fighting against
a new invisible enemy: Covid-19. Cities are locked down and civilians are
besieged in their own homes, to prevent the spreading of the virus. War-related
terminology is commonly used to frame the discourse around epidemics and
diseases. Arguably the discourse around the current epidemic will make use of
war-related metaphors too,not only in public discourse and the media, but also
in the tweets written by non-experts of mass communication. We hereby present
an analysis of the discourse around #Covid-19, based on a corpus of 200k tweets
posted on Twitter during March and April 2020. Using topic modelling we first
analyze the topics around which the discourse can be classified. Then, we show
that the WAR framing is used to talk about specific topics, such as the virus
treatment, but not others, such as the effects of social distancing on the
population. We then measure and compare the popularity of the WAR frame to
three alternative figurative frames (MONSTER, STORM and TSUNAMI) and a literal
frame used as control (FAMILY). The results show that while the FAMILY literal
frame covers a wider portion of the corpus, among the figurative framings WAR
is the most frequently used, and thus arguably the most conventional one.
However, we conclude, this frame is not apt to elaborate the discourse around
many aspects involved in the current situation. Therefore, we conclude, in line
with previous suggestions, a plethora of framing options, or a metaphor menu,
may facilitate the communication of various aspects involved in the
Covid-19-related discourse on the social media, and thus support civilians in
the expression of their feelings, opinions and ideas during the current
pandemic.
