The Triple P framework: Prolonged crisis, platformized visibility, and partisan incentives in COVID-19 political communication

COVID-19 unfolded as a prolonged crisis at the intersection of public health and partisan politics. This article develops and applies the Triple P framework to examine how prolonged crisis temporality, platformized visibility, and partisan incentives shaped engagement with Norwegian party leaders’ Facebook posts. The analysis covers 7,264 posts from 12 Norwegian party leaders, spanning the six months before the first national lockdown through the end of the third lockdown. Posts were coded for the presence of nine crisis-message strategies, drawing on Diers-Lawson’s typology as adapted to political communication by Jacob et al. (2023). Engagement is modeled using negative binomial regressions for reactions, shares, and comments, with standard errors clustered by leader. Results show uneven engagement rewards: criticism was most widely shared, self-enhancement increased reactions, and action cues boosted shares but not reactions. Accommodative and crisis-framing messages were flat or penalized, while organizational and relational signaling underperformed. Government leaders attracted lower engagement than opposition leaders. Overall, the findings show how engagement-based selection can privilege contestation and mobilization over guidance and reassurance as a prolonged crisis evolves, making the Triple P framework a transferable lens for studying future crises marked by prolonged disruption, political contestation, and platformized visibility.