Evolution of the political agenda during the COVID-19 pandemic: analysis of the Seimas debates transcripts

This paper analyses debates of the Lithuanian Parliament (the Seimas) during the first and the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (covering the period from January 2020 to January 2021), attempting to establish how the previous and the newly elected Parliament discussed certain aspects of the pandemic and its containment. For this purpose, the authors automatically extracted the transcripts of all the debates that took place in the Seimas during the period under study (https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/documentSearch/lt) and devised a content analytic dictionary covering two broad themes: “COVID-19 pandemic” and “human rights.” In addition, the first theme was divided into subtopics covering: 1) general references to the pandemic, 2) references to public life restrictions, 3) references to medical measures of fighting the disease, and 4) references to distance learning/working. The results after an automatic and expert analysis showed that the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and mass protests after the presidential elections in Belarus resonated strongly on the Lithuanian parliament’s agenda, as substantial increases of search terms related to “pandemic” and ‘human rights” topics were detected in the floor debates. On the more specific level, the study revealed that the Parliament’s debate during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was dominated by the subtopic of “public life restrictions” and the subtopic “pandemic in general” was at the centre of Parliament’s interest during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemicInformatikos fakultetasKauno technologijos universitetasTaikomosios informatikos katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta