1 Introduction

Following the first identification of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in December 2019 and the subsequent declaration of a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020, warning of its high contagiousness, most countries began to design and develop strict protocols for social distancing, full or partial closures and even curfews for their citizens.

The key issue was to avoid enclosed places where people share spaces that do not allow for minimal social distance. Among these places were, obviously, educational institutions, which were among the first to close in virtually all countries. As a consequence, more than 1.5 billion students of all ages around the world experienced disruption of their learning processes, equivalent to almost 90% of the world's student population (UNESCO, 2020a, 2020b; UNICEF, 2020).

While disruption had previously occurred in other contexts, such as conflicts, it had never been experienced in such a global, emotional and acute way by students, teachers and families (Williamson et al. 2020). For the first time, the need to ensure the continuity of formal educational processes was experienced on a global scale. The so-called Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) was implemented in many different ways (Bozkurt, 2020).

In this last period, a large number of research, reports, scientific articles etc., have tried to identify the positive and negative effects of the crisis in relation to students, educators and educational institutions. These range from the more optimistic perspectives of "what works" and "what we have learned" in digital education, to more sombre analyses of effects such as "learning loss", "unfinished learning", "digital poverty", increased inequalities and challenges to well-being and mental health, among many others (Williamson et al. 2020). Educational technology was positioned as a predominant focus of public attention (Castañeda & Williamson, 2021).

Previous work has mainly addressed the shift from face-to-face to virtual teaching and learning processes. But before these processes were set in motion, or at the same time, as they were at home and unable to do other types of activities outside, teachers and families with school-age children were involved in the search for new routines and resources that could be of interest and favour the continuity of their children's educational processes in such a novel and complex situation. These resources could be self-developed by the families, provided by the educational centres or facilitated by institutions or bodies at more central levels.

Trust et al. (2020) warn that social networks became, during the COVID-19 pandemic, accessible tools and sources for learning. And while the use of Twitter has been considered as an enabler of teacher professional development during the crisis (Greenhow et al. 2021; Rehm et al. 2021), its use by institutions and other stakeholders has received little and limited attention (Trust et al. 2020).

It is against this backdrop that the research we present here focuses on analysing the response that the Spanish Government, from the bodies under the Ministry of Culture and Sport (MCD) and the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MEFP), offered citizens during the first year of the pandemic (March 2020 to March 2021) and in the last post-pandemic year (March 2022 to March 2023) through the social network Twitter.

1.1 Teacher professional development, PLE and twitter

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented demand for immediate teacher professional development, generating a wide range of needs to address ERT (Klusmann et al. 2022). At that time, many education professionals turned to virtual cloisters to train with their community, sharing knowledge and experiences through social media, which became a conducive space for these exchanges (Beardsley et al. 2021; Trust et al. 2020).

Twitter has been particularly relevant in teacher professional development (Carpenter & Krutka, 2015; Trust et al. 2020). This social network is positioned as a space for exchange and access to immediate opportunities for professional development (Staudt-Willet, 2019). It is one of the most widely embraced teacher networks for ongoing learning and the second most studied in education (Greenhow et al. 2021).

Since its inception, Twitter has been identified as an educational platform with great potential, including the possibilities for teacher professional development and the value of extending one's own Personal Learning Network (PLN). This PLN, which refers to the connections we create with people and resources for learning, is part of each professional's PLE (Personal Learning Environment), an approach that focuses on the role of the learner and informal learning experiences (Castañeda et al. 2023). A space where informal networks stand out for their value for just-in-time information sharing (Rehm et al. 2021). This is the case of Twitter, which appears as a place to share and combat isolation (Carpenter & Krutka, 2015), being used in the pandemic as a space with great opportunities for transition to ERT (Carpenter et al. 2021), contributing to support and increase teachers' PLN (Greenhow et al. 2021).

Twitter engagement is determined by the social capital of teachers and schools (Rehm & Notten, 2016; Wang, 2016). This platform allows teachers to organise around their interests and needs, similar to the affinity spaces proclaimed by Gee (2012). Social networks are established as conducive and favourable spaces for accessing resources and knowledge on a topic. People create new links, increase their PLN over time and this translates into social capital for the school. It has been observed that in crisis situations the demand for professional development is high and it is necessary to go beyond traditional mechanisms (Carpenter et al. 2021), with proposals that allow for greater flexibility and personalisation.

Social networks offer opportunities to share and exchange information quickly, which is essential in changing contexts (Carpenter et al. 2021); although this also means, in some cases, implementing technological solutions without prior analysis and reflection. The analysis of these opportunities has been the subject of research, especially in the pandemic, where teachers used Twitter extensively to seek advice and help in remote emergency teaching, seek resources or share experiences and situations, as reflected in the analysis of tweets and hashtags through teacher and management team profiles (Beardsley et al. 2021; Greenhow et al. 2021; Rehm et al. 2021; Trust et al. 2020). Meanwhile, the accounts of official government bodies have received little attention during the crisis (Carpenter et al. 2021). The scant research on these bodies is evidence of poor network movement, as concluded by Abkar et al. (2021), who analyse Indonesian government activity at the onset of the pandemic. In this regard, the research stresses the need for governments to harness the potential of social media to contribute to teachers' PLE and PLN by making an effort to use these media to support and advocate for teacher professional development (Abkar et al. 2021; Greenhow et al. 2021). Rehm et al. (2021) call for more research that looks at the textual elements and content analysis of what educational leaders share in these spaces of power provided by social networks.

Previous research on social networks in governmental contexts shows that their use and application has grown in recent years (Bertot et al. 2010), identifying three levels of participation: 1) Transmission of information on Twitter, as a one-way communication channel. 2) Participatory dialogue, characterised by co-production between the public and government agencies. 3) Solutions pooled between these agencies and the citizenry, harnessing collective intelligence to develop innovative solutions. Bertot et al. (2010) stress the need to build bridges between citizens and government through social networks, generating a greater sense of participation, new models that can be favoured by the current political and socio-technological context, especially after the boost to digital in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, these authors call for more research on how technologies serve as agents of interaction as governments share more content (information, services and resources) on social networks. In this case, there is an interest in how such content can contribute to teacher professional development and how it can facilitate and support formal education processes at home.

2 Material and method

The present study seeks to explore and investigate the response of the different institutions linked to the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport (MCD) and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MEFP) following the lockdown decreed in March 2020. The aim is to collect the activity generated and shared on Twitter by these institutions and the public's reaction to these posts, as well as to carry out an in-depth analysis of the activity shared with the greatest impact on each of the accounts during the first year of the pandemic.

We posed the following research questions:

  • How many posts and reactions, and at what times, were generated from the accounts linked to education and culture of the Spanish Government?

  • What differentiating elements are found in the production of tweets and in the interaction with them between the pandemic and post-pandemic periods?

  • To what extent did the hard lockdown (March-June 2020) affect the production of tweets by institutions linked to the Spanish Government and the reaction of citizens?

  • What kind of information, content and educational resources were shared to address the COVID-19 crisis?

  • What formats and languages were preferred by institutions and citizens to inform and access information?

To answer these questions, a descriptive study is proposed based on a mixed concurrent triangulation design (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004), combining social network analytics (Thelwall, 2018) and content analysis (López Noguero, 2002). The activity of 11 accounts associated with the MCD and the MEFP is analysed, as well as the response they have generated among citizens. And a content analysis is carried out of the tweets with the greatest impact, in terms of favourites and retweets received.

2.1 Sample and data collection

For data collection, a list was created with the 11 accounts linked to the MCD (n = 5) and the MEFP (n = 6), and their activity on Twitter was recorded during the period from March 2020 to March 2021, considering a period of one year from the lockdown decreed due to the pandemic; and from March 2022 to March 2023, considered as the post-pandemic period.

The accounts were selected on the basis of the following criteria: a) official accounts of bodies or portals of interest dependent on the MCD or the MEFP, collected through their official websites (https://www.culturaydeporte.gob.es/ and https://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/), and b) accounts with an educational and training space with proposals for citizens. Table 1 shows the data of the accounts analysed, allowing us to observe the weight of each of these institutions in terms of followers and posts generated at two points in time: summer 2021 and spring 2023.

Table 1 Profiles of the Twitter accounts of the institutions linked to the MCD or the MEFP
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Decisions about the social network for this study are based on the fact that the social network Twitter, which is highly used in academic publications (Thelwall, 2018), is the only network where all the agencies in the sample have a profile (Table 1).

To extract the data, we used the Twitter API itself, which allows access to a large amount of data from each account, with some limitations, as it allows retrieving a maximum of 3200 tweets. The profile of the National Library of Spain (BNE) exceeded this figure at the time of the first data collection in May 2021. This is an account with a high level of production and activity, so the API could not generate references prior to May 2020. In order to collect the data necessary for the study, the BNE itself was contacted, and they made the data available.

In accordance with the proposed objectives, the aim was to ascertain the activity generated by each of the accounts of the aforementioned Spanish Government Ministries, and the interaction of the public with these publications. After collecting data through the Twitter API, a total of 13,969 tweets were obtained for the pandemic period, which generated 287,704 retweets and 662,271 likes. And a total of 12,560 tweets, which generated 131,539 retweets and 395,144 likes, for the post-pandemic period.

Note: (1) The first 5 accounts are linked to the MCD; the last 6 to the MEFP. (2) There are two data collections of Followers and Tweets corresponding to the following dates: 25 August 2021 and 21 March 2023.

In order to delve deeper into the educational proposals shared by the Spanish Government through the different institutions selected for the study, a qualitative phase based on content analysis was carried out simultaneously. The 10 tweets with the most interactions (likes and retweets) from each account during the pandemic period (March-2020/March-2021) were extracted for qualitative analysis. The Twitter API and the free software R (2020) were used to retrieve this information. On multiple occasions (n = 94) the tweet with the highest interaction of one type was also the one with the highest interaction of the other, counting only once. The final sample, after eliminating repeated tweets, consisted of 126 tweets for analysis. Table 2 shows the total sample of tweets selected for each account and their impact in terms of retweets and likes generated. This analysis allows us to investigate pedagogical issues, such as the type of resources offered, the educational stages at which they are aimed, their purpose, content and areas addressed, and their accessibility.

Table 2 List of the sample of tweets selected for content analysis
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2.2 Data analysis procedure

Quantitative data from the social network analytics, referring to the activity of the 11 accounts selected for the study, were collected through the Twitter API and analysed with the R-software (2020), through descriptive statistics. These data allow us to explore the changes in the activity of the institutions due to the conditions imposed by COVID-19 and the interaction of users with their content.

The sample of the tweets with the greatest impact of each account (n = 126) was analysed using the qualitative analysis software ATLAS.ti 23. A primary document was created for each account analysed with the tweets with the most interaction. For the content analysis, it was considered that at least two researchers would carry out the analysis of each tweet as a form of data triangulation. Following Strauss and Corbin's (2002) assumptions, a hybrid inductive-deductive process was carried out, considering some previous categories in line with the research objective and the revised theoretical framework, as well as emerging categories that came out of the analysis itself.

First, the tweets were analysed through open coding, noting fragments of interest in each tweet and associating them with a code (Table 3). In this way, the codes are fed with quotations until they are saturated, a value known as grounding. In a second phase of the analysis, through axial coding, relationships were established between the different codes. These associations give "density" to the categories of analysis. Finally, in the selective coding phase, the central categories of analysis that contribute to generate substantive theory (Strauss & Corbin, 2002) around the findings were established.

Table 3 Dimensions and categories of analysis of the content of the tweets, codes, definition and grounding
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In line with the principles of Open Science, the analysis of the 126 tweets selected for the content analysis was shared on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7932748) due to their greater interaction by citizens, differentiated by Twitter account.

3 Results

3.1 Twitter activity of Spanish government institutions and bodies linked to culture and education

An overall reading of the activity of the 11 Twitter accounts analysed reveals, as shown in Fig. 1, that there was a high production of content during the pandemic, especially in the months of lockdown, with an average of more than 100 tweets per month, with a slight downward trend in the following months. The data show a significant drop in the month of August in all the accounts, with two of them (@educaSGCITE and @leeres) not even posting anything during this holiday period. This trend of posts is maintained in the post-pandemic period, with a lower production of tweets, but with a similar behaviour throughout the year.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Average number of tweets produced per month in pandemic and post-pandemic periods

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The five accounts analysed belonging to agencies dependent on the MCD generated more than 7,700 tweets during the pandemic and more than 4,800 in the post-pandemic period. The other six accounts, linked to the MEFP, generated more than 6,100 tweets during the pandemic and nearly 4,800 during the post-pandemic period. Figure 2 shows the drop in production over the last year in the accounts of the Museo del Prado and the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, which has meant that production has been equalised between the profiles linked to Education and Culture. The account with by far the most activity is @BNE_biblioteca (National Library of Spain), with an average of over 200 tweets per month, both in the pandemic and post-pandemic periods (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Average number of posts per Twitter account in pandemic and post-pandemic times

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The overall posting trend was higher during pandemic times for most of the accounts analysed. Five of the accounts posted an average of more than 100 tweets per month during the pandemic, while in the post-pandemic period the threshold of 100 tweets per month is only exceeded by two of the 11 accounts (@BNE_biblioteca and @CeDeC). Both accounts also show a higher rate of production at present.

The months of hard lockdown have led to a noticeably higher interaction of Twitter users on the content posted by the accounts linked to the MEFP and MCD. Especially April 2020, the first month of hard lockdown, has been the month with the highest number of interactions in terms of favourites and retweets (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Total favourites and retweets per month in pandemic and post-pandemic times

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An anomaly in the trend of interactions was observed in November 2022, when the Prado Museum suffered a protest by environmental activists who attacked some of the best-known and most visited works. This atypical phenomenon generated debate and polarisation in the networks, causing the peak of interactions that can be seen in Fig. 3. This account, @museodelprado, is the one that arouses the greatest interest and generates the highest number of interactions.

3.2 Content with the greatest impact during the pandemic: what, for whom, how and when

From the content analysis process of the 126 tweets from the accounts linked to the MCD and the MEFP with the highest number of interactions (retweets and favourites), the category "Education" appears as the central category of interest for the analysis, with the code "EDUC" being the one with the highest grounding and density. Figure 4 shows the semantic network of this central category, in which under each code we can observe its grounding (G) and density (D).

Fig. 4
figure 4

Semantic network of relationships of the core category education

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The tweets from the educational field mainly address two topics: (1) Educational resources, programmes, applications or experiences; and (2) Open Source, free resources and open code. The main purpose of these publications is to make resources, experiences, recommendations or tools for teaching and learning processes available to their target audience.

Tweets are shared that integrate content in very different formats such as illustrations, photographs, plans, infographics, video games, Apps guides (such as MyClassGame, Me respetas or Twitter), audio books, practical guides and works and collections of books in the public domain. There are also frequent mentions of tweets that share practical guides to licensing, free software tools, recommendations for creating accessible and inclusive materials, image banks, videos, songs, icons and sounds that use Creative Commons licences. Other recurrent tools are those enabling distance and competency-based assessment, digital book platforms such as eBiblio and ELEO, online resources and educational portals, as well as television programming.

Among the tweets analysed, the following stand out: (1) the EDIA Project (Educational, Digital, Innovative and Open—Abierto in Spanish) which, driven by CeDeC (National Center for Curriculum Development in Non-Proprietary Systems), promotes and supports the digital transformation of educational centres, and (2) the Procomún repository, the Open Educational Resources (OER) platform of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5
figure 5

Screenshots of Tweet13_@CeDeC_intef and Tweet7_@educaINEE

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The target population of these publications is mainly teachers or education professionals who, on occasions, are directly questioned, as can be seen in the tweets in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Screenshots of Tweet2_@educaINEE and Tweet10_@leeres

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In the cultural sphere, as shown in Fig. 7, the tweets that have generated the most interaction from users deal with questions about art and history, with a mainly informative purpose and aimed at the general population.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Semantic network of relationships of the core category culture

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The profile of the Museo del Prado is the one that generates the greatest number of reactions. The tweet in Fig. 8, where art, culture, vindication and commemorative days come together, including a video of a flamenco dance performance in one of the museum's rooms, has generated more than 3,400 retweets and more than 6,600 likes.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Screenshot of Tweet1_@museodelprado

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The tweets that aroused the greatest reaction from the public made reference to the reopening of museums and galleries after the period of hard lockdown, as well as those that reported on curiosities and events on the anniversaries of past events, celebrated or commemorated an ephemeris or reported current discoveries about works and artists.

Publications that report on and share online tours and visits to exhibitions or catalogues have also had a great impact on the public, especially at the time of hard lockdown (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9
figure 9

Screenshot of Tweet1_@MuseoThyssen

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With regard to the analysis of social networks, the tweets that include Hashtags stand out (77.77%). These mainly refer to 3 blocks of content:

  • Special days (n = 12): #DíaDeLasEscritoras (Women Writers Day), #DíaDeLaMujer (Women’s Day), #DíainternacionaldelaMujer (International Women's Day), #ArmisticeDay, #DíadelaEnfermería (Nurses Day), #DíaInternacionalFlamenco (International Flamenco Day), #UnDíaComoHoy (On a day like today), #TalDíaComoHoy (On this day).

The content analysis reveals a high co-occurrence between special days or commemorative dates and the presence of a gender perspective, including direct mentions and making visible the role of women in different contexts and times (visible in Fig. 4).

  • Accompaniment and support in hard lockdown (n = 31): #MeQuedoEnCasa (I Stay at Home), #AprendoEnCasa (I Learn at Home), #aprendenlínea (Learn Online), #Quédateencasa (Stay at Home), #EsteVirusloParamosUnidos (We Will Stop This Virus Together), #ProfesQueAyudan (Teachers Who Help), #PradoContigo (Prado With You), #LaBNEcontigo (The National Library of Spain With You), #ElReinaenCasa (The Reina Sofía Museum at Home), #LaCulturaentucasa (Culture in Your Home), #ThyssenDesdeCasa (Thyssen From Home), #JuntosMW (Together MW), #HéroesMW (Heroes MW), #AplausoSanitario (Sanitary Applause), #CoronavirusEspaña (Coronavirus Spain).

  • References to educational issues (n = 42): #ProyectoEDIA (Edia Project), #SoftwareLibre (Free Software), #REA (OER), #RecursosEducativos (Educational Resources), #profesorado (teaching staff), #evaluación (assessment), #competencias (competences), #AprendeINTEF (Learn INTEF), #primaria (primary education), #secundaria (secondary education), #bachillerato (high school), #rúbricas (rubrics), #RadioEscolar (School Radio), #exelearning, #procomún, #LecturaDigital (Digital Reading), #audiolibros (audiobooks), #CreativeCommons, #ABP (Project-based learning).

Original productions that include images and/or hyperlinks are the kind and type of tweet that have the highest interaction response from the population (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10
figure 10

Screenshots of Tweet1_@BNE_biblioteca and Tweet1_@educaINTEF

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The period of hard lockdown has emerged as a key moment in the interaction of citizens with the posts made by the accounts linked to the MCD and MEFP. 40% of the tweets with the greatest impact were posted during this period, when a large number of hashtags (already mentioned) were generated to support and accompany citizens and, in particular, the educational community. In fact, the tweets with the greatest impact during the lockdown accounted for 44% of those linked to the educational sphere.

During this period, the tweets that generated the greatest impact were those aimed at teachers with the purpose of disseminating information on resources, experiences, tools and recommendations for continuing with the training processes in the pandemic. As shown in Fig. 11, they mainly offer alternatives for online or screen-based education.

Fig. 11
figure 11

Screenshots of Tweet9_@CeDeC_intef and Tweet2_@educaciongob

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"Aprendemos en casa" (We learn at home) consisted of special programming on the public channels La2 and CLAN of Spanish television (TVE) as an alternative for the education of children and young people in compulsory schooling (6–16 years old), being a TV programme with schedules by audiences. It also includes a portal with digital educational materials and resources available to teachers, families and students.

During the hard lockdown, educational inclusion is highlighted, with a fifth of the publications of this period addressing various issues of equity, inclusion and diversity, some of them revealed in the Hashtags used: #DUA (Diseño Universal para el Aprendizaje—Universal Design for Learning), #LecturaFácil (EasyReading), #accesibilidadyeducación (accessibility and education), #inclusióneducativa (inclusive education).

Finally, it is worth highlighting the citizens' response to a tweet by way of an apology from @educaciongob, which with a touch of humour refers to the former Prime Minister of Spain (Fig. 12). This post generated 35,420 likes, 12,185 retweets and more than 8,600 comments, making it a viral tweet in the period of hard lockdown during the pandemic.

Fig. 12
figure 12

Screenshot of Tweet1_@educaciongob

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4 Discussion and conclusions

In relation to the research questions formulated, the results of the quantitative analysis reveal a greater production of tweets in pandemic than in post-pandemic by the Twitter profiles linked to the MCD. Moreover, there are differences between the two periods in the intensity of citizen response, being higher during the pandemic, especially in the months of hard lockdown. This could point to the use of social networks as a shelter and refuge from which to remain connected to the world. In this regard, previous research (Carpenter & Krutka, 2015) highlights the value of networks as a space of contention against loneliness and lockdown.

These data point to an effort on the part of the different institutions of the Spanish government to keep the public informed and entertained, especially during the pandemic. This constant dissemination of content and information, with an average frequency of more than one tweet per day, represents a commitment by the Spanish administration that clashes with the results of the research by Akbar et al. (2021), who note the lack of dynamism in the Indonesian government's networks at the beginning of the pandemic.

Although the production is similar between the Culture and Education accounts, it is the profiles linked to Culture that have a greater international projection and therefore a greater impact on the population. While the Education accounts, with fewer followers, could be having a greater impact on a specific audience, such as education professionals.

The figures analysed point to two peaks of citizen interaction with the Twitter posts of the profiles analysed, both of which respond to Tweets that address controversial and/or polemical issues, which is evidence of citizen interest in positioning themselves in relation to political issues.

Content analysis reveals that the social network Twitter was used to provide just-in-time information and share resources with citizens to enable them to deal with the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Results that are repeated in various contexts, as research on the use of this network during the crisis points out (Beardsely et al. 2021; Carpenter et al. 2021; Greenhow et al. 2021; Trust, 2020).

It is worth noting that citizen interaction with the posts made by the accounts analysed is greater than that registered through retweets and likes. These responses show a higher degree of engagement in the interaction, as they leave a "footprint" and are a public manifestation. However, the viewing of posted content, the number of people who reproduce a video posted in a tweet, is much higher than the reactions linked to it.

The exploration of the content with the greatest impact on citizens has made it possible to identify that exhibitions and virtual visits, in the cultural sphere, and resources, experiences, tools, guides and applications, in the educational sphere, are the content with the greatest value for users. Both point to materials and resources with which to interact, enjoy and learn.

In the field of Education, these contents promote teacher professional development and contribute to extending and reinforcing the PLN (Greenhow et al. 2021). In addition, they point out the resources valued by teachers, helping to highlight the concerns of education professionals. However, it is important to note that, although social networks offer multiple opportunities to access information sources, they do not include mechanisms to assess their quality (Greenhow et al. 2021). And although most of the resources shared by the accounts linked to the Spanish government are free and open resources, most of what was shared during the pandemic period on the networks referred to commercial resources (such as the network analysed) and linked to large technological companies (Krutka et al. 2021). A shortcoming in the posts analysed points to the need for information/training by government institutions.

A large majority of the tweets in the analysis were original, i.e., generated by the account itself, which implies that, despite the possibility of replication, Twitter is being used by some of the profiles analysed as a bulletin board rather than a space for conversation (Staudt-Willet, 2029). This implies that there is no structure and condition of a community of exchange, typical of informal learning networks (Rehm et al. 2021), although the forces of affinity spaces are involved (Gee, 2012). Communication has a single top-down direction, so Twitter's potential for two-way communication is not exploited (Wang, 2016).

Original tweets that include image and hyperlink have established themselves as the language favoured by the audience. The image appears as a privileged language in today's society, where the new economy of attention is visible (Dussel, 2020), in which these representations of culture have become a key element to capture the audience's attention.

Moreover, the space limited by 280 characters, conditioned by Twitter's platform architecture, is expanded by linking content in other formats such as videos, infographics or websites. Citizens prefer tweets with hyperlinks that direct them to web pages where they can find more information.

The results allow us to observe the rapid response and adaptation of the institutions linked to the MCD and the MEFP, through their Twitter accounts, to the crisis situation, offering leisure and learning opportunities to citizens, especially in times of hard lockdown.

The analysis of a new landscape, which has disrupted vital sectors such as education, is fundamental to understand the solutions that were put in place to overcome the COVID-19 crisis, but also to improve these responses and find new measures and resources for similar future situations. The findings of this research, in line with the findings of Rehm et al. (2021), are of great value for the generation of supportive strategies by public policy makers in global crisis situations.

Finally, the limitations of the study are presented. An analysis of interaction on the Twitter network is carried out, which implies being cautious with the results because the social and cultural capital of citizens is at stake (Rehm & Notten, 2016): Who interacts with this content? On the one hand, it is limited to people who are already on this social network, who have some digital competence and access to the internet and devices. Being there means participating in these networks and, in the case of teachers, taking advantage of their potential for training and professional development.

On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that Twitter is a social network that, since 2015, has been working according to its own algorithms that drive trends and topics and condition recommendations, which may have meant that some of the content of the accounts analysed has been "more exposed", and has been offered more frequently to a wider audience.