Covid-19 News Pattern in Malaysiakini During MCO 1.0 & MCO 2.0

Abstract

News patterns on health information have an effect on social cognition and public attitudes as the pandemic progresses. Online news agencies have used a range of tools to engage with social media users in order to compete with others. The main and essential point of this study is analysing the frequency and form of online news coverage about the pandemic by the online news agencies in Malaysia. Quantitative content analysis was used in this study to analyse the news patterns such as news slants, dimensions of news, and news values on the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Facebook fan page of MalaysiaKini during Movement Control Order 1.0 and 2.0. The research result shown that, there has been a major drop in the frequency of COVID-19 related news stories between MCO 1.0 and 2.0, with 73.5% versus 26.5%, respectively. Covid-19 news in news slants during MCO 1.0 was more neutral in nature, whereas in MCO 2.0, these are more alarming in nature. News with a social problem dimension had the highest volume in MC0 1.0. However, a majority of the news in MCO 2.0 has a health risk dimension. This research also shows that news with a political dimension receives more engagement than others in the MalaysiaKini Facebook pages, from the social media users, where the engagement can be seen in the form of comments and shares. MalaysiaKini frames the news with various news patterns in general, but news audiences are more interested in serious and political news.