Institutional and news media denominations of COVID-19 and its causative virus: Between naming policies and naming politics

Abstract

From the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it became clear that the practices of naming the disease, its nature and its handling by the health authorities, the news media and the politicians had social and ideological implications. This article presents a sociosemiotic study of such practices as reflected in a corpus of headlines of eight newspapers of four countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. After an analysis of the institutional naming choices of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, the study focuses on the changes in newspapers’ naming patterns following the WHO’s announcement of the disease name on 11 February 2020. A subsequent political controversy related to naming in the United States is then examined in reports of The New York Times and The Washington Post as a further illustration of how public discourses and perceptions can rapidly evolve in the context of health crises.

A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of News Reports on the COVID-19 Pandemic in China and the UK

“…The consensus was reached that news discourse concerning the epidemic in various countries can reveal their distinctive ideological and cultural backgrounds. For example, a study on the headlines in eight newspapers from four countries found that the differences in the naming of the epidemic were related to ideological differences (Prieto-Ramos, Pei, & Cheng, 2020). It was proven that people's understanding of the concept of "influencer" during the epidemic was largely affected by regional and socio-cultural backgrounds (Abidin, Lee, Barbetta, & Miao, 2020).…”

China and the global search for health security: history, vaccines, and governance

“…On February 8, 2020, China’s health authorities named the newly found virus in Wuhan, central China, as “novel coronavirus pneumonia.” The “COVID-19” naming by the WHO followed on February 11, and China immediately adopted it. Mainstream new media of Europe and North America were fast to drop prefixes such as “Wuhan,” “China,” “Chinese,” and/or “Asian” to the disease name (Prieto-Ramos et al 2020 ). A small minority, including U.S. President Donald Trump, continued to use names criticized as discriminatory against China and/or Chinese/Asian cultures (Rogers et al 2020 ).…”

Socially Meaning Events In Memes: Potential For Social Consolidation

“…Media inform about an event, estimate it, and form the behavioral motives connected with the event. The media text pathos may vary from mocking at the event and its participants to appeal to the national community's patriotic feelings -depending upon the power of influence of the event or situation on a particular community (Prieto-Ramos et al, 2020). In any case, under the influence of media in its broad sense, some common position, the direction for social consolidation, is followed.…”