Media Framing on Headline News of the COVID-19 Issues in Malaysia: A Study of Malaysiakini and Astro Awani

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the world in the early 2020 until 2021, society still currently face with the dreadful situation and its control precautions even though various vaccines have emerged to treat this infectious disease. The world community is also served with a variety of sensational and hot news headlines about the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to examine news headlines available in Malaysiakini and Astro Awani, framing the coronavirus in its coverage of the COVID-19 virus pandemic. The objective of this study is also to investigate the major frames of these two online news portals in terms of their reporting approaches on COVID-19. The research adopted a qualitative content analysis for the data collection process. For data analysis, the researcher read and code the study based on the scheme from Entman, which consists of four main categories, namely economic consequences, human interest and impact, attribution of responsibility, and health severity. A code sheet was created to capture all relevant story information, including news organization, publication date, story title, story narrative, frame definition, and tone. The findings provide exposure for the community to stay cautious and vigilant with headlines posted by online news portals, especially on sensitive issues like the pandemic. Furthermore, Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) could act upon any news outlets that publishes such provocative and misleading news headlines to the public with the help from National Union of Journalists Malaysia (NUJ) to monitor each registered journalist to adhere to journalistic ethics in news reporting to ensure the information remain true and authentic.