Online News Media Framing of COVID-19 Pandemic: Probing the Initial Phases of the Disease Outbreak in International Media

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic that purpoted to originate in the city of Wuhan draws a lot of questions on the extent of crisis health communication concerning the international media. At the inception stage, in January 2020, it was reported that about ten major cities in China had been affected by this virus at that time labelled as 2019 nCov. By March 10, 2020, the disease had spread to Europe, the UK, Middle-East, and Africa, with more than 114,344 confirmed cases reported globally. In this situation, various scholars have often criticized the media for framing, misinformation, or exaggeration in the news information. In contrast, others have hailed the media for playing an educative and informative role to the public. Utilizing content analysis, framing and consecutive day sampling, this study focused on examining the media coverage of the initial two months of the COVID-19 Pandemic by four international news media organizations namely; BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and the People's Daily. The article contributes to the discourse of mass media practice, and application of various research paradigm in deconstructing media framing during critical periods.

Meaning Representation of Corona and Covid-19 in Online Newspaper

“…Dealing with the aim of description and meaning interpretation, placing particular words could give a different meaning. Sentence (4) shows that the collocation between pandemi (pandemic) describes COVID-19. Placing pandemi before COVID-19 makes it could be understood as a disease, and placing infeksi virus could make the reader understand it as a virus.…”

Challenges of Distance/Online and Face-to-Face Education in the New Normal: Experiences of Reggio Emilia-Inspired Early Childhood Educators in Turkey

“…About such consensus, Mutua and Ong'ong'a (2020) blame the media and state, "The media play an essential role in providing information at the initial stages of a disease outbreak." (p. 7).…”

Battling with infodemic and disinfodemic: the quandary of journalists to report on COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan

“…This implies that pandemics have implications for news discourse, how frames are used to report on pandemics and how such news frames may evolve over time (Mutua & Ong'ong'a, 2020). For example, in the past, Shih et al (2008) Journalists, especially in developing countries like Pakistan, can live up to this task when they are able to: access information and safely contact their sources; employ human and artificial intelligence to check facts (Jamil, 2020a); safe from health risks and surveillance (Jamil, 2020d), online attacks and legal actions from the state (Jamil, 2017a(Jamil, , 2016(Jamil, , 2015b.…”