“Wearing a mask or not” goes beyond a public health issue in the U.S.

Abstract

Abstract: Severe outbreaks of COVID-19 have changed America’s landscape substantially. What’s more astonishing is wearing a mask or not used to be a question for many Americans when this virus was exponentially spreading in the U.S. The present study conducted thematic analysis of mask-related news comments from six American mainstream media. The analysis indicated five major themes. These were: (1) Debates on mask effectiveness; (2) Care vs. not care about others; (3) Controversies over personal rights and freedom; (4) Masks are politicized; and (5) Mask-related anti-science phenomenon. Each theme was further discussed using relevant theoretical evidence (e.g., trust in public health measures; altruism in crises; autonomy; individualism/collectivism; trust in science) in the literary. Despite the observed selfish behaviors, divisions and increasing anti-science trends in the U.S., people should still hold deep belief in science, altruism and solidarity.

Keywords:

• face masks
• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• coronavirus
• public health measures
• pandemic
• individualism
• altruism
• trust in science
• U.S. media

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

The present study is a thematic analysis of American mask-related news comments. The researcher wishes to contribute some novel and inspiring perspectives to mask studies. Relevant implications are also discussed from different perspectives for policy makers and researchers for the current and future public health pandemics.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kathy Li for helping collect data and code.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. Hereafter, NYT (The New York Times), WP (The Washington Post), MW (MarketWatch), NBC (NBC Nightly News), ABC (ABC News), CBS (CBS This Morning).

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (31020180QD143).

Notes on contributors

Nan Shang

Dr. Nan Shang holds a PhD in Psychology from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University in China. Her research interests focus on health communication and psycholinguistics. This study is part of a wider project on cross-cultural comparisons on face mask usage during the COVID-19 pandemic.