The Global Study of COVID News: Scope, Findings, and Implications of Quantitative Content Analyses of the COVID-19 News Coverage in the First Two Years of the Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Researchers and practitioners have unanimously acknowledged the impact of legacy media coverage of past pandemics as well as COVID-19 and its importance for health-related risk communication. Therefore, this study provides scholars and health communication practitioners with a deeper understanding of the patterns, main themes, and limitations of media reporting and peer-reviewed research in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in different national media environments. Because the objective is to evaluate patterns, this paper focuses on early quantitative and automated content analyses for theoretical contribution, geographic diversity, methodological rigor, and inclusion of risk and crisis communication theory. It also assesses whether authors deduced implications, for both theory and practice of health-related risk and crisis communication. We conducted a content analysis of 66 studies in peer-reviewed journals from the beginning of the pandemic until April 2022. The findings demonstrate that early quantitative analyses of the news coverage of COVID-19 are often not theory-driven, apply heterogeneous forms of framing analysis, and lack references to risk and crisis communication theory. Consequently, only few implications for health communication practice during pandemics were drawn. However, there is evidence of improvement in geographic scope compared to previous research. The discussion addresses the importance of developing a consistent approach to framing analyses of risk and crisis media coverage and the importance of well-designed cross-cultural research in a global pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

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

Notes

1. The precise wording of the initial search term was: (pandem* OR epidem* OR disease OR outbreak OR covid OR COVID-19 OR sars OR corona OR coronavirus OR ebola OR h1n1 OR influenza OR hiv OR aids OR flu OR vacci* OR e coli OR escherichia coli OR zika) AND (frames OR framing OR media OR news OR newspaper OR coverage OR report* OR represent* AND “content analy*“OR “media analy*“OR frames OR framing OR “agenda setting“OR priming).

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of the DECIPHER project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).