Framing of economic news and policy support during a pandemic: Evidence from a survey experiment

We examine how news outlets' communication of macroeconomic information affects policy support during the COVID-19 crisis. In our survey experiment based on a representative sample from Germany, respondents are exposed to an expert forecast of GDP growth. Individuals either receive no information, the baseline forecast, or real-world media frames of the same forecast. We find that positive framing of economic growth increases policy support. This effect is stronger for respondents with more pessimistic macroeconomic expectations. Negatively framed economic news are perceived as more credible and hence less surprising in times of recession, not translating into political opinion.

How global cyber mediated news networks and social media platforms influenced messages about COVID-19 pandemic: Offering sociological solutions for marginalized people

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) hit the news headlines as a pandemic bound to affect millions of people worldwide, and news media took responsibility to warn people, country heads, businesses, and private and non-governmental institutions about the virus. However, stories swirling on social media platforms about the origin and nature of COVID-19 and questionable reporting by established news networks have left the public questioning the integrity of the natural causes of the virus, how it spreads, what the facts are, how they are communicated, and whether treatment standards equate the hoopla about the genesis of the "pandemic." This chapter reviews various narratives about the mystification and demystification of COVID-19. It attempts to depart from the premise that the media frames how people consume and use news and examines the media's character (operations). The chapter then suggests how stakeholders should manage news flows on COVID-19, how consumers should screen news, and how journalists should process and report COVID-19. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

The Frontlines and Margins: Gendered Care and Covid‐19 in the Indian Media

Among the many stories that emerged out of India during the pandemic, one was somewhat buried under the media discourse around the migrant crisis, lockdown regulations, and economic fallout. This was the story of striking accredited social health activist workers asking for fair wages, improved benefits, and better working conditions. The Covid‐19 crisis highlighted the poor health infrastructure and the precarious, and often, stigmatized nature of frontline work, managed at the community level by paramedical workers, a significant proportion of whom are women. There has been considerable attention paid by feminist groups as well as health‐related civil society organizations on the gender‐based inequities that have emerged during the pandemic, particularly in relation to care work. This study explores how care work performed by the accredited social health activists was framed in the mainstream media, through an examination of articles in three selected English daily newspapers over one year of the pandemic. Drawing on theoretical work deriving from similar health crises in other regions of the world, we explore how the public health infrastructure depends on the invisible care‐giving labor of women in official and unofficial capacities to respond to the situation. The systemic reliance on women's unpaid or ill‐paid labor at the grassroots level is belied by the fact that women's concerns and contributions are rarely visible in issues of policy and public administration. Our study found that this invisibility extended to media coverage as well. Our analysis offers a "political economy of caregiving” that reiterates the need for women's work to be recognized at all levels of functioning. © 2023 by the author(s);licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal).

Media Representation of China in COVID-19 Reports: Text Mining of the Language of New York Times

Textual mining, an application of natural language processing and analytical methods, effectively turns text into data, making machine analytics possible, especially in the field of textual framing and sentiment analysis, traditionally classified manually by researchers which unavoidably involves tremendous manpower and time. This study examines the themes and sentiments of news coverage of China against the backdrop of Covid-19 in the New York Times (NYT) ranging from January 2020 to January 2021 by employing the LDA topic modeling textbfand (Natural Language Toolkit) Vader SentimentAnalysertextbf. The result of a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals the foci and attitudes of NYT and highlights the selection, emphasis and exclusion practices in this Western media. The study thus broadens the scope of existing content analyses of the image of China and contributes to the exploratory application of text mining techniques in media and linguistic studies. © 2022 IEEE.

Framing Migration in Southern European Media: Perceptions of Spanish, Italian, and Greek Specialized Journalists

Greece, Italy, and Spain are the Southern European borders and the main entrances for migrants and refugees to Europe, a movement that was particularly visible after the 2015 "refugee crisis of the Mediterranean.” In this context, immigration is used as a political tool, and the object of major media coverage. However, previous studies have shown that this coverage tends to be partial and prejudiced. This study, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, uses the frame building theory to study the perceptions of journalists covering migration issues regarding ways to improve the representation of migrants in the media of these three countries. For that, in-depth interviews were conducted with 94 Greek, Italian, and Spanish journalists. The precarity of the profession, the focus on conflictive approaches, and discrimination based on national origin or religion are mentioned as the biggest challenges. Professionals covering this information demand more individualized and deeper coverage, giving the migrants' condition greater visibility, and giving voice to the migrants themselves, as they are the protagonists of the stories. Greater attention to journalistic ethics and the defense of vulnerable groups is considered essential to achieve this. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Perceived Motives of Public Diplomacy Influence Foreign Public Opinion.

Although many countries engage in public diplomacy, we know relatively little about the conditions under which their efforts create foreign support for their desired policy outcomes. Drawing on the psychological theory of "insincerity aversion," we argue that the positive effects of public diplomacy on foreign public opinion are attenuated and potentially even eliminated when foreign citizens become suspicious about possible hidden motives. To test this theory, we fielded a survey experiment involving divergent media frames of a real Russian medical donation to the U.S. early in the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that an adapted news article excerpt describing Russia's donation as genuine can decrease American citizens' support for sanctions on Russia. However, exposing respondents to information suggesting that Russia had political motivations for their donation is enough to cancel out the positive effect. Our findings suggest theoretical implications for the literature on foreign public opinion in international relations, particularly about the circumstances under which countries can manipulate the attitudes of other countries' citizens. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09849-4.

Health, Concerns, and Finance: News Framing of Wearing Masks in China From 2001 to 2020

Since the COVID-19 outbreaks, masks have become one of the most controversial topics throughout the world. However, the pro-mask atmosphere seems to be formed smoothly in China, at least in the beginning and peak of epidemic. To understand the social construction of masks in China, this study examines the media framing of masks from 2001 to 2020 in two important newspapers, the People's Daily and the Southern Metropolis Daily. We found that pro-mask discourse portrayed wearing masks first as an emergent and undesired health strategy;later, as an inevitable measure against constant crises;and lastly, part of the new normality. The legalization of wearing masks lies in the severity of a certain health crisis, the effectiveness that masks can protect citizens from such crisis, a comparatively low cost that to exchange for normal lives under a crisis, and the fact that it could overall benefit China's national image and interests. Moreover, masks have been constructed as a financially promising business and a trendy fashion, which further justifies their existence. The counterdiscourses against masks appeared when the conditions that justified masks were questioned. © 2023 (Zhifei Mao, Huaxin Peng, Di Wang, Mengfan He, and Kun Zhou). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.

Differentiated "Others": Representations of the European Union and the United States From Chinese State Media in COVID-19-Related News Reports

Rarely in recent history has there been a challenge to public health as great as the COVID-19 pandemic. With newer cases still being reported on a daily basis, the media has maintained close track of the development of the outbreak in their news reports. This study analyzes representations of the European Union and the United States in China Daily, one of the major Chinese state media, through a content analysis of 88 news reports concerning the pandemic situations in 2020 from a broad perspective without explicitly elucidating the individual differences of the countries and states within these two global players. It reveals that China Daily represents the EU and the US differently within the global context of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the intensity of the outbreak, coordination and response, and most notably, their amicable and antagonistic relations with China. The results of the analysis epitomize China's interactions with major global actors from the West, which are increasingly shifting away from the traditional "East versus West" dichotomy, and the EU and the US are viewed as differentiated "others" from China's perspective according to the reports involved in this study.

Framing of economic news and policy support during a pandemic: Evidence from a survey experiment

We examine how news outlets’ communication of macroeconomic information affects policy support during the COVID-19 crisis. In our survey experiment based on a representative sample from Germany, respondents are exposed to an expert forecast of GDP growth. Individuals either receive no information, the baseline forecast, or real-world media frames of the same forecast. We find that positive framing of economic growth increases policy support. This effect is stronger for respondents with more pessimistic macroeconomic expectations. Negatively framed economic news are perceived as more credible and hence less surprising in times of recession, not translating into political opinion.

Russian disinformation in Eastern Europe. Vaccination media frames in ro.sputnik.md

The news site ro.sputnik.md is the Romanian language version of the Sputnik news website platform, owned by the Russian government, one of the main channels used by the Kremlin to disseminate mis- and disinformation across Russian borders. The current research aims to identify the frames associated with anti-COVID-19 vaccines, and the news values employed in constructing news discourse on vaccination in ro.sputnik.md media texts. To map the media frames and the lexical and discursive constructions, the research proposes a mixed methods content-based approach, where automated text analysis (frequency, co-occurrence, n-grams) is combined with thematic and discourse analysis. Six emphasis frames are identified in the corpus (N=1,165): Superiority of the Russian Sputnik V Vaccine, Fatal/Side Effects of EU Authorized Vaccines, Limitations of Individual Rights and Freedoms, EU and/or Romanian Authorities' Struggle, Children and Teenagers' Protection, and Big Pharma Conspiracy. The findings show that specific discursive patterns are associated with the negative news value: death, side effects (blood clot, thrombosis, coagulation), restrictions, and interdictions or warnings (serious, risk, negative, panic, etc.), while the conflict news value is associated with warfare vocabulary (defense, threat, battle, fire, gunpowder, etc.);and eliteness, with well-known actors (state leaders, European leaders, famous "conspirators") and countries (powerful international actors, meaningful neighbours).

Public health intervention: Exploring crisis communication elements in media reports on COVID-19 in Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the public health, as well as the economic and sociocultural dimensions of many societies. By publishing news with various frames, the media plays an informative and discursive role in ensuring that the public stay informed and help one another in containing the virus and alleviating the adverse effects of the pandemic. This paper aims to explore the crisis communication elements in the media framing of COVID-19 in Bangladesh. The contents of two major dailies, The Daily Star and The Business Standard, were analysed to determine the framing of COVID-19 news. For the study period, 34 news stories that met the inclusion criteria were selected for analysis. The analysis of data reveals that COVID-19 was framed using the following frames: mortality-casualty, treatment-management, active-participation, collective-altruistic narratives, economic crisis, international relations, and fake news. The study also demonstrates that these identified frames have crisis communication elements that may be effective in crafting messages to address the pandemic with implications for public health interventions. The paper argues that news framing has a crucial function during a pandemic in ensuring that the news reports foster discourses among the media, government, and the public, to shape public health policies for the greatest good of the society.

Framing Migration in Southern European Media: Perceptions of Spanish, Italian, and Greek Specialized Journalists

Greece, Italy, and Spain are the Southern European borders and the main entrances for migrants and refugees to Europe, a movement that was particularly visible after the 2015 "refugee crisis of the Mediterranean." In this context, immigration is used as a political tool, and the object of major media coverage. However, previous studies have shown that this coverage tends to be partial and prejudiced. This study, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, uses the frame building theory to study the perceptions of journalists covering migration issues regarding ways to improve the representation of migrants in the media of these three countries. For that, in-depth interviews were conducted with 94 Greek, Italian, and Spanish journalists. The precarity of the profession, the focus on conflictive approaches, and discrimination based on national origin or religion are mentioned as the biggest challenges. Professionals covering this information demand more individualized and deeper coverage, giving the migrants' condition greater visibility, and giving voice to the migrants themselves, as they are the protagonists of the stories. Greater attention to journalistic ethics and the defense of vulnerable groups is considered essential to achieve this.

Social Media Insights During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infodemiology Study Using Big Data.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic is still undergoing complicated developments in Vietnam and around the world. There is a lot of information about the COVID-19 pandemic, especially on the internet where people can create and share information quickly. This can lead to an infodemic, which is a challenge every government might face in the fight against pandemics. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand public attention toward the pandemic (from December 2019 to November 2020) through 7 types of sources: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, news sites, forums, and e-commerce sites. METHODS: We collected and analyzed nearly 38 million pieces of text data from the aforementioned sources via SocialHeat, a social listening (infoveillance) platform developed by YouNet Group. We described not only public attention volume trends, discussion sentiments, top sources, top posts that gained the most public attention, and hot keyword frequency but also hot keywords' co-occurrence as visualized by the VOSviewer software tool. RESULTS: In this study, we reached four main conclusions. First, based on changing discussion trends regarding the COVID-19 subject, 7 periods were identified based on events that can be aggregated into two pandemic waves in Vietnam. Second, community pages on Facebook were the source of the most engagement from the public. However, the sources with the highest average interaction efficiency per article were government sources. Third, people's attitudes when discussing the pandemic have changed from negative to positive emotions. Fourth, the type of content that attracts the most interactions from people varies from time to time. Besides that, the issue-attention cycle theory occurred not only once but four times during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that online resources can help the government quickly identify public attention to public health messages during times of crisis. We also determined the hot spots that most interested the public and public attention communication patterns, which can help the government get practical information to make more effective policy reactions to help prevent the spread of the pandemic.