Abstract
News is central to human communication and has an important signifying power as a particular subsystem within language. This study sets out to comprehensively examine how four major TV global news providers - CNN, BBC, DW and RT - have covered the COVID-19 pandemic from outbreak to mid-crisis. We apply a multi-level content analysis approach that rests on theories of proximization and representation of distant suffering, following a computer-assisted analysis that aids in identifying concepts occurrence and the semantic relationship among the highly frequent clusters. We explore the news representation during 2020 of COVID-19 as proximal versus distant discourses of suffering, safety and compassion conceptualized in light of theories on distant suffering. A total number of 12 dataset reports consisting of 2,017,875 words were analyzed. The results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic news formulates a particular type of discourse on suffering that individualizes the sufferer, sets out the course of action and turns the fast-approaching pandemic into a global cause for action.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 327-345 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Text and Talk |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 1 2022 |
Keywords
- coronavirus
- discourse
- distant
- pandemic
- proximization
- suffering
- TV news
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