Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Online Versions of Highly Circulated U.S. Daily Newspapers
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Online Versions of Highly Circulated U.S. Daily Newspapers Corey H. Basch1 · Aleksandar Kecojevic1 · Victoria H. Wagner2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract With the proliferation of news and the abundance of unknowns, COVID-19 information became rife with rumors and infiltrated consumers with confusion and information overload. In situations like this, it is important to provide consumers with credible and reliable information about the pandemic which is affecting their lives and livelihoods. Articles about coronavirus published in online versions of USA Today online, Wall Street Journal online and NYTimes.com between January and March 2020 were identified. Only articles where the search terms appeared in the headline were included as it was considered a more effective approach to understanding the health communication trends for this outbreak. These criteria resulted in 5,285 articles published on this topic during this time. All articles were imported into Dedoose mixed-methods software for thematic analysis. The frequency of each identified theme appearing in reviewed articles was counted, together with excerpts illustrating the specific theme. Overall, the five most common themes appearing in reviewed articles were “financial impact of COVID-19” (11.6%), “stories of affected individuals” (7.0%), “death and death rates” (6.8%), “precaution recommendations for public” (6.2%), and “quarantine” (5.9%). The newspapers did not just report the numbers (number of infections, ventilators, deaths, economic losses) but they also reported the context of the pandemic, such as, impact on economy, efforts to slow the spread of infection, switch to working from home, presence of health disparities, scientific search for reliable COVID-19 tests, and effect on supply chains. News media play a vital role in enhancing understanding of pandemic, but also in shaping public response to public health messages. Keywords COVID-19 pandemic · Health information seeking · Health communication · Mass media · Community health
Introduction SARS-Co-V2, the virus that causes COVID-19 was first identified to the media in December, 2019 [1]. The outbreak, originating in China made its way around the world and was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020 [2]. As the coronavirus spread around the globe so did a wealth of information, ranging from factual to false. In this evolving situation, not only are health data changing rapidly and health messages by the authorities updated constantly, but the effects beyond * Corey H. Basch [email protected] 1
Department of Public Health, William Paterson University, University Hall 366, Wayne, NJ 07470, USA
Robert Wood Johnson Library of the Health Sciences, Rutgers University, P.O. Box 19, 1 RWJ Place, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
2
physical health per se are being brought to light frequently. Issues ranging from financial concerns [3] to xenophobia [4
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