How public confidence was established during the COVID-19 pandemic by Chinese media: A corpus-based discursive news value analysis

How news reporting exacerbated the monkeypox pandemic in Spain and the US: A corpus-based news values analysis

Media reporting greatly influences the civilians' mentality, which further exacerbates or mitigates outbreaks of infectious diseases, prolongs or shortens the pandemic process. Adopting corpus linguistic methods and Discursive news values analysis (DNVA) framework, this study examined the news values through key words, naming strategies and photographs in monkeypox-themed news reporting in Spanish and the US media, to analyse how they constructed the monkeypox pandemic in their news reporting, sold it to the public and exacerbated the pandemic in the two societies. The results show that the Spanish media constructed the monkeypox pandemic predominantly as an international medical event, distancing the monkeypox pandemic from the Spanish indigenous context and depriving the domestic audiences from the sense of urgency to take prevention actions. On the other hand, the US media mainly packaged the monkeypox pandemic as a political event which isolated this public health crisis from the life of the common people and hindered the US citizens' understanding of the requisite medical information about the monkeypox virus. It is concluded that the lack of indigenous focus of the Spanish media, and the excessively politicised focus of the US media are important factors that lead to the exacerbation of the monkeypox epidemic.

Discrepancies in the portrayal of the COVID-19 vaccine in Chinese and US international media outlets: A corpus-based discursive news values analysis

This article compares the discursive construction of news values in English news reporting of China Daily and CNN about the COVID-19 vaccine, to reveal how the two media packaged the vaccine and improved the acceptance of the international community towards the vaccines made in the respective countries. Adopting corpus linguistic methods and Discursive news values analysis (DNVA) framework, this study examines news values through keywords, nomination strategies, and photographs. The results show that the two media outlets constructed the news value of Eliteness dominantly through a systematic combination of words and images, albeit in different ways. China Daily prominently consists of references to China's international communications in the production and application of the COVID-19 vaccine, at the same time packaging the COVID-19 vaccine as foreign aid to enhance diplomatic relations as well as protect and promote the order of the international community. In contrast, CNN chiefly demonstrates references to domestic medical experts and the well-known manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine, packaging the COVID-19 vaccine as the US' medical/commercial product. The respective ways in which they portray the COVID-19 vaccine have helped to bolster the acceptance of each country's vaccine by the international community.