Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Graduate School

Major Professor

Stephen W. Song, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Mark Walters, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Miyoung Chong, Ph.D.

Keywords

framing, information, journalists, media, themes

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a wealth of new information regarding the virus's origin and treatment. Regrettably, the vast amount of online information has resulted in the proliferation of misinformation, as the World Health Organization reported. To investigate whether journalists may have contributed to this problem, a qualitative analysis was conducted on 15 news articles from top-tier media outlets. Using NVivo software, the articles were analyzed to identify linguistic words and visuals that fell into coding categories based on Behrendt's (2008) contextual analysis for evaluating text. Each article was then coded again to identify common themes. During this process, new themes emerged, such as unknown or unsure, danger or fear, and historical accounts that provided additional information about the context of each text and visual. Goffman's framing theory was applied to interpret the journalists' portrayal of the news based on Rooke's (2021) research on COVID-19 misinformation. Although all coding categories and themes were referenced, the top categories were Inform and Informative, with the theme of facts. This suggests that journalists were confident in the information they provided in their reports at the onset of COVID-19 and aimed to share accurate information instead of spreading misinformation. However, comparing the results to other researchers, it can be determined that the widespread circulation of misinformation is due to the large amount of it in the digital realm. Future research should focus on analyzing all forms of media to determine which sources are the primary contributors to misinformation and how best to address the issue.

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