Visual and Verbal Content Analysis of COVID-19 News Reports on Facebook
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Abstract
The biggest global news story of 2020–2021 was the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the virus was a scientific and medical issue, societal responses to the virus with regards to vaccine and mask mandates became highly debated political issues in the United States. Different news agencies in the US tend to have audiences that are politically biased; however, it is unknown how the multimodal content of COVID-19 news stories posted to social media might align with the audiences’ political beliefs. A visual and textual content analysis was employed to investigate COVID-19 news stories that FOX (with a conservative audience), CNN (with a mixed audience), and NPR (with a liberal audience) posted to Facebook. The results showed differences among the news media in both the visual and textual modes that appear to corroborate with their audiences’ biases. COVID-19 news from FOX was focused on the authority of Republican government officials, while NPR was often concerned with the effects that the virus has on daily life. CNN, meanwhile, took a more moderate, scientific approach. This study provides insights into how people from different political beliefs are exposed to different news content even if the main topic of the story is similar.
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