A Comparative Analysis of COVID-19 News Framing in Sweden, the UK, and Egypt
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American University in Cairo AUC Knowledge Fountain Theses and Dissertations Student Research Summer 6-19-2021 A Feverish Spring: A Comparative Analysis of COVID-19 News Framing in Sweden, the UK, and Egypt Hend Abdelgaber Ahmed El-Behary [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds Part of the Health Communication Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation APA Citation El-Behary, H. (2021).A Feverish Spring: A Comparative Analysis of COVID-19 News Framing in Sweden, the UK, and Egypt [Master's Thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1616 MLA Citation El-Behary, Hend Abdelgaber Ahmed. A Feverish Spring: A Comparative Analysis of COVID-19 News Framing in Sweden, the UK, and Egypt. 2021. American University in Cairo, Master's Thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1616 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at AUC Knowledge Fountain. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of AUC Knowledge Fountain. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The American University in Cairo School of Global Affairs and Public Policy A FEVERISH SPRING: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF COVID-19 NEWS FRAMING IN SWEDEN, THE UK, AND EGYPT A Thesis Submitted by Hend Abdel Gaber Ahmed El-Behary to the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication under the supervision of Professor Shahira Fahmy (May 2021) 1 Dedication To the soul of my Father, who was my biggest supporter, May Allah bless him. To my twins Adam and Malak, they have made me stronger, determined and more fulfilled than I could have ever imagined. I love you to the moon and back. To my Mother for her unconditional and genuine love, support & encouragement…… To my Husband who inspired and supported me all the time …… To my Brother and his unconditional support ……………. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In 2018, when I was admitted to the master’s program, my kids were crawling, and by defending my thesis, they will be joining school very soon. After three years in the master’s journey, I would like to express my special gratitude to every person who gave me support during this three-year-long journey. It was not easy at all. It was full of happy and tiring moments, achievements and setbacks. Studying media coverage of a deadly global pandemic was not an easy task. But it became tougher when I tested positive with COVID-19 while working on this paper. I truly felt every single word in the news. I was the researcher, the audience and the sick patient. First and foremost, I would like to show gratitude to Professor Shahira Fahmy, my thesis supervisor, who has been always a biggest supporter and mentor not only in the paper but during my entire journey at AUC. She guided me with her impressive academic expertise and vision to get the best of this paper. I wish also to extend my special thanks to the thesis readers, Dr. Ahmed Taher and Dr. Brian J. Bowe for giving me the honor to be my thesis committee members and I am sure your comments and insights will be an added value to the paper. My deepest gratitude and love go to my mother Nadya El Sayed; without your endless support this would not have been possible. I would like also to express my very great appreciation to my brother Hossam for his endless encouragement, support and love, my brother Ayman and my sister Enas for their support. I would like to thank my Father in-law Mahmoud Abdel Moniem for his utmost support. 3 Finally, I am eternally grateful to my lifetime partner and friend, my husband Ahmed Mahmoud, who has been a constant source of support, love and motivation in every step in my academic and professional career. I wish to express my deepest love to my angels and lovely kids Adam and Malak, whose existence is the reason for my power, insistence and a much better me. I hope one day you will read this paper and feel honored, motivated and inspired to go after your dreams. I wish to acknowledge the help provided by Aliaa Qamer, my friend and a PHD Candidate who helped me in the coding process. Thank you Aliaa for your unconditional support and motivation. Last but not least, I would also like to thank all my friends, Bassma Moustafa, Lina Abdel Ghaffar, Mai Gamal, Mona Raffat, Passant Halawa and Nouran Tahoun. 4 ABSTRACT Based on framing and the social responsibility theoretical frameworks, this comparative study analyzes the dominance of frames in the media coverage of the COVID-19 global pandemic across three countries that have adopted different preventative measures: Sweden (herd immunity) the United Kingdom (full lockdown) and Egypt (partial lockdown ‘curfew’). While several studies have investigated the media’s role during COVID-19, few have analyzed the frames used by the media. The analyses that were made here, for the most part, is on individual countries. The current study bridges a gap by using a comparative approach to interpret the frames discovered in news articles and the tone of these stories across six media outlets in three different countries: Sweden (Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet) the United Kingdom (the Guardian and the Daily Mail) and Egypt (Youm 7 and Al-Ahram). Furthermore, this paper enriches scholarly studies on media framing and public health crises in Egypt that suffer from limited research. Using a quantitative content analysis over a time frame of five months and 10 days (from January 31 to July 9, 2020), a total of 585 news stories from six media outlets were analyzed. The findings of the story discovered that the morality, human Interest and fear frames were the dominant frames presented in the media across the three countries, while the Blame frame was the least common. A closer examination revealed significant differences among the three countries in six out of the seven frames analyzed. These frames excluded the morality frame and included: the attribution of responsibility frame; the human interest frame; the economic consequences frame; the conflict frame; the fear frame and the othering frame. Moreover, the study found statistical differences in tone of news stories across the three countries. 5 Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemics, Public Health, Comparative research, Coronavirus in Media, Media Frames, Communication and Health Crisis, Infectious diseases, Content Analysis 6 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................ 12 Chapter 2: Literature review ........................................................................................ 18 1.The role of mass media in a health crisis .............................................................. 18 2. Pandemics and media coverage............................................................................ 25 2.1 The Spanish influenza ...................................................................................... 27 2.2 HIV/AIDS ........................................................................................................ 29 3. Major frames in modern pandemics .................................................................... 32 3.1 SARS media coverage ...................................................................................... 33 3.2 EBOLA ............................................................................................................. 37 3.3 Swine Flu .......................................................................................................... 40 3.4 COVID-19.......................................................................................................... 43 4. News values during a health crisis ....................................................................... 47 5. Media landscapes and COVID-19 news coverage: Sweden, Egypt and the UK . 50 5.1 Sweden .............................................................................................................. 50 5.2 Egypt .................................................................................................................. 53 5.3 The United Kingdom ......................................................................................... 57 6. COVID-19 measures: Lockdown, Partial Lockdown and Herd Immunity .......... 59 6.1 Lockdown and Curfew ...................................................................................... 59 6.2 Herd immunity .................................................................................................. 65 Chapter Three: Theoretical framework ........................................................................ 69 1. Framing theory 69 7 2. Social representations theory (SRT) .................................................................... 73 Chapter Four: Research questions and hypothesis ....................................................... 76 Chapter Five: Methodology ......................................................................................... 78 1. Sampling ............................................................................... 78 2. Framing measures and coding .............................................................................. 83 Chapter Six: Results ....................................................................................................