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. 2020 Oct;42(5):679-697.
doi: 10.1177/1075547020950735.

Politicization and Polarization in COVID-19 News Coverage

P Sol Hart  1 , Sedona Chinn  2 , Stuart Soroka  1
Affiliations

Politicization and Polarization in COVID-19 News Coverage

P Sol Hart et al. Sci Commun. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

This study examines the level of politicization and polarization in COVID-19 news in U.S. newspapers and televised network news from March to May 2020. Using multiple computer-assisted content analytic approaches, we find that newspaper coverage is highly politicized, network news coverage somewhat less so, and both newspaper and network news coverage are highly polarized. We find that politicians appear in newspaper coverage more frequently than scientists, whereas politicians and scientists are more equally featured in network news. We suggest that the high degree of politicization and polarization in initial COVID-19 coverage may have contributed to polarization in U.S. COVID-19 attitudes.

Keywords: COVID-19; media coverage; polarization; politicization; risk communication.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Politicization in newspaper coverage of COVID-19, March 1 to May 26, 2020. (A) Targeted COVID-19 actor dictionaries; (B) General actor dictionaries. Note. Lines represent centered 5-day moving averages. Dots represent actual data points for each day. The black lines and dots represent mentions of politicians and the grey lines and dots represent mentions of scientists.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Politicization in network news coverage of COVID-19, March 1 to May 26, 2020. (A) Targeted COVID-19 actor dictionaries; (B) General actor dictionaries. Note. Lines represent centered 5-day moving averages. Dots represent actual data points for each day. The black lines and dots represent mentions of politicians and the grey lines and dots represent mentions of scientists.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Polarization in COVID-19 coverage by month. (A) Newspapers. (B) Network news.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Words distinguishing Republicans and Democrats in COVID-19 coverage. (A) Including names, titles, and places; (B) Excluding names, titles, and places. Note. Black words in the bottom half of the comparison clouds are those most closely associated with Republicans and grey words in the top half are most closely associated with Democrats. The size of the words indicates both the frequency of use and distinctiveness of the word with the affiliated party.
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