Frame Analysis On News Reports On COVID-19 Of El Mundo

In recent years,since the number of infectious viruses in the world has been increasing and major public health emergencies have occurred frequently,people are increasingly concerned about issues on health communication,and the media has become the main channel for it.For domestic and foreign media,2020 was an extremely special year:the pandemic of COVID-19 has ravaged the world and hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives.Media from different countries have reported a lot and played an important role in dissemination during the epidemic.In this respect,El Mundo,one of Spanish leading newspapers,stood out among the Spanish media.However,there have been many studies on the news frames of mainstream media in China on COVID-19,but few have focused on the coverage frames of Spanish newspapers due to language barriers.Therefore,how Spanish media like El Mundo reported the epidemic of COVID-19 is worthy to be examined.Based on the frame theory,this study analyzed all the news coverage of the pandemic of COVID-19 from March 1 to May 1,October 25 to December 10 during the year of 2020 in El Mundo in order to answer the three following research questions:Which core frames are used to report COVID-19?How do the frames of news reports on the pandemic vary over time?How do the news sources of reports on COVID-19 change over time?With quantitative analysis,the method of content analysis is used to explain the frame of the text presented by El Mundo.The findings revealed that five core frames were used to cover the news on COVID-19:problem definition,human interest,cause analysis,solution and consequence analysis.The specific research dimensions of this content analysis include the publishing topics,sources,areas,forms and the length of the reporting.In terms of topics,El Mundo adopted six main topics,including epidemic update,government measures,economic consequences,public understanding of COVID-19,progress in vaccines and people;s well-being;with regard to the news sources,this newspaper prefers the source of common people.The news on COVID-19 in El Mundo covers Spain,Latin America,China and others.The main forms of the media are message and interview and it focuses on the short-length news.The analysis of the dominant frames and sources in different periods reveals that on one hand,during the period of outbreak of COVID-19,problem definition and solution frame were used the most frequently.With the development of the pandemic,the frames of human interest and cause analysis appeared and their proportions have been increasing.Meanwhile,the consequence analysis have drawn more attention of Spain over time.In addition,problem definition has become the stable frame of news on COVID-19.On the other hand,El Mundo has always been focusing on the opinions of common people in every period.During the outbreak of COVID-19,sources of the government were cited most frequently.With the further study on the virus,more and more experts appeared in the news.Besides,this newspaper pays much attention on international affairs.When the disease ravaged certain country,the news of this area would increase.On this basis,this paper discusses these characteristics and analyzes the reason for the news frames of El Mundo.Besides,this paper also provides suggestions for China's future international reporting practices.