Corpus-based Comparative Study of Online News Reporting of the COVID-19 Outbreak in the Philippines and Malaysia
When faced with new and threatening events like a global health crisis, the public tends to draw inferences from news media to make sense of the uncertainties of the situation. This study explores how online news media in the Philippines and Malaysia depicted the outbreak of COVID-19 during the early period of its spread. The study analyzes the discourse around the outbreak based on a large corpus of Facebook news posts between January and March 2020. Using a corpus-based approach called Keyness Analysis, salient themes & topics, and framings around the disease were identified and interpreted. The results show the differences in the reporting of the outbreak between the two countries. News reports in the Philippines depicted the disease in an enigmatic lens which explains the alarmist angle of news reports and the reassuring tone of the government, versus the war framing of Malaysian news that depicted the disease as an enemy to be fought and defeated. In reporting about the bid to contain the spread of the virus, Philippine news reports dealt mostly with the restrictions and regulations of movement while the Malaysian news covered more issues on personal hygiene and safety protocols. Lastly, concerns for Filipino seafarers and Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) that needs to be repatriated was a recurring theme in Philippine news reports regarding COVID-19, while concerns for the economy was prominent in the Malaysian news reports. The study therefore shows that the depiction of COVID-19 in Malaysia and the Philippines are shaped by each country’s present social and political conditions.