scholarly journals Coronavirus Disease 2019: Exploring Media Portrayals of Public Sentiment on Funerals Using Linguistic Dimensions

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sweta Saraff ◽  
Tushar Singh ◽  
Ramakrishna Biswal

Funerals are a reflective practice to bid farewell to the departed soul. Different religions, cultural traditions, rituals, and social beliefs guide how funeral practices take place. Family and friends gather together to support each other in times of grief. However, during the coronavirus pandemic, the way funerals are taking place is affected by the country's rules and region to avoid the spread of infection. The present study explores the media portrayal of public sentiments over funerals. In particular, the present study tried to identify linguistic dimensions associated with lexical components of social processes, affective processes, fear, and disgust. An exhaustive search of newspaper coverage of funeral and related articles was made for a specific corona period. After an initial screening for the details and language used, a total of 46 newspaper articles on funerals were finalized for the analysis. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software was used to determine the association between linguistic dimensions of function words and words related to social and affective processes, as presented in the newspaper articles. Sentiment Analysis and Cognition Engine (SEANCE) was applied for the analysis of sentiment, social cognition, and social order. Bayesian correlation analysis and regression revealed positive and significant associations between function words and affective processes, between pronouns and social processes, and between negative adjectives and psychological processes of fear and disgust. Also, significant negative associations were found between polarity nouns and psychological processes of fear and disgust and between polarity verbs and psychological processes of fear and disgust. Bayes factor 10 provides strong evidence in favor of the study hypotheses. The media is influenced by the prevailing sentiments in society and reflects their perception of the current social order and beliefs. The findings provide a glimpse into the prevailing sentiment of society through the lens of media coverage. These understandings are expected to enhance our observations of how people express their feelings over the loss of their loved ones and help mental health professionals develop their therapeutic protocols to treat the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-affected population.

INvoke ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jori Dusome

From 1978 to 2002, more than 60 women went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area that has often been described as “Canada’s poorest postal code”. For decades, families of the area’s missing women filed police reports and engaged with the media about their vanished loved ones, however little headway was made in the case until ten years later, when the Vancouver Sun began publishing a series of stories on the women that drew provincial and national attention. Motivated by citizen dissent and accusations of negligence, The Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP finally launched a joint task force, resulting in the arrest and conviction of Robert “Willie” Pickton, a pig farmer from Port Coquitlam, for the serial murders of street-involved women. The subsequent excavation of the Pickton property became the largest criminal investigation in Canadian history, spanning several years and costing tens of millions of dollars. However, the danger and violence that plagued women on the Downtown Eastside remained largely the same for many years after Pickton’s arrest. While media coverage narrated Pickton as a single deranged male, this narrative effectively eliminated the context of the broader social background that thrust these women into harm’s way. In this paper, I will discuss the racialization, spatialization, and class distinctions that heavily influence women's participation in the sex trade, as well the media narratives that enable an understanding of Pickton as a violent outlier. The research shows that despite these narratives, violence against marginalized women is a part of the normative social order, which is precisely what allows violent men to function without apprehension in these communities for so long. As you will read, violence against women cannot be described as simply the action of a few bad apples, but is instead a larger part of a “continuum of violence” enacted against already marginalized women. Keywords: MMIWG, Robert Pickton, sexual violence, street-level sex work


2014 ◽  
Vol 116 (9) ◽  
pp. 1426-1445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wells ◽  
Martin Caraher

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how British print media have reported the emergence of food banks in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The research uses the news database Nexis and focuses on the period since the global financial crisis in 2007 in nine national UK print media titles. The search criteria included mention of the term food bank at least three times in the newspaper article and a UK focus. This resulted in 190 usable articles from the newspapers. Findings – There were no UK-focused newspaper articles before 2008 and few until 2012 when the number increased dramatically. A key theme in reporting was increasing numbers of food banks and users of them. The data most often cited were from the Christian charity The Trussell Trust which runs a franchise system of food banks. There were clusters of newspaper articles indicating a common source. Few of the articles used direct quotes from current food bank users. A “frame contest” appeared in 2013/early 2014 with newspaper articles reporting both changes in welfare provision and the proliferation of food banks as the reason for the increase in food banks and food bank use. Tensions emerged between three key sets of players: government ministers, church leaders and The Trussell Trust as the key provider of food banks in England. Research limitations/implications – The authors only examined newspapers, the reporting in other media may be different. Practical implications – The media reporting of food poverty and the use of food banks has the potential to influence public perceptions and policy. Originality/value – This is the first study to look at how food banks are reported by the media.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelmer Brouwer ◽  
Maartje van der Woude ◽  
Joanne van der Leun

In this article we examine whether the proposal to criminalize illegal stay in the Netherlands was preceded by increased negative media attention for unauthorized immigrants. Using a corpus linguistics approach, we carried out a quantitative discourse analysis of all newspaper articles on unauthorized migrants over a period of 15 years. Our results show that the amount of media coverage actually strongly decreased in the years before the proposal, and this coverage was moreover increasingly less negative. This study thus nuances the somewhat popular belief that unauthorized migrants are increasingly portrayed in negative ways and shows that the framing of migrants as criminals is a more diffuse process in which the media seem to follow rather than fuel politics and policy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Kim ◽  
Moonhoon Choi ◽  
Kyriaki Kaplanidou

Residents’ support for hosting the Olympic Games is crucial for a bid to succeed in the Olympic host-city selection process. Because of the vital role of the media in framing public perceptions of Olympic bids, the purpose of this study was to examine media coverage of hosting the Olympic Games during the Olympic host-city bid process. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on newspaper articles about Pyeongchang, Korea. Pyeongchang was a candidate city for 3 consecutive bids for the Winter Olympic Games, and it finally won its latest bid to host the 2018 Games. Six hundred Korean newspaper articles were collected for analysis. The results indicated that positive, nationwide discussions of hosting the Olympic Games were presented during the successful bid. Infrastructure legacy was mentioned frequently and dominantly for both successful and unsuccessful bid periods, whereas the presence of sport-development and sociocultural-legacy themes increased in the latest, successful, bid. In addition, extensive coverage related to celebrity endorsement was found during the successful bid.


Author(s):  
Marina Dekavalla

Chapter 5 looks at which frames were most prominent in the media coverage of the referendum. The frames identified earlier are traced in the coverage of the end of the campaign on BBC Scotland and STV, the two broadcasters that produce dedicated content for audiences in Scotland. This is complemented by an analysis of newspaper articles in ten Scottish daily and Sunday newspapers. The strategic game and policy frames were the two most dominant frames in both television and newspaper coverage, with the game frame becoming more prominent as the referendum date approached. The chapter concludes by discussing the democratic implications of representing the referendum as a strategic competition between political sides and as a decision about policy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
N. S. Dankova ◽  
E. V. Krekhtunova

The article is devoted to the study of the media representation features of the situation of coronavirus infection spread. The material was articles published in American newspapers. It is shown that the metaphorical model "War" is widely used in media coverage of the pandemic. The relevance of the work is due to the ability of the media to influence the mass consciousness. The methodological basis of the research is formed by critical discourse analysis, which establishes the connection between language and social reality. The article provides an overview of works devoted to the study of metaphor. The theoretical foundations for the study of metaphorical modeling are given. In the course of the analysis, the linguistic means of updating the metaphorical model "War" were revealed. The authors note that this metaphorical model is represented by such frames as “War and its characteristics”, “Participants in military action”, “War zone”, “Enemy actions”, “Confronting the enemy”. It is shown that modern reality is presented in the media as martial law, the coronavirus is positioned in the media as a cruel and merciless enemy seeking to take over the world, the treatment of the disease is represented as a fight against the enemy. It is concluded that the use of the metaphorical model "War" is one of the ways to conceptualize the spread of coronavirus.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110247
Author(s):  
Alexandrea J. Ravenelle ◽  
Abigail Newell ◽  
Ken Cai Kowalski

The authors explore media distrust among a sample of precarious and gig workers interviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although these left-leaning respondents initially increased their media consumption at the outset of the pandemic, they soon complained of media sensationalism and repurposed a readily available cultural tool: claims of “fake news.” As a result, these unsettled times have resulted in a “diffusion of distrust,” in which an elite conservative discourse of skepticism toward the media has also become a popular form of compensatory control among self-identified liberals. Perceiving “fake news” and media sensationalism as “not good” for their mental health, respondents also reported experiencing media burnout and withdrawing from media consumption. As the pandemic passes its one-year anniversary, this research has implications for long-term media coverage on COVID-19 and ongoing media trust and consumption.


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