An Emotional Rally: Exploring Commenters’ Responses to Online News Coverage of the COVID-19 Crisis in Austria

Eisele, Olga; Litvyak, Olga; Brändle, Verena K.; Balluff, Paul; Fischeneder, Andreas; Sotirakou, Catherine; Ali, Pamina Syed; Boomgaarden, Hajo G.

doi:10.1080/21670811.2021.2004552

Cited by 14 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…However, we found differences between outlets and over time: concerning RQ5, the tabloids The Sun and The Mirror, often associated with emotioninducing content (Esser 1999;Uribe and Gunter 2004), were somewhat more likely to use fear appeals. Our study thus not only answers recent calls for studies focusing explicitly on differences between quality and tabloid outlets in crisis communication (Eisele et al 2022), but also shows that it is important and worthwhile to differentiate between these different types of outlets. Related to H1, fear-inducing content tentatively decreased over time, indicating a shift from alarming to reassuring coverage, similar to other crises (Ungar 1998;Vasterman and Ruigrok 2013).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Wahl-Jorgensen (2020a) notes that scholars have understood emotions to stand contrary to the ideal of objectivity by criticizing emotional coverage as sensationalized or commercialized. By doing so, however, research ignores that emotions have always been part of the news, especially in crises (Eisele et al 2022;Pantti 2018)-which is why their role has been reconsidered in an "emotional turn" (Wahl-Jorgensen 2020a, p. 175) in journalism studies: Recent work on emotional labor illustrates how journalists manage their emotions during terrorist attacks (Kotišová 2017) or disease outbreaks (Perreault and Perreault 2021). Studies on emotional audience reactions underline the ambivalent effects of emotion-inducing news.…”

Section: The Role Of Emotions In and For Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While studies rarely analyze these temporal patterns for the coronavirus crisis, Eisenegger et al (2020) show that, during the first wave of COVID-19 in Switzerland, threats were mentioned less over time, which the authors attribute to declining cases in the country. Similarly, Eisele et al (2022) illustrate an increase in emotional reactions in public communication before infections peaked. Thus, we pose: H1: The prevalence of fear appeals in coronavirus coverage decreased over time.…”

Section: Differences Between Tabloids and Quality Outletsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotions in Crisis Coverage: How UK News Media Used Fear Appeals to Report on the Coronavirus Crisis

Hase

Engelke

2022

Journalism and Media

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During crises, journalists rely on emotional appeals to alert the public. This includes fear appeals, i.e., journalistic depictions of threats and measures against them. Focusing on the coronavirus crisis, this study analyzes the prevalence of fear appeals in journalistic news, differences between outlets, and changes over time. It employs a manual content analysis of UK online news between January and May 2020 (N = 1048). Results indicate that, during the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic, journalists relied heavily on fear-inducing messages by emphasizing threats related to COVID-19 and, though to a lesser degree, measures against these threats. Besides differences between tabloids and quality outlets, we find that fear-inducing content decreased before the UK itself became most affected, indicating that coverage served a warning function rather than mirroring national affectedness. Overall, the study illustrates that fear appeals are common in coverage of crises, where they enable journalists to take on the role of public mobilizers and facilitators of crises response strategies, for instance by governments.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: The Role Of Emotions In and For Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Differences Between Tabloids and Quality Outletsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotions in Crisis Coverage: How UK News Media Used Fear Appeals to Report on the Coronavirus Crisis

Hase

Engelke

2022

Journalism and Media

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“…Our data here consist of news comments made in response to predictive journalism articles about COVID-19. We chose to focus on news comments as they contribute to the deliberative public discourse and offer a rich stream of data for understanding public reactions ( Eisele et al, 2022 ; Lee and McElroy, 2019 ). At the same time, comments do not reflect all news readers ( Friemel and Dötsch, 2015 ), and therefore, our analysis of comments should not be interpreted as some reflection of public opinion or the general population but rather reflects only the population of commenters studied.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting COVID: Understanding audience responses to predictive journalism via online comments

Allaham

Diakopoulos

2022

New Media & Society

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The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global health crisis that stimulated journalists to frame their stories around predictive models and forecasts aiming to predict the future trend of the pandemic. This article examines the audience response to predictive journalism by qualitatively analyzing readers’ comments to articles covering COVID that were published in a small sample of mainstream media. Based on a thematic analysis of readers’ comments, this research contributes a typology of audience response types to the models incorporated in such predictive journalism. We elaborate on each of three primary themes—reflecting affective, action-oriented, and evaluative responses—and discuss the implications of our findings and the importance of expanding research to answer questions related to the role of predictive journalism in shaping affective response, encouraging action-oriented responses and collective planning around responsibility for taking future actions, and considering the ways in which supportive and critical comments triggered by the models may be harnessed to improve communication.

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“…The Covid-19 pandemic again raised questions about how tabloid coverage of a major health crisis would differ from that of ‘quality’ news, especially given the former’s propensity for emotionality during a period where social anxieties were high ( Eisele et al, 2022 ) and their tendency for exaggeration and scapegoating ( Kleut and Sinkovic, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

South African tabloid coverage of Covid19: The Daily Sun

Bosch

Wasserman

2023

Media, Culture & Society

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Around the world, tabloid newspapers are routinely surrounded by a moral and cultural panic. They are criticised for lowering standards of journalism and privileging sensation above substance, diverting readers from serious news to entertainment, or foregoing ethical principles. However, scholarship about tabloids have also highlighted the ways in which these papers are frequently better attuned to their readers’ everyday lived experience. In South Africa, tabloid newspapers have also received much criticism in the past for their perceived superficial treatment of important news. This article examines South African tabloid newspapers’ coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, focussing specifically on a case study of the national newspaper the Daily Sun. The national Daily Sun newspaper boasts the country’s largest circulation figures. Through a quantitative content analysis of 1050 online news stories in the Daily Sun, we found that unlike mainstream front-page news reporting which was largely episodic, negative and alarmist, the majority of Daily Sun coverage was thematic and neutral. Daily Sun news coverage countered Covid-19 related misinformation and provided contextual coverage, with a large focus on the social impacts of Covid-19. The analysis concludes that despite the popular discourse of the reporting, Daily Sun reporting on Covid-19 provided readers with access to information and a focus on the micro aspects of the pandemic versus broader political issues and the views of political or scientific elites.

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An Emotional Rally: Exploring Commenters’ Responses to Online News Coverage of the COVID-19 Crisis in Austria

Cited by 14 publications

References 60 publications

Emotions in Crisis Coverage: How UK News Media Used Fear Appeals to Report on the Coronavirus Crisis

Emotions in Crisis Coverage: How UK News Media Used Fear Appeals to Report on the Coronavirus Crisis

Predicting COVID: Understanding audience responses to predictive journalism via online comments

South African tabloid coverage of Covid19: The Daily Sun

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