Politicizing COVID-19 Lingua in Western and Arab Newspapers: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

COVID-19 has struck the world in an unprecedented way. Countries quickly tried to counter the rapid spread of the virus by imposing strict measures and national lockdowns. At the same time, some governments took advantage of the pandemic to besmirch their opponents. We utilize van Dijk (J Polit Ideol 11(2):115–140 2006) critical discourse analysis model to investigate how newspaper headlines reacted to COVID-19 from through ideological lenses. Results show that while the US implied that China is the origin of the virus, headlines in Arab newspapers showed that Saudi Arabia blamed travel to Iran for the early increases of COVID-19 cases.