Cross-cultural analysis of the American, German, and Japanese newspaper coverage on COVID-19

As the news coverage on COVID-19 continues to accumulate, there is a need to analyze this coverage to critically examine the role of the mass media during the pandemic. This cross-cultural study conducts a qualitative analysis and quantitative comparison of the American, German, and Japanese quality newspaper coverage of COVID-19. Following a thematic analysis approach, this study analyzed 117 newspaper articles through the creation of a codebook with 133 codes. Results show how the media in all countries underrated the risk of the pandemic in its initial stage, while also focusing on people’s fear of the pandemic. In American and Japanese newspapers exists a tendency for criticism against the Chinese government, while German newspaper articles appear critical of the use of face masks. The methodological approach of this study highlights the merits of combining qualitative analysis and quantitative comparison to identify and cross-culturally compare elusive themes in media texts.