Does the media only report about the COVID19 pandemic anymore?
A Data Analysis of Coverage in Austrian Online News
Due to the extensive coverage of the COVID19 pandemic, it is easy to get the impression that nothing else is being reported. In this article, I would like to examine on the basis of data whether this subjective impression corresponds to reality. I will also take a look at how coverage of different topics has evolved over the last few months. Regional differences and the tone of the news coverage, i.e. whether it has been more positive or negative, will also be discussed.
The Data
For the analysis, I collected and evaluated a total of 148,991 articles published online in the Austrian press from Nov. 4, 2020, to Feb. 2, 2021.
Articles from the following media were considered:
- ORF / http://orf.at
- Tiroler Tageszeitung / http://tt.com
- Upper Austrian News / http://nachrichten.at
- Lower Austrian News / http://noen.at
- Vorarlberg Online / http://vol.at
- Österreich / http://oe24.at
- Salzburg News / http://salzburg.com
- Kurier / http://kurier.at
- Die Presse / http://diepresse.com
- Kronen Zeitung / http://krone.at
- Der Standard / http://derstandard.at
- Heute / http://heute.at
- Neues Volksblatt / https://volksblatt.at
- Wiener Zeitung / http://wienerzeitung.at
This gives an almost complete picture of the Austrian media landscape with regard to daily news. (Data from the “Kleine Zeitung” / http://kleine-zeitung.at ) were unfortunately not available to me).
The Analysis
Of each article, the title, published text, and publisher were stored along with the publication date. The number of articles in my dataset is distributed across the publishers as follows:
The articles searched for specific keywords related to pandemic reporting. For example, the terms “covid,” “corona,” but also “kurzarbeit,” “lockdown,” and “mutation.” The posts were also subjected to a sentiment analysis and noted whether it was a positive, neutral or negative report.
To what percentage do the words “corona” or “covid” appear in the articles?
If we look at the proportion of articles with at least one of the two keywords in the text, summarized by day in each case and plotted across the time axis, the following picture emerges when we summarize across all media.
So, in the whole period, about 30–40% of the reports are on this topic. This confirms the impression that “only” about the pandemic is reported, although not literally, but it is already a very large proportion. And this is almost constant over the entire period of 3 months.
What about differences on publishers?
There are already clear differences here, with oe24.at almost at 50% and the “Volksblatt” even well above that, while the “Krone” and “Kurier” are only at 30% or below.
What about the presence of the “mutations”?
To do this, we look at the absolute number of articles with the word “mutation” in the text, plotted over time.
This topic appears abruptly in the news just before Christmas, then drops off again significantly for some time. It picks up again from mid-January and has been with us ever since. If we look at the mentions in regional newspapers separately, a more differentiated picture emerges.
At Christmas, the topic is already very present in the western newspapers “Tiroler Tageszeitung” and “Salzburger Nachrichten”. In Upper Austria (“nachrichten.at”), it is not until mid-January. This shows a “west-east divide”.
What about the lockdown issue?
The following figure shows the absolute number of articles in which the word “lockdown” appears, broken down by source.
It can be seen that on the day of the first lockdown there is also a clear “peak” in the reporting. The lockdown starting after the Christmas holidays does not show a clear peak. In general, however, the topic is present throughout the entire period with a certain weekly cycle. A strong contribution to the peaks is provided in each case by “OE24.at” (green).
What about the tonality (sentiment) of the articles?
In the subject area of a pandemic, one would expect rather negative reports throughout. Let’s look at the whole thing in figures, and also break down the temporal course according to different terms.
The graph shows the chronological progression of the number of articles containing the respective terms, broken down by tonality. The understandably low number of positive articles on these topics is striking. In particular, the articles on “mutations” and “lockdown” are predominantly with negative sentiment. The other two terms at least have a proportion of neutral reports almost similar to the negative news.
The analysis expresses through concrete numbers what we feel in the daily consumption of news, a very significant part deals with the pandemic, and mostly with a negative tone. However, we could also see some differences in sources, subject areas, and time periods.
