Comparative Study of the Information about the COVID-19 Pandemic and COVID-19 Vaccines on the Covers of United Kingdom, France, Spain and United States’ Main Newspapers

Abstract

This study compares the information coverage of the vaccine against the information of the COVID-19 pandemic in eight newspapers (two per country) from the United Kingdom, France, Spain and the United States. The newspapers analyzed are The Times and The Guardian (United Kingdom), Le Monde and Le Figaro (France), El País and El Mundo (Spain), and The New York Times and The Washington Post (United States). On a methodological level, the work uses a descriptive approach of hemerographic analysis. As a result, it is observed—in the case of coverage of the pandemic—that the presence of affected persons and health personnel in the front-page information was negligible, with a predominance of news journalistic genres (brief and newsworthy, especially), evidencing a leading role of political figures and the high degree of politicization of the crisis. In addition, the visual frames in the analyzed newspapers tended to promote humanization through emotional representation. On the other hand, the results of the news coverage of the vaccine showed a predominance of news journalistic genres, wherein supranational entities and pharmaceutical companies starred in the front pages to a greater extent. The study denotes the importance of media literacy among citizens, especially in the face of this type of informational events of global significance.