Chinese National Health Commission’s Reporting Strategies on COVID-19

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives dramatically and caused much fear around the world. While social media can contribute to faster information flow, this environment also gives rise to intensifying anxiety. This paper examines the research questions of how the Chinese National Commission (NHC), as the main authority for the health-related issues, presents the news about COVID-19 pandemic to English-speaking readers, which topics related to the coronavirus are stressed most, and what reporting strategies are used in presenting the current events and issues. The results indicate that the authorities are well-informed about the dynamics of public attention, since the same dynamics can be observed in the amount and structure of news. Moreover, from the perspective of reporting strategies we can see that the authorities subtly follow all the criteria that were proposed to allay fears and slow down or break the spiral of negativism with regard to the pandemic.