Diagnosis or prognosis? An analysis of COVID-19 news framing and its association with affective tones and efficacy information

Societies across the world had faced a challenging health threat with a likely common goal worldwide to control the spread of COVID-19. Anticipating a worldwide desire for problem-solving, this study investigated how the pandemic crisis was covered by news media in terms of diagnosis framing versus prognosis framing, with the former focusing on diagnosing problems while the latter concentrating on seeking solutions. A total of 1600 news articles by the news media in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia were collected to examine the syntactic structure of each story, focusing on the headline and the lead. As a result, the US news media favored prognosis over diagnosis framing. More importantly, prognosis framing in all the four countries was associated with a positive tone and more efficacy information. The implications of both framings are discussed in terms of framing research as well as risk communication studies.