REPORTING ON CORONAVIRUS USING THE EXAMPLE OF SPANISH MEDIA EL PAÍS, LA VANGUARDIA Y 20 MINUTOS

Abstract

The topic of this paper is the reporting of media on the coronavirus and side phenomena of global sanitary crisis caused by COVID-19 at the example of three Spanish daily magazines (online versions): El País, La Vanguardia and 20 minutos. We have analysed the articles published during 2020. The aim of this paper is to present similarities and differences in media coverage of the topic of coronavirus using the example of three media outlets with large influence, but with a different level of credibility. We have selected four texts from each newspaper, one for each of four key phases of the pandemic. According to our methodology, these phases are: first outbreak of contagion in China, first confirmed death in Spain, declaration of state of alarm and lockdown and the first end of state of alarm and lockdown on June 21st 2020. We also analysed twelve more articles, using the inductive, deductive and comparative method, that inform about various aspects of life in the time of the pandemic: civil rights (especially curfew), public health, economy and celebrities tested positive for coronavirus. During the analysis, we have focused on the elements of journalistic language, as well as the ethics of journalists’ gaze at COVID-19. We have taken into consideration some linguistic elements like: evidentiality, combination of formal, neutral and informal speech, eufemism and political correctness, metaphore, word order, neologisms, verb forms, graphostylistic marks.