The COVID-19 Pandemic in South China Morning Post & BBC: The Influence of Cultural Values on the Framing of South China Morning Post and BBC of COVID-19 in a Hong Kong and British news media.
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2022-06-24
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en
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Abstract
In this study, a cross-national analysis of news framing and understanding the application of
Hofstede's theory in news media framings about the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong's
local news outlet South China Morning Post and the United Kingdom's BBC from the 23rd of
January 2020 until 23rd of March 2020 is presented. Hofstede's cultural dimensions provided
a context for understanding the fundamentals behind the occurrences of the five news frames
(Economic Consequences, Conflict, Morality, Human Interest and Impact, Attribution of
responsibility) in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. A corpus of 62 articles from the South
China Morning Post and BBC were analysed; it was found that Hong Kong produced a diverse
range of news frames and had the most Economic Consequences news frame, followed by
Human Interest and Impact. For the United Kingdom, it was found that BBC had the most
number of Morality frame, followed by Human Interest and Impact frame. The findings
contradicted Hofstede's theory, as Hong Kong (South China Morning Post) as a collectivistic
culture generated more diversified news frames than the United Kingdom (BBC) when
documenting COVID-19 (Hofstede, 2001). Nevertheless, the findings support Hofstede's
(2001) theory that Hong Kong is a Collective and High Power Distance culture, whereas the
UK is an Individualistic and Low Power Distance society, as the South China Morning Post
had more number of news articles reflecting high Collectivism and Power Distance than the
BBC.
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