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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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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