Framing the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Icelandic media: What were the key concerns and who could raise them?

Adda Guðrún Gylfadóttir,Sigrún Ólafsdóttir,Jón Gunnar Ólafsson

doi:10.13177/irpa.a.2021.17.1.6

Abstract

The worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of reliable and relevant information dissemination. How well a crisis like COVID-19 is handled depends, in many ways, on how the public perceives the crisis and risks related to it, through the media. Therefore, how the situation is framed, what are seen as key issues, and who is perceived to be in charge, can have implications for the outcome. This article analyses Icelandic news media content about COVID-19 at the onset of the pandemic by using theories of agenda-setting and framing. The objective is to examine how the pandemic was framed, which topics were highlighted and who was given a voice in the media. We specifically investigate what kind of leadership was present during the earliest stages of the pandemic. Using content analysis, we examined media content about COVID-19 from 21 Icelandic media outlets from January 1st to March 31st, 2020. Our conclusions show that from the start of the pandemic, health related subjects, such as disease prevention, COVID-19 statistics and the health care system were salient in the media, though tourism and economic factors were also quite prominent. Furthermore, experts were at the helm of communication whilst politicians remained more in the background. The dissemination of instructions and rules illuminates the relationship between the experts and politicians, as the experts were given a voice in the media to communicate such information. The politicians, however, directly cited the experts, thanked them or endorsed them, when they spoke on instructions and rules in the media.

Highlights

The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 quickly started to spread to numerous countries at the start of 2020
Recent research has shown how COVID-19 has affected Icelandic journalists and the working conditions in newsrooms (Guðmundsson 2020), and as we have shown, the pandemic had great impact on the news media content that these journalists produced
We have demonstrated that health-related subjects and economic factors were prominent in the news media at the onset of the pandemic

Summary

Introduction

The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 quickly started to spread to numerous countries at the start of 2020. February 27th marked a turning point in the media coverage of the pandemic in Iceland, as daily briefings broadcasted live on television, radio and online began, held by a team of experts At this point, it was becoming clear that COVID-19 would present a major threat in Europe and it was deemed critical to disseminate important information directly to the news media and the public during the upcoming crisis. Other government ministers were present at government press conferences when they were related to their ministry, such as Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, Minister of Education, Science and Culture, when discussing the impact on the education system It seems as if Icelandic authorities succeeded in building unity among the Icelandic population during the first wave of the pandemic, and that placing the experts at the forefront of communication has been effective, as nearly 90% of general public in Iceland participated in disease prevention measures and more than 95% believed that the measures would “very likely” or “most likely” be successful in April 2020 (Jónsson et al 2020). We provide such an analysis in this paper, with a focus on: 1) how the pandemic was framed in the beginning, with a specific focus on health and economy; 2) who were the key players given prominence in the media

Data and methods

Analysis

Who had a voice in the media discourse at the onset of the pandemic?

The interplay between specialists and politicians

Findings

Discussion