From risks to catastrophes: How Chinese Newspapers framed the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in its early stage

Abstract

Beck identified delocalisation, uncalculability and non-compensability as three characteristics of modern risk, the recognition of which lies at the core of transforming insubstantial risks into urgent catastrophes. This study aimed to empirically test and enrich Beck’s theory by examining how the Chinese media framed COVID-19 during the first month of the pandemic’s outbreak, a critical period for the media’s staging of risk. We observed that the usage of the consequences and treatment responsibility frames lies at the core of transforming COVID-19 from a risk to a catastrophe. Initially, journalists framed the virus as conquerable at a local level, with calculable consequences and compensable solutions. In the second phase, after the central government and national health experts stepped in, journalists admitted that COVID-19 was uncontrollable at a local level, starting to transform the risk into a national catastrophe, and called for enhanced solutions to controlling the spread of the virus. In the third phase, journalists started to transform the local catastrophe into a global crisis, referring to the global community as an information source. By building a bridge between risk theory and framing theory, we found that, in the case of COVID-19, delocalisation, incalculability, and non-compensability were crucial factors in risk virtualisation. We argue that the different usage of the consequences and treatment responsibility frames can either prevent the transformation of a risk into a catastrophe or facilitate this transformation process.