Media framing and public perception: the use of war metaphor in times of COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT The war metaphor is common in framing diseases. This study intends to combine both approaches of discourse analysis and empirical investigation to explore how the war metaphor in China’s media discourse contributed to framing COVID-19 and how it exerted influence on the public’s perception and response. Through the analysis of how war metaphor was employed by China’s media, three sub-frames, including preventing war, total war and people’s war, were discovered, which played an important role in legitimizing regulations, interpreting policies and evoking the public’s response. Interviews were conducted to examine the framing effect of the war metaphor on people. It’s found that while it exerted some influence on interviewees’ perception of COVID-19, the war metaphor did not enter the public discourse. Instead, the interviewees intended to employ the responsibility frame when talking about their motivations to take preventive measures. From the perspective of Cultural Discourse Studies (CDS), the war frame and the responsibility frame are intrinsically related, which could be explained in terms of Chinese culture. This implies that studying metaphors and frames in discourse and communication requires consideration of sociocultural contexts. In this sense, CDS provides theoretically analytical tools for communication studies under certain cultural backgrounds.