Newspapers\u2019 coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Eswatini: from distanciated re/presentations to socio-health panics

Abstract

This paper examines the coverage and re/presentation of the coronavirus pandemic by two mainstream newspapers in the Kingdom of Eswatini, namely, the Times of Eswatini and the Eswatini Observer between January and June 2020. Framing and discourse analyses are used in the examination of news stories. The key to this study is how the coverage and re/presentation evolved as ‘new facts’ about the virus emerged. From being re/presented in a distanciated form to becoming a localised scare, the travelling of the virus in space and time and its profile in the newspapers are examined. When the virus began to enjoy widespread coverage, news stories focused on virus incidence and later started paying attention to the internal evolution of the virus and how the government was responding to it. The analysis shows that political indexing sustained the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to political and official indexing, media coverage largely reproduced the views of those in power, especially the construction of lockdown regulations as rational and legitimate. The government and security officials characterised the coronavirus as an invading enemy that could only be defeated through ‘war’. The news media reproduced the war language of the government and security officials, and thus legitimised the lockdowns and security surveillance. In addition to regulatory interventions, the results reveal that the government and civil society initiated prayer and fasting sessions as part of response interventions. This paper concludes that health journalism pays less attention to health scares that are seen to be happening ‘elsewhere’. However, once the problems become local, the news value of proximity enables journalists to provide extensive coverage. In addition, the coverage of pandemics begins with increased coverage and panic, followed by constant attention and after some time, the stories leave front pages as journalism fatigue kicks in.