Reconceptualizing the Watchdog: Comparing Media Coverage of COVID-19 Response in Democracy

Abstract

What is the role of the watchdog of democracy in the Information Age? We augment a theory that focuses on accountability as the key element of watchdog journalism and propose an innovative framework concentrating on structure, content and timing of media coverage. Methodologically, we introduce artificial intelligence analyses and data mining to a comparative field largely dominated by econometrics and case studies. We investigate the variance between media coverage in Anglo-American democracies during the first months of the COVID-19 crisis, by comparing the USA, Canada and New Zealand. All 27,089 articles published in the New Zealand Herald, The Globe and Mail and the New York Times from February-May 2020 were harvested. AI analyses suggest meaningful differences in structure (networks of COVID-19 articles), content (politicized coverage) and timing. Compared with their US counterpart, the watchdogs of democracy in Canada and NZ barked louder, clearer and 2 weeks earlier.