US Nationwide Coronavirus Newspaper Coverage of Federal/National Government Responses: Community Structure Theory and a “Violated Buffer”

Authors

  • John C. Pollock
  • Suchir Govindarajan
  • Alexis Marta
  • James N. Sparano

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51698/tripodos.2020.47p27-48

Abstract

Community structure analysis (Pollock, 2007, 2013a, 2015) compared city characteristics and newspaper coverage of federal/Trump administration coro­navirus responses in 18 major US cities, sampling all 250+ word articles from 01/28/20 to 04/03/20. The resulting 123 articles were coded for “promi­nence” and “direction” (favorable/un­favorable/balanced-neutral coverage), then combined into each newspaper’s composite “Media Vector” (range= 0.3850 to -0.6433, or 1.033). Fifteen of 18 newspapers (83%) displayed negative coverage of federal COVID-19 responses. Pearson correlations and regression analysis confirmed a robust “violated buffer” pattern (higher proportions of economically/socially “buffered” privi­leged groups are associated with neg­ative coverage of “biological threats or threats to a cherished way of life”: Pollock, 2007: 101), manifest in polit­ical and religious polarization and links between health access or generational privilege and negative coverage of feder­al COVID-19 actions. Higher proportions voting Democratic or Catholic member­ship in cities were associated strongly with negative coverage of federal efforts, while voting Republican and Evangelical membership accompanied positive feder­al coverage, evoking nationwide partisan “tribalism”. Privileged healthcare access (physicians/100,000, municipal health­care spending) and economically “privi­leged” age groups 45-64 and 65+ were all connected to negative coverage of federal COVID-19 responses, illuminat­ing overall “violated” expectations that the national government is responsible for nationwide disaster protection. Keywords: COVID-19, community struc­ture theory, newspapers, government, media.

Author Biographies

John C. Pollock

The College of New Jersey (USA)

Suchir Govindarajan

The College of New Jersey (USA)

Alexis Marta

The College of New Jersey (USA)

James N. Sparano

The College of New Jersey (USA)

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Published

2021-02-05

How to Cite

Pollock, J. C., Govindarajan, S., Marta, A., & Sparano, J. N. (2021). US Nationwide Coronavirus Newspaper Coverage of Federal/National Government Responses: Community Structure Theory and a “Violated Buffer”. Tripodos, 1(47), 27-48. https://doi.org/10.51698/tripodos.2020.47p27-48