ABSTRACT
The research aims to empirically verify the role and importance of global news stations on an international scale, analyse multicultural audience reactions to media reports, and identify the most frequently shared COVID-19 information based on hard data (webometric indicators and data from social media). The author tries to answer the question how global media coverage shaped during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and what made the information more shareable online during this period? The presented study combines different methodological approaches. First, the quantitative method focuses on collecting a massive volume of data (news from websites, website traffic data such as website visitors, monthly visitor traffic, the length of time spent on the website or the number of views), analysis of digital audiences (engagement on social media profiles and level of news shareability), and quantitative and qualitative content analysis of selected news. Results show visible differences and similarities between audience reactions of CNN International (USA), BBC World (Great Britain), Deutsche Welle (Germany), RT (Russia), France24 (France), EuroNews (France/Europe), and Al-Jazeera (Qatar).
