ABSTRACT
This chapter explores media frames and their tones frequently used in COVID-19 coverage. During a public health crisis, people turn to mass media for information about the crisis to minimise the potential effects of the disease. Media accentuate some aspects of reality and downplay, ignore, and obscure other aspects in the process. This is known as framing. During pandemic media coverage, framing may augment perceptions of threats to health and economic security and amplify distress in people. It further discusses the possible implications these frames and tones had on public mental health at the time. Two main print media outlets in Malawi – Nation Publication Limited and Blantyre Newspapers Limited – were used to collect 205 news headlines about COVID-19. The content analysis technique identified six media frames: human interest, economic consequences, containment, politicisation, ethnicisation, and morality or religion. The human interest frame dominated COVID-19 media coverage, with a higher frequency of its negative sub-frame. A negative frame tone was identified as the most frequent frame tone. The language of COVID-19 coverage was dominantly English. This chapter demonstrates that negative frames and tones in news headlines may accentuate people’s fear and panic, leading to adverse mental health consequences.
