Abstract

Maps are a unique means of combining visual and textual communication, and have been ubiquitous in Covid-19 reporting. This article presents a framing analysis of 4,398 coronavirus-related news maps published across six UK news outlets during the early stages of the pandemic. The authors identified 10 frames: coronavirus was characterized as (1) a national problem; (2) a regional problem; (3) associated with China; (4) an undefined threat; (5) medical; (6) containable; (7) an economic problem; (8) an environmental problem; (9) datafiable; and (10) identifiable. Maps drawing on national boundaries for organizing space were common, often in conjunction with datafication and appeals to the threat posed by the virus. The findings are discussed in the context of representations of infectious disease and of maps as a distinct form of news visuals.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages27
JournalVisual Communication
Early online date26 Nov 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 26 Nov 2024

Data Availability Statement

Meta-data about the maps and scanned articles, as well as details on all stages of the qualitative analyses, quantitative results and scripts to reproduce quantitative results can be found on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/yxsmr/?view_only=498a8fd24efa472889172e7575a94f49. Map images are not stored at this link for copyright reasons. The meta-data includes article links and map captions to facilitate retrieval of the original images from their place of publication (subject to continued availability).

Funding

This research was conducted as part of a University of Bath Leveraged University Research Studentship associated with the RENEW project (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Global Challenges Research Fund, project number EP/P028403/1).

Keywords

  • Covid-19
  • news maps
  • framing
  • news representation
  • Covid-19 maps

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