News media’s framing of telehealth before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This research contributes to the literature on journalistic news framing by analyzing the portrayal of telehealth as a particularly relevant topic during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frames before and after the onset of the pandemic were examined across four news regions: Canada, Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.A. A mixed-methods news framing analysis combined computational linguistic analysis with manual coding methods and determined five general frames through which telehealth is discussed in the news. Results show differences in non-pandemic and pandemic news frames, and in national frames.

Keywords

• telehealth
• news framing
• explanatory journalism
• health communication
• covid-19
• mixed-methods