Does the Corona crisis lead to a displacement of media attention for the refugee and climate crises? A case study on issue attention processes

Abstract

In the following, classical hypotheses on the dramatization tendency of media crisis reporting and the assumed simultaneous suppression of other socially relevant topics are put to the test. For this case study, we rely on news reporting during the first year of the COVID19 pandemic (September 2019 to December 2020) to evaluate its influence on the thematization processes of «climate» and «refugees.» Based on a multivariate dynamic time series analysis of 437 784 online articles, we first confirm whether overall issue displacement can be detected and then delve deeper by differentiating into two possible mechanisms of displacement: 1) as a phase-dependent but global shift in attention and 2) as a direct i.e., simultaneous effect pointing toward editorial competition. Results from our analysis confirm the overarching hypothesis of topic competition, clearly showing displacement processes depending on the thematization phase. Globally, while not being rendered invisible, media attention for the other two crisis phenomena was reduced significantly following the onset of the pandemic. Regarding direct displacement, effects are measurable, but rather small. We conclude that the displacement of media attention seems to be attributable more to a shift in public attention and overall trends than to classic assumptions based on limited resources in the editorial process.

Keywords

• thematization
• topic competition
• crisis reporting
• covid-19
• climate
• refugee crisis
• computational procedures
• time series analysis