Media attention toward COVID-19 across 18 countries: The influence of cultural values and pandemic severity

BACKGROUND: Current media studies of COVID-19 devote asymmetrical attention to social media, in contrast, newspapers have received comparatively less attention. Newspapers are an integral source of current information—that are syndicated and amplified by social media to a wide global audience. This is the first-known study to investigate the impact of cultural values and pandemic severity on media attention towards COVID-19. Findings lay the groundwork for targeted public health communications that are culturally nuanced. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the impact of cultural values and pandemic severity on Media Attention towards COVID-19 across 18 countries. METHODS: We tracked the global volume of COVID-19 coverage (to measure media attention) over 8 months in a news media database of 12 billion words with 30 million articles from over 7,000 news media sites. Predictors of Media Attention towards COVID-19 came from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (incidence and mortality) and Hofstede’s Cultural Values. RESULTS: Media attention toward COVID-19 increased 55 times over 8 months. Higher rates of new cases and deaths predicted this exponential increase. Countries with higher power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation, were associated with increased media attention, controlling for covariates. CONCLUSIONS: Cultural values play a significant role in the news media’s attention toward COVID-19, controlling for pandemic severity. We provided a framework to design targeted public health communications that are culturally nuanced.