Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Articles from The Washington Post and Jutarnji list Reporting on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of our lives and become the topic of scientific research in various fields. This paper analyses selected newspaper articles from The Washington Post and Jutarnji list, published from February to May of 2020, based on Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of three stages: description, interpretation, and explanation. At the description level, pandemic-related vocabulary is analysed; at the interpretation level, newspaper discourse is analysed from the perspective of news sources and modes of discourse representation; and at the explanation level the discourse is analysed from the standpoints of the institutional and societal contexts. Analysis revealed a striking difference between The Washington Post and Jutarnji list in the total number of pandemic-related words. There are 315 pandemic-related words in The Washington Post and 707 in Jutarnji list. Furthermore, in The Washington Post, the focus is on the dangerous aspects of the pandemic, while Jutarnji list focuses on certain neutral aspects of the pandemic. At the interpretation level, the results show that Jutarnji list used a higher percentage of specified news sources. There are no major differences in the usage of modes of discourse representation. The differences in certain aspects of newspaper discourse at the explanation level reflect a range of ideological differences between the two countries.