A Comparative Corpus-Based Content Analysis of Head of Government Addresses in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Japan and Western Countries

Abstract

Addresses made by heads of government reflect their views and opinions. This article presents a quantitative content analysis of public addresses made by heads of government of the five countries, namely Japan, the USA, New Zealand, Germany, and Slovenia, which were done in response to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). Word frequency analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to identify the content specifics of these addresses.  The comparative analysis of speeches concerning the novel coronavirus enables us to determine how these addresses reflect the speakers’ perspectives and political orientation and what they attempted to convey to the public.