Jakin Zhang
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
UROP Fellowship: Women and Gender Summer Fellowship Program
Research Mentor(s): Young Rim (Hailey) Kim, PhD Candidate, Patrick Barry, JD, PhD
Department of Communication and Media
Presentation Date: Monday, July 27, 2020 | Session 2 | Presenter: 7
Authors: Jakin Zhang, Young Rim Kim
Abstract
At the year-end of 2019, a novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 emerged. The outbreak of the respiratory disease was traced back to a first case in China, on November 17th. In the following months, the respiratory disease spread across six continents and infected over 12 million individuals. To this day, more than half a million people have died due to COVID-19. In the early months of the outbreak and amidst global confusion, the American public received conflicting signaling from health professionals in regards to masking. Looking back at a general timeline since the declaration of the world pandemic, Americans were initially told that masks were “useless” and “ineffective” for protection against the coronavirus. Conducting news discourse analysis, this project seeks to uncover and understand the thematic trends behind such contradictions on wearing face masks in the age of coronavirus. In order to locate the changing discourse surrounding face masks, this project uses data collected from two major news establishments— The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Articles were selected through an advanced search process, which required the article headline to have the word “mask” in it, from January to June. By examining several hundreds of newspaper articles from both sources, we aim to shed light on the fluctuations of mainstream messaging concerning face masks in the United States. From a communications and media perspective, this study emphasizes the role in which mainstream media affect the transmission, content, and reception of important health information to the general public.
Google Slide Presentation
Presentation Script
Research Disciplines
Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences
