Open AccessWhen Fear Leads Towards Preventive Measures: A Study of Newspapers’ Coverage and Public Perception on COVID-19 Pandemic
Author(s) -
Muzammil Saeed,
Farahat Ali,
Nighat Nawaz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of peace, development and communication
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2663-7901
pISSN - 2663-7898
DOI - 10.36968/jpdc-v05-i01-33
Subject(s) - newspaper , pandemic , covid-19 , perception , psychology , risk perception , public opinion , advertising , social psychology , political science , medicine , business , politics , disease , pathology , neuroscience , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law
This research intends to examine and analyze the coverage of COVID-19 pandemic inleading Urdu newspapers of Pakistan and its effects on readers. For this purpose, this studyapplied quantitative content analysis and survey method. News stories (n=690) of COVID-19were selected randomly from two newspapers, daily Jang and daily Express to find out theelements of fear, hope, awareness and precautions, while news readers and viewers wereselected as respondents (n=455) to know the fear level and preventive measures taken by thenews audience. The results found that newspapers paid attention to the crisis in terms of riskperception, and public opted preventive measures after news exposure. Survey result showsthat television viewers have greater fear of COVID-19 than the social media users andnewspapers readers. It further shows that females have more fear of COVID-19 than males,and they are taking more precautionary measures. Moreover, result shows that fear ofCOVID-19 is a significant predictor of precautionary behaviour for males than females.Limitations and future directions are discussed in details