A Computer-Based Text Analysis of Al Jazeera, BBC, and CNN News Shares on Facebook: Framing Analysis on Covid-19 Issues

Abstract

This study is a comparative text analysis of Al Jazeera English, BBC News, and CNN on the Coronavirus pandemic. Only the text-based news from April 13 to April 20, 2020, were collected from the official Facebook pages of the respective news organizations. Based on the framing theory, the computer-based text analysis using MAXQDA software was used to conduct the research. The study found how these internationally recognized media outlets frame their news using word frequency, the combination of multiple words, and semantic relationships among the news published on their Facebook pages. A total of 105 news were selected out of 185 and 89,465 words were analyzed to observe how they framed the Novel Coronavirus crisis. Six individual frames were found and the results revealed four similarities and two differences among the frames. The similarities and differences were discussed based on different approaches to framing including proximity and political agendas.