Covid-19 News Pattern in Malaysiakini During MCO 1.0 & MCO 2.0

Abstract

News patterns on health information have an effect on social cognition and public attitudes as the pandemic progresses. Online news agencies have used a range of tools to engage with social media users in order to compete with others. The main and essential point of this study is analysing the frequency and form of online news coverage about the pandemic by the online news agencies in Malaysia. Quantitative content analysis was used in this study to analyse the news patterns such as news slants, dimensions of news, and news values on the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Facebook fan page ofduring Movement Control Order 1.0 and 2.0. The research result shown that, there has been a major drop in the frequency of COVID-19 related news stories between MCO 1.0 and 2.0, with 73.5% versus 26.5%, respectively. Covid-19 news in news slants during MCO 1.0 was more neutral in nature, whereas in MCO 2.0, these are more alarming in nature. News with a social problem dimension had the highest volume in MC0 1.0. However, a majority of the news in MCO 2.0 has a health risk dimension. This research also shows that news with a political dimension receives more engagement than others in the MalaysiaKini Facebook pages, from the social media users, where the engagement can be seen in the form of comments and shares. MalaysiaKini frames the news with various news patterns in general, but news audiences are more interested in serious and political news.

Keywords: News Pattern, COVID-19, Online News, MCO, News Framing

Introduction

Information can be easily transmitted throughout a network thanks to the advent of the internet, and social media has become the main medium of transmitting information for all smartphone users. Social networking is used for more than just interacting with friends, relatives, and acquaintances. It is also a place where information is gathered and disseminated, as well as a source of news. As a result, the decrease in news consumption does not imply that people no longer consume news. They are unlikely to get their news from traditional news sources such as newspapers, television news channels, online news outlets, or even news apps. On the contrary, since it is easy to access and more focused on the most recent facts, news agencies on social media have become their primary source of information. People have started to pay more attention to social media and online news (Tewksbury, 2003), resulting in the development of a modern media ecology, with conventional media joining in. People can find out about any occurrence that occurs around the world with a single click of the mouse on the internet, and newsfeeds can be easily distributed to all (Antunovic et al., 2016; Nain, 2018). Traditional media's network reach and notification sending speed are inferior. According to Rajaratnam (2009), the conventional newspaper industry is too structured and rigid in contrast to new media. In this digital age, they are no longer connected to people's everyday lives.

For news organisations, social media has also become a source of news (Newman, 2011; Schmitz, 2013). Digital news nowadays applies not only to native online news organizations, but also to existing news organizations that have moved away from offline outlets (Cooke, 2003). The structure of the media industry, along with technological advances in news production and delivery, has changed how people of all different ages consume news. According to Newman (2011), Twitter has rapidly become the new darling of the newsroom due to its ease, efficacy, and timeliness over the last few years. The news cycle is sped up as content is filtered, shattered, and shared via social media. The traditional media's method of collecting and disseminating news has been altered by social media (Alejandro, 2010). Social media editors are in high demand in the news industry due to the widespread use of social media (Newman, 2011). According to Pavlik (2001), the news industry's structure will experience profound changes as a result of digital media's impact on the relationship between news organizations, journalists, and the general public. The internet provides journalists with a number of resources, such as the ability to communicate more with their audience, consider consumer desires, and monitor users. The data now allows the news consultants to keep their superiors up to date on the types of news that the viewers want or need. As a result, professional journalists would need to be more tech-savvy, as the news industry as a whole becomes more digital and technologically advanced.

In Malaysia, while the transition from conventional or offline outlets to online news by the media was not considered satisfactory at first, online news has steadily gained popularity. This is due to the fact that political action has acted as a catalyst. Following the 1998 Reformation movement, intermittent support or focus for the Reformation movement began to appear on the internet, as well as some anonymous pages critical of Tun Dr. Mahathir. An English news website called MalaysiaKini.com had emerged one year after the Reformation movement and nine days before the tenth general election in 1999. It was Malaysia's first local commercial online newspaper, running on a media business model and managed by dedicated news professionals. MalaysiaKini.com stands out from the crowd as compared to standard English newspapers, which have bland and bureaucratic content. MalaysiaKini.com is also available in Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. In the online news industry, it is still the older brother to this day (Chang, 2009). MalaysiaKini is Malaysia's leading online news outlet.

Today, online news is a critical medium for communicating messages to society, especially when breaking news occurs in any part of the world (Arguin et al., 2004). It is an important tool used for providing health information to the public during a pandemic outbreak (Jensen et al., 2010). As per previous studies, news consumption and credibility are growing throughout the pandemic because everyone, particularly young people and the uneducated, is eager to obtain news to improve their health-related awareness (Casero-Ripolles, 2020; Hassim et al., 2020). Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin used live stream technology to announce the deployment of the Movement Control Order (MCO) as a COVID-19 prevention measure. Almost every online news outlet used their own online channel to broadcast the live video. This is completely in line with the new Malaysian norm, as social media has become a forum for people to pass the time and keep up with the latest news in Malaysia while they are confined at home.

Problem Statement

In today's content-overloaded world, it is worth considering how online news organisations can break through the clutter and become the audience's primary source of information. During COVID-19's raging time, all sorts of news and rumours emerge from all corners. Media professionals have used a variety of tools to communicate accurate information to the public. To reduce the risk of infection, people must have adequate health information (Seman et al., 2020). The public's health literacy can improve as a result of the media coverage. Only thorough coverage of the pandemic from various perspectives will provide people with a better understanding of a specific health risk or pandemic. According to Meng and Berger (2008), international countries have previously chastised China for failing to prevent Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) due to a poor information dissemination system. During the SARS epidemic in Canada, a similar situation occurred: majority of the undergraduate students were aware of the general hygiene and health issues, but they lacked sufficient knowledge of SARS (Bergeron & Sanchez, 2005). According to a study conducted in the United States, there was a lack of communication among the elderly about the H1N1 pandemic. People continued to practise good hygiene as normal, oblivious to the fact that they were in a health-hazardous climate (Jehn et al., 2011).

As a result, it appears that communication is crucial during periods of health risk. One of the benefits of online news is the ability to update it in real time as events unfold. Online news competes not only in terms of speed, but also in terms of the progress of news alerts (Rajaratnam, 2009). The most basic way to determine whether people have a chance to comprehend individual events is to reflect at the frequency of news. Therefore, the COVID-19 news frequency will indicate how much news about that issue has reached the general public. According to Chen et al. (2020) and Koh et al. (2020), social media has had a significant effect on the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. The online news agencies update a lot of coverage and updates on social media on a regular basis, as such, the information about the pandemic that the public would get from social media is usually enough to keep them from being contaminated (Azlan et al., 2020). However, according to a study on H1N1, online media reached a broader spectrum of viewers with informational and persuasive messages about the pandemic, but public knowledge was still rated as poor (Bergeron & Sanchez, 2005; Jehn et al., 2011). Despite the fact that they had access to all online news sources, they were unlikely to have obtained accurate information. The increasing of news frequency blindly has no impact on improving people's awareness or preventing disasters; indeed, getting more news can even cause the community to become panicked (Luth et al., 2013).

Media may assist viewers in deciding which events or problems are important to be informed of and respond to by agenda setting. Framing, on the other hand, has the potential to manipulate public perceptions and attitudes by emphasising the most important aspect of the topic (McGinty et al., 2016). Consequently, the news patterns in news coverage would have an impact on the societal context along with people's perceptions of the pandemic. News slant or news tone is one of news patterns which can give reassuring or disturbing messages to the viewer (Berry et al., 2007; Casero-Ripolles, 2020; Klemm et al., 2014). And, in most cases, this would mean and relate to news value (Harcup & O'Neill, 2001) and news dimension (Bardhan, 2001). The news is chosen based on its news value. O’Neill and Harcup (2009) proposed eight categories of news values which include expectations, intensity, negativity, relevance, meaningfulness, unambiguity, continuity, and unpredictability. A piece of news should embody at least one of them during a crisis. On the other hand, Pan and Meng (2016) listed out six dimensions concerning the news frames on health crisis coverage, among which are health risk, medical or scientific issue, prevention or protection, economic consequence, societal problem, and political or legal issue. Since they are detailed enough to evaluate the thematic salience of news coverage in a health crisis, these six dimensions are accessible and appropriate for use in analysing a pandemic or outbreak news coverage. The use of news patterns in framing a story to deliver information and engage with readers, especially online users, involves news slant, news value, and news dimension. In order to compete with others, online news agencies have used a variety of tools to deliver the news and engage with social media users.

Previous studies (Casero-Ripolles, 2020; Mohamad & Azlan, 2020; Shimizu, 2020) looked at the audience's actions and awareness during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the news about COVID-19 is still being studied, especially by online news agencies. The Malaysian government enforced the Movement Control Order in four phases from 18 March 2020 to 12 May 2020, followed by the start of the Conditional Movement Control Order until 9 June 2020. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yasin, had issued a Recovery Movement Control Order that would last until August 31, 2020. When the third wave started on January 13, 2021, Movement Control Order 2.0 was re-implemented. Despite the fact that the Movement Control Order was in effect across the country with the aim to avoid the spread of COVID-19, the essential news from online news agencies were focused on informing the public about what is going on, what steps must be taken, and who is responsible for making the Movement Control Order a success. The aim to compare Movement Control Order 1.0 and Movement Control Order 2.0 is to explore how the news patterns have changed over the time of the pandemic. There was a half year gap between the first and the second Movement Control Order, so the media and the public both have had the experience in sharing and receiving news and information after Movement Control Order 1.0. The news patterns used by the media will keep changing, because the news frames need to align with the development and process of the issue, which is also known as “Frame Changing” (Houston et al., 2012).

Research Questions

The research questions of this study are as below:

• What are the differences in the COVID-19 news frequencies between MCO 1.0 and MCO 2.0 in MalaysiaKini?
• What are the differences in the COVID-19 news patterns between MCO 1.0 and MCO 2.0 used by MalaysiaKini?

Purpose of the Study

The study's key focus is on analysis of the frequency and news pattern of online news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic during MCO 1.0 and MCO 2.0 by MalaysiaKini to disseminate the information and engage with its audiences. This research exposes the discrepancy of the function of MalaysiaKini in social media by using the framing theory. News frequency is important to understand how often the news is updated to viewers and what types of media forms are often used to convey the messages. Furthermore, the news patterns used for COVID-19 news will be examined in order to determine the news value, news slant, and dimension of health risk in COVID-19 news stories by MalaysiaKini.

Research Methods

To accomplish the purpose of the research, quantitative content analysis was employed. Online news by MalaysiaKini’s Facebook page about the COVID-19 pandemic was studied during the 1^st and 2^nd phases of the MCO, which were from 18^th March 2020 to 31^st March 2020 and 13^rd January 2021 to 26^th January 2021, respectively. This study focusses on MalaysiaKini because it is considered to be one the most popular online news sources among Malaysians. The Reuter Institute Digital News Report 2019 stated that MalaysiaKini was the most popular online news brand and it had successfully worked up a significant base of subscribers with more than 24,000 subscriptions. MalaysianKini is still the top online news source among the young people across all ethnic groups in Malaysia, among whom, 64% of the respondents are MalaysiaKini’s readers (Nge et al., 2012). MalaysiaKini had gained an audience of about 44% of the total population, as it had maintained the trust of most of the Malaysians by continuous provision of independent news (Nain, 2018).

The code book and coding sheets were used to code the data in this research, which was developed into five sections, which were Part A (General Information), Part B (News Slants), Part C (Dimension of News), Part D (News Value), and Part E (Remarks/Additional Comments). The news slants were examined by the researcher to justify whether the news report's tone was reassuring, alarming, balanced or neutral. The approach of news slant was widely used in other studies on the pandemic as well. The tone of news was being analyzed in the studies by Lakoff (2004), Vasterman and Ruigrok (2013), and Klemm et al. (2014). The list of the dimensions of news was suggested by Bardhan (2001), who claimed that the news reported during health crisis is normally regarding health risk, medical or scientific issues, prevention or protection, economic consequence, societal problem, or a political or legal issue.

The intercoder reliability was measured using the pilot test. This research’s intercoder reliability was tested by three qualified coders, one of whom was the main researcher and two were external coders. The primary coder was the main researcher, and the external coders were master's degree holders in mass communication. Krippendorff's alpha was used to assess the reliability. The intercoder reliability level for this study ranged from 0.8014 to 1.000. The research's face validity was also tested by two experts: one is an academic expect in crisis management and media framing, and the other is an industrial expected to take office in an online news agency. The data collected on the coding sheet from the research was analysed using SPSS to address the research questions, and descriptive analysis was used to help with the analysis and achieve the research objectives.

Findings

The analysis of this study is divided to two parts, aiming to address the two research questions. The first part was to identify the differences in COVID-19 news frequencies between MCO 1.0 and MCO 2.0 in MalaysiaKini, followed by the online news patterns between MCO 1.0 and MCO 2.0, which was the second part. The indicators of news patterns included news slants and dimensions of news. Furthermore, the analysis revealed the feedback of social media users' likes, comments, and shares on the dimensions of news of COVID-19 by MalaysiaKini in their Facebook pages.

Conclusion

The media framing theory focuses on how the mass media uses the contents of news stories to assist readers in constructing mental barriers. In this study, news frequency played an important role in constructing and creating the high awareness towards the disease of COVID-19 in Malaysia. Between the two phases of MCO implementation, the results show that there was a drastic drop of COVID-9 news frequency by MalaysiaKini. Reduced news volumes for COVID-19 may not be one of the causes of pandemic deterioration, but it may be a factor in lowering public alertness and awareness towards the disease. Undoubtedly, the audience would ignore the news coverages because of overflow information on the internet. Thus, appropriate news patterns should be considered in the progress of framing the content of news in different stages of the pandemic. News patterns in news coverages can have an impact on the societal climate as well as people's perceptions of the pandemic. In the stages of crisis management in health crises covered by scholars (Coombs, 2011; Fink, 1986; Mitroff, 1994; Ungar, 2008; Vasterman & Ruigrok, 2013), there are three basic stages. These include the first stage, the content with fearful claims and alarm; second stage, a continuous treat and reassuring scientific data as well as a national strategy, and third stage, information would be used to alleviate any anxiety. In this case, the implementation of MCO can be referred to as the second stage on health crisis, with the information content being fearful, alarming, medical or scientific, as well as about prevention or protection. The research results show that both phases of MCO had a lack of medical or scientific and prevention or protection news slants in the news coverages of MalaysiaKini.

Additionally, the findings also present that societal problems were the main focus in the dimensions of news in the 1^st phase of MCO 1.0, whereas health risk and political or legal issues were majorly used in the 1^st phase of MCO 2.0. Notably, the dimensions of news in political or legal issues had more engagement and feedback from MalaysiaKini’s Facebook users. Klinenberg (2005) believed that in order to preserve viewer loyalty, media organisations would not only serve the public, but also build their own communities. People with strong faith will stand together and trust the media to provide content that is in line with their beliefs. To summarise this, there are significant correlations between the dimensions of news and engagement of users in online news coverages.

The relationship between online news frequency and cognition of COVID-19 can be studied in future research. Such research could examine the impact of frequency of news towards user cognition, whereby information and data are turned into actionable “evidence”.

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