Navigating health communication in China: a corpus-based critical discourse analysis of COVID-19 news from 2020 to 2023

This study delves into the communication of the COVID-19 pandemic in China by examining the representation of the pandemic in Chinese news coverage from January 2020 to March 2023. Analyzing 37,484 news reports from leading English newspapers in China, the study employs a corpus-based Discourse-Historical Approach to uncover how specific lexical and discursive strategies construct representations in the Chinese media. Overall, six major representations have been identified: COVID-19 as a lethal global health crisis, the pandemic as an extensive disaster, China's response as effective, the pandemic fight as a unifying war, steady Chinese economic recovery, and politicization of the pandemic as unethical. Further analysis connects the representations with the sociopolitical and historical context in China. The findings of the study offer insights that can inform precise and culturally sensitive communication strategies for health professionals.