The Information of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Front Pages of Newspapers. Comparative Study of Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Portugal, the United States, Russia and Germany

This research presents a comparative study of the front pages of eight countries regarding the news coverage of the pandemic in two printed newspapers in Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Portugal, the United States, Russia and Germany. The study analyzes the number of news items on the pandemic, the type of text, the typology of information sources, the characters, the use of color, the inclusion and focus of photographs and their location on the page, among other parameters. It studies 288 front pages of 16 newspapers worldwide (2 per country), collecting 1 478 pieces of information from 710 news items and 94 592 pieces of data evidence. The work employs a mixed method of direct observation and hemerographic analysis. Its conclusions include that the presence of affected people and health personnel in the front page information is negligible; it identifies a predominance of informative journalistic genres (brief and news, especially) and detects the leading role of political figures and the high degree of politicization of the crisis. Lastly, it is observed that the visual framing in the analyzed newspapers tends to promote humanization through emotional representation.