The “Hit Parade” of Viral News. How Did The Media Write About COVID-19?

In the last five months, every fourth news item in the Ukrainian online media concerned the Covid-19 pandemic. The topics of this news were very diverse: international statistics, the rate of spread of the virus, descriptions of symptoms and the development of vaccines. Almost every day there were new reports of public figures being infected, publications on the state of hospitals, medical procurement and recommendations for maintenance of social distance. The large amount of information and the oversaturation of the information space with reports of the coronavirus have become a breeding ground for the spread of myths and fakes. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the VoxCheck team has refuted about 300 fakes about Covid-19.

Coronavirus has become one of the main news items, about which hundreds of news items were written every day. We had analyzed 473,527 news from the largest 27 online media in Ukraine for five months: from February to June 2020 inclusive. To see the hidden structure behind the information noise, we used the LDA machine learning algorithm to analyze large sets of textual information.

Napalm news

The SARS-CoV-2 virus epidemic has absorbed public attention. From the beginning of the pandemic to the end of June, almost a quarter of all news (23% or 112.5 thousand publications) concerned the coronavirus.

The peak of interest in Covid came in March-April, when the first case of Covid-19 was detected in Ukraine and quarantine restrictions were introduced. Compared to February, the share of news with the mention of coronavirus has tripled: from 11% to 37% (37,310 news in March versus 9,850 in February).

In April, news with the mention of Covid became a little less – 32% (34,204 news), but interest in it still remained, perhaps due to discussions of quarantine restrictions, which were extended several times.

During the two months of quarantine, the society was tired not only of following the rules of social distance, but also of reading news about the coronavirus. Thus, in the May news feeds, coronavirus reports were 20% (19,655), and in June – 13% (11,387).

The main topics about the coronavirus

The 27 online media outlets, that we surveyed, published more than 3,000 news items a day on all possible topics, including the pandemic. Some news sites publish 20-30 news items every minute. Of course, people cannot keep up with all this news. However, with the help of the LDA algorithm, the most frequently repeated topics can be separated from these information flows (Fig. 1). Such topics have a chance to influence public opinion about the pandemic.

We selected six topics on which the media wrote the most. In total, they make up more than half (57%) of the entire array of news about the coronavirus. Next, we describe them in the following structure: what? (what words formed the topic), where? (in which media), when? (period of time when the topic was in the media most often).

International statistics

The topic of international statistics on Covid included the most articles (11% of all articles on coronavirus). This topic has been generated by reports on new infections and deaths worldwide. These are articles about the course of the Covid-19 epidemic in the countries that were then in the leaders in the number of infected: the USA, Italy and Spain. This topic also included reports on the number of infected people in the last 24 hours, the number of deaths per thousand people and in the world as a whole.

This topic immediately began dominating in the information space: in February there were 2160 articles on it, in March already 3779, in April 3126. In May, interest in it subsided (2030), and continued to decline in June (1718).

Quarantine for all 

Quarantine restrictions in Ukraine were discussed in the media almost as often – 8.03% of all articles about the coronavirus. They were most discussed in March (2,993 news) and April (2,446 news), when quarantine was most severe. This topic included reports of quarantine measures, their observance or violation, strengthening of restrictions in certain regions. There was also news about a state of emergency, rules for visiting public places, restrictions on traffic. Some examples of publications: Disinfection of streets and bus stops: how Kyiv is fighting the coronavirus, In Luhansk region decided to reduce quarantine despite a small number of tests performed, In Vinnytsia region, the quarantine has been tightened: five round-the-clock posts have been reopened

Regional statistics

This topic included 7.87% of all articles mentioning coronavirus: everything related to the rate of spread of the virus within the country, the sickness rate statistics by regions and districts. This is news with headlines like: In Odessa region, the number of patients with COVID-19 increased by 20 people, a total of 93 infected, In Bukovyna, another 56 people got infected with the new coronavirus. In April there was the most of such news – (3 396).

Medical system 

7.3% of news related to coronavirus were published about the state of the medical system, hospital occupancy, medical procurement and the activities of the Ministry of Health. For example, this includes articles on the incidence rate among medics, reports and comments from medical area employees. This topic was formed by all articles related to the discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic in the light of the medical system. The largest number of publications on this topic was in March (3,964) and April (2,278).

Quarantine for everyone

Articles on this topic cover life in quarantine from the viewpoint of the average citizen. They make up 6.6% of all articles about the coronavirus. This topic included recommendations on how to adapt to quarantine restrictions, reminders of social distance, explanations for enhanced personal hygiene measures. It also includes publications on quarantine violations (In the US, the mayor ordered the police to catch all violators of quarantine: his wife was arrested), advice (How to set a schedule for a child during quarantine: psychologist’s advice, Coronavirus quarantine: a list of museums that can be “visited” “online). The most relevant such articles were in March and April, when they were published in the largest number: 2610 and 2885.

Interesting about the coronavirus

This topic is the second largest according to the number of articles: it includes 10% of all news about the coronavirus. However, we put it at the end of the list because it is represented only by a few media. The algorithm has combined articles into this topic, as most of them are written in Russian, and large volumes of the topic are explained by the productivity of the resources that formed it (in particular, Strana and Censor.Net). In essence, the topic is quite broad: it was formed by articles explaining the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, quarantine restrictions in different countries and government measures to combat the spread of Covid. Many news items in this topic are based on comments from representatives of the Ministry of Health and top officials of the state. It also includes explanations of the functioning of society during quarantine. Typical for it are the following headlines: Doctors found out the impact of coronavirus in the first weeks of pregnancy, The USA increases aid to Ukraine to fight COVID-19 to $ 14.5 million, The spread of coronavirus: how different countries are fighting the epidemic. That is, it is a fairly broad topic, the purpose of which is to explain the situation around the coronavirus. Most articles on this topic were published in April (4006) and March (3294).

During the period under review, the “hit parade” of coronavirus topics had not been changing: among them are international and regional statistics, quarantine restrictions, rules of social distance and state measures to fight Covid. And although over time, interest in the news about Covid-19 is declining, the relative popularity of these topics remains unchanged.

Who writes the most about Covid-19?

There are several models through which the media reports on the Covid-19 epidemic. Some create separate digests, some create online statistics tracking pages and thematic sections. There are also media outlets that only occasionally mention the virus in articles.

Those websites that do not publish a large number of news (an average of 2,503 news per month) write relatively more about Covid-19. Gordon.ua (35% of all news in the resource), Censor.Net (34%), Hromadske (33%) and Ukrainska Pravda (32%) are in the top three in terms of the number of articles mentioning Covid-19. The first two media created separate Covid sections, UP developed a page with statistics, and Hromadske website did not single out the Covid-19 topic.

In contrast to these news websites, two portals from our list with the most news published in a day, Politeka and Znaj, barely mentioned the coronavirus in their feeds. Politeka has the fewest mentions of Covid – 6% of all news on the website, and Znaj – 9.5%. The portal with the largest total number of news in five months, 24 Chanel, also mentions Covid-19 in only 9.5% of news.

Favorite media topics

Our database includes online media news feeds with different models of news supply. For example, such websites as 112, Znaj, 24 Chanel, Politeka publish 20-30 news per minute. Quality media, such as LIGA, Radio Svoboda or Focus, publish significantly less content – in average 57 news per day. Figure 3 shows how the described above leading topics about Covid-19 are distributed in the media. Are there topics in some media that they promote most actively?

The topic of International statistics of Covid-19 distribution was covered by all media equally. Even more: for the half of the media (14 out of 27) this topic is one of the most discussed. The share of articles in each media on this topic among the “covidious” articles is approximately the same – in average, 19% of news in five months.

The Quarantine for all topic was most actively promoted by those media that generally wrote little about the coronavirus. For example, in the Ekonomichna Pravda, only 9% of articles concerned the coronavirus. However, 13% of articles about the coronavirus were about quarantine restrictions. A lot of attention was paid to this topic by Radio Svoboda, which wrote about the covid in 30% of the news. The share of news about the quarantine restrictions here was 6% of all Covid-19 publications. In the Mirror Weekly for the 5 months considered, 30% of the articles concerned Covid, but the share of Quarantine for all of those is 12%.

The contrary to the previous topic, Quarantine for everyone, describes the rules of social distance and personal hygiene during a pandemic. Apostrophe (49% of articles about Covid), Znaj (36%) and Politeka (37% of articles) wrote the most about individual adherence to quarantine.

The topics of the Medical system and Regional statistics were covered by the online media almost evenly, except for the news of the Russian-language media. The state of the Medical system was discussed in the news in an average of 13% of cases, and 14% of publications in media were written about the Regional statistics.

The overall picture did not include articles of the Russian-language media, as the algorithm combined their publications into a separate topic – Interesting about the coronavirus (RUS). This topic is one of the largest in the whole array, but it was formed by only a few Russian-language media: Strana (3183 news), LIGA (984 news), Ukrnews (1768 news), Livyi Bereh (1077 news), Censor.Net (2553 news), Focus (1707 news).

Conclusions

1. From the beginning of the pandemic to the end of June, every fourth news item concerned Covid-19: 112,513 news items from 473,527 publications.
2. Most about Covid-19 was written in March (37,310 news) and April (34,204 news). The least – in February (9,850).
3. Among the 27 top media, Gordon (35% of the news), Censor.Net (34%) and Hromadske (33%) wrote relatively more news about the Covid.
4. The most common topics were: International statistics (12,222 news), Quarantine for all (9,031 news), Regional statistics (8,852), the state of the Medical system (8,217 news), Quarantine for everyone (7,424 news).
5. The only topic covered evenly by all media is International statistics. It is the most popular for 14 of the 27 media. There are topics that were developed only by some media: Apostrophe, Politeka and Znay wrote the most actively about Quarantine for everyone, and UNN and Interfax wrote about regional coronavirus statistics.

How we’ve been counting

We’ve been collecting news from the websites of the most popular Ukrainian media. In determining the popularity of the media, we relied on the ratings of TNS GROUP, the Internet Association of Ukraine, USAID-Internews research and Detector Media monitoring. Based on the data of these studies, we have formed the list of the most popular online media. This analysis includes news feeds of 27 online media:

** Unfortunately, NV was not included in our sample due to the technical limitations, although this media ranks first in the ratings **

We collected news from the websites of the most popular Ukrainian media, among them we selected news about the coronavirus and checked which topics about the pandemic were most loudly covered in the media.

During the period from February to July, Ukrainian online media published more than 470 thousand text news. To determine what and how they wrote about the Covid, we cleaned the news articles of invalid text that could affect the final processing: removed links, tags, comments under the articles and links such as “read also” and so on. Then we selected only those publications in which Covid-19 was mentioned at least three times. There were 112,513 of such news.

On this array, we used the LatentDirichletAllocation (LDA) machine learning algorithm. With its help, we determined which topics were most frequently encountered in articles about the coronavirus in the Ukrainian online media during the five months of the pandemic. The LDA looks for hidden structures in large sets of texts. With its help we can “reduce the dimension” of the array and see the most significant messages in it.