IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v10y2021i9p320-d620379.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins

Author

Listed:
  • David Rozado

    (Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most disruptive and painful phenomena of the last few decades. As of July 2021, the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the outbreak remain a mystery. This work analyzes the prevalence in news media articles of two popular hypotheses about SARS-CoV-2 virus origins: the natural emergence and the lab-leak hypotheses. Our results show that for most of 2020, the natural emergence hypothesis was favored in news media content while the lab-leak hypothesis was largely absent. However, something changed around May 2021 that caused the prevalence of the lab-leak hypothesis to substantially increase in news media discourse. This shift has not been uniformed across media organizations but instead has manifested itself more acutely in some outlets than others. Our structural break analysis of daily news media usage of terms related to the laboratory escape hypothesis provides hints about potential sources for this sudden shift in the prevalence of the lab-leak hypothesis in prestigious news media.

Suggested Citation

  • David Rozado, 2021. "Prevalence in News Media of Two Competing Hypotheses about COVID-19 Origins," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-13, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:9:p:320-:d:620379
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/9/320/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/9/320/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:9:p:320-:d:620379. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.