Snowballed Covid-19 Spread and Waned News Coverage in Indian Newspapers

Abstract

The study focuses on the increased spread of COVID-19 virus in India and the space and time allocated by the English national newspapers in the wake of the pandemic. Media plays an indispensable role in society to influence health literacy, and the world media meticulously made COVID-19 the top priority, and the Indian newspapers were no different. The initial months of the virus outbreak, the percentage of coverage of news articles were more than other any other news categories and the same coverage was expected for the later months as well when the number of cases snowballed drastically. But, as the ‗newness‘ about the virus gradually became feeble, the news coverage about COVID-19 also stared to lose its vigor. To document and prove this concept, COVID-19 coverage in English national dailies, hardcopies of The Hindu and Times of India, were methodically reviewed from March to August 2020.