| Abstract |
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant media impact in Europe. Consequently, this study aims to understand the discursive construction that the European press has created regarding this health crisis by analysing the verbs used by journalists in conjunction with the term "coronavirus". Methodology: A study has been conducted on the semantic prosody of the term "coronavirus" in the media discourse of three European newspapers: El País (Spain), Le Figaro (France), and La Repubblica (Italy), during the week following the WHO’s declaration of the pandemic. Results and Discussions: A predominantly negative bias has been observed in the co-occurrences of verbs with "coronavirus", intensifying the semantic value of the term. This tendency has been noted more frequently when "coronavirus" acts as the subject of the action rather than as the object. Conclusions: The discursive construction of COVID-19 by European newspapers has been very similar, demonstrating that, regardless of the language used, the three publications have approached this media phenomenon from the same linguistic perspective. © 2024, HISIN (History of Information Systems). All rights reserved. |
