Framing pandemic news. Empirical research on Covid-19 representation in the Italian TV news

In empirical studies relating to COVID-19 and social media during the first outbreak of 2020, themes concerning the role of online platforms focused on: identifying infodemics, surveying public attitudes, assessing mental health, detecting or predicting COVID-19 cases, analysing government responses to the pandemic, and evaluating the quality of health information in prevention education videos7). The Italian case was an excellent case study to analyze the role of the news making during the pandemic, because it represents an example of a "polarized pluralist" model of journalism, characterized by high levels of politicization and where this "service role" of journalism is not commonly exercised. [...]the sample includes three Italian public TV news - TGI, TG2, and TG3 - and the main four private TV news: According to Goffman, framing also requires the so-called "keying" operations put in place by social actors involved in a given situation - in our case, an information situation.