KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study examined what format and content the national key news agency Yonhap News reconstructed and reported the vaccination news for the prevention of COVID-19, a global pandemic. We conducted an analysis on how Yonhap News reported on the vaccination issue, which is a major national health issue, and what to cover as the main agenda. For research issues, after extracting all articles about ‘vaccination’ reported by <Yonhap News> for 4 months from the start of vaccination on February 26, 2021 to June 30, two coders were used for articles on even days for quantitatively analysis. The analysis results are presented as follows. Articles on COVID-19 vaccination were mainly written as expository articles, with more neutral than critical ones. Although the method of presenting relevant information showed a context-oriented behavior, the proportion of number information-centered reports that simply presented numbers in a list was also high. Reports on vaccination were mainly in the US and Europe, but reports on negative situations such as infection status were concentrated in some parts of Asia. In addition, the reliance on press releases such as dictation was higher rather than reporting directly on the spot, which we find very severe problem to solve. However, vaccine politics was written based on field coverage, and vaccine economics and health epidemiology were highly dependent on press releases. As a result of a separate analysis of the health epidemiology agenda, which was the most frequently reported in Yonhap News, the additional vaccination policy and the vaccination trial and error agenda were reported with a negative tone, while the side effects of vaccination and the topic of vaccination were reported with a neutral tone. Agendas for social distancing and vaccination were reported based on contextual information, but agendas on the status of COVID-19 infected and vaccinations tended to be based on numerical information. The percentage of field coverage was high on the agenda to encourage vaccination, but the percentage of press release was high on the agenda of side effects of vaccination or the status of infected people. By region, the agenda for encouraging vaccination was mainly emphasized inthe United States, the agenda subject to vaccination in Europe, and the status of the infected person in Asia as the dominant reporting agenda. Based on these results, the public news agency Yonhap News discussed in terms of health journalism norms what format and content to reconstruct and report on the coronavirus vaccination agenda.

COVID-19, vaccination news agenda, Yonhap News, information presentation methods, health journalism