Media representation of COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Australian hospitality businesses

ABSTRACT

Representation of a phenomenon in media can impact and shape particular public beliefs, and attitudes and can contribute to social change. As the social role of the hospitality industry has become more salient, this study aims to investigate the representation of COVID-19 and its impact on the Australian hospitality businesses in news articles. Those news articles focus on the hospitality industry in Australia published in the outlets, such as Hospitality Directory, The Hotel Conversation, ABC News, Gourmet Traveller, nine News, and Business News Australia. Using corpus linguistics analysis (CL), we revealed that COVID-19 has been mainly represented as a new and current outbreak that threatened community health and caused restrictions, responses and measures that had to be put in place.

KEYWORDS:

• Corpus linguistics analysis
• Australian hospitality news
• media representation
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Abdullah Yildiz

Abdullah Yildiz is a PhD lecturer at the School of Foreign Language Education, Istanbul Medeniyet University. His research interests include corpora, language teaching and applied linguistics.

Oktay Guzel

Oktay Güzel is a PhD student at Business School, University of Barcelona. His research interests include business management, marketing and consumer behavior.

Mehmet Yildiz

Mehmet Yildiz is a PhD student at the University of South Australia, Business School. His research has been published in top journals including International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. His research interests revolve around organizational behavior, leadership, employee well-being and bibliometric analysis in Management and Tourism & Hospitality disciplines.

Semih Ceyhan

Semih Ceyhan works as an Asst. Prof. at Management Department of Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University Business School. His interest areas include Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Islamic Management.

Nicola Pless

Nicola M. Pless is Chaired Professor of Management at the University of South Australia. Her research has appeared in leading academic journals, including HRM, JBE, JMS, ORM, and received numerous awards. She was awarded the Honorary Jef Van Gerwen Chair from the University of Antwerp for pioneering work in the field of responsible leadership. For teaching excellence and innovation, she was honored with the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award.

Ihsan Aytekin

Ihsan Aytekin is an assistant professor at Social Sciences University of Ankara, Faculty of Political Sciences. His research examines human resource management and organizational behavior.