Prejudice, discrimination, and immunology paradigm: A critical discourse analysis of the New York Times' reports on the respective responses to COVID-19 by China and Italy

During the COVID-19 outbreak, mainstream U.S. news agencies reported on different countries' responses to COVID-19. However, these articles often politicalize and racialize the healthcare issue. In this study, I ask how The New York Times (NYT) presents China's coronavirus responses and why through a comparative analysis. Specifically, I conduct a frame analysis and critical discourse analysis on 122 NYT news and opinion articles on China's and Italy's respective coronavirus responses between January and March 2020. My main finding is that the NYT depicts China negatively and presents Italy positively through simplified generalizations. I further explain that the othering process of China in the NYT reports demonstrates an immunology discrimination process in which news serves as a social immune system in the U.S. context.