The effect of gain versus loss framing of Covid-19 online news on preventive behavior

World Health Organization announced the coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11th 2020. The outbreak caused a massive destruction globally affecting more than 200 countries. During pandemic, information regarding the control of spreading, infectious cases, prevention, preparedness and risks are the important elements of public health. Media plays an important role here in delivering all this kind of information during the crisis. This is because media is the mediator of health communication between both the public and the government. Media framing influence public’s preventive behaviour differently in terms of positive and negative framing. Their framing is capable enough to influence one’s health behaviour and response to the disease differently. The purpose of this review paper is to examine how gain and loss framing influence COVID-19 preventive behaviours differently. This study chooses two main theories which are Valence Framing theory and Health Belief Model (HBM). This study draws the relationship between gain and loss as news framing effects, with perceived threat, perceived evaluation and self-efficacy as components of HBM. The combination of these two theories would be great tool for future studies to research on preventive behaviors. Besides that, this study will help the media to understand which frame (positive or negative) can educate the society and raise public health behaviours. This may also help the government to plan strategies for better health outcome practices from the public.

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