Framing the Coronavirus Epidemic Through Intertextual Practices: A Comparative Study of Japanese and South Korean Press Reports

This study deconstructs the way in which journalists in two lesser-studied contexts framed a major health crisis through the lens of intertextuality. Based on a corpus of English-language newspaper reports from Japan and South Korea from 2020 to 2022, the study explicates the way in which the risks, urgency, and gravity of the COVID-19 crisis are talked into being, amplified, or downplayed through the complex interaction of the quoted and reporter voices. The findings reveal that in both settings, quotations are strategically interwoven to serve four rhetorical functions: reporting facts, distancing, deauthorizing, and providing a personal touch. Despite similar journalistic standards, variation is observed in terms of the types of sources deferred to and the functions the voices opted for. Such differences are attributed to the changing nature of the socio-political factors in the two countries.