Analysis of COVID-19 Name Varieties in Chinese Mass and Social Media
1
School of Liberal Arts, Xi’an University, Xi’an 710065, China
2
Department of Liberal Arts, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510303, China
3
Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
4
School of Liberal Arts, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710062, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Beatrice Casini and Paul B. Tchounwou
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(18), 9850; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189850
Received: 1 July 2021
/
Revised: 25 August 2021
/
Accepted: 14 September 2021
/
Published: 18 September 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Health Humanities: Social Determinants of Access to Healthcare in Migrant and Minority Populations)
The sudden appearance of a new epidemic disease in China created the need for names identifying that disease. Between December 2019 and January 2020, a variety of severe pneumonia-related disease names suddenly appeared, and more name varieties kept coming up afterwards. To better understand the introduction and spread of these names, 16 different COVID-19-related name varieties were selected covering the period from the end of December 2019, when the epidemic started, to mid-March 2020, a moment at which the term competition had stabilized. By way of big data analysis, the initiation and distribution of the 16 names across the media landscape was traced with regard to the impact of different media platforms, while the distribution frequency of each of the selected terms was mapped, resulting in a distinction of three groups of disease names, each with a different media and time profile. The results were discussed based on the hypotheses of disease confusion by name variety and management failures in absence of clear language governance at the national and global levels. The analysis of the data led to a refutation of both hypotheses. Based on this discussion, the study offers empirically based suggestions for the WHO in their naming practices and further research.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
COVID-19; severe viral pneumonia; new coronavirus epidemic; disease name varieties; distribution across media; usage timelines; daily frequencies; word forms
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Dong, H.; Zhou, M.; Che, D.; Zhang, H.; Bodomo, A. Analysis of COVID-19 Name Varieties in Chinese Mass and Social Media. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 9850. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189850
AMA Style
Dong H, Zhou M, Che D, Zhang H, Bodomo A. Analysis of COVID-19 Name Varieties in Chinese Mass and Social Media. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(18):9850. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189850
Chicago/Turabian StyleDong, Hongjie, Minli Zhou, Dewei Che, Huiying Zhang, and Adams Bodomo. 2021. "Analysis of COVID-19 Name Varieties in Chinese Mass and Social Media" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 18: 9850. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189850
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
