Date of Award
Fall 2020
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
School of Journalism and Mass Communications
First Advisor
Linwan Wu
Abstract
As of late November 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic killed more than 250,000 people in America despite having early warning of the virus’ lethality and some of the world’s best public health institutions. In today’s media landscape, conservative commentators have an enormous influence on President Donald Trump as well as American political discourse broadly. This study focused how the top conservative commentators on YouTube influenced their audience by their coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. By examining over 1,600 YouTube comments from videos from February to July 2020, this paper investigates who conservative media consumers principally blamed, the socio-political influences behind those criticisms, and how commenters interacted in the comment section.
Rights
© 2020, Michael J. Layer
Recommended Citation
Layer, M. J.(2020). Conservative Media’s Coverage of Coronavirus on YouTube: A Qualitative Analysis of Media Effects on Consumers. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6133