Tourism in times of pandemic: review of previous studies

As regards health care crisis, the large information volume is due to the global scale of the pandemic. Recent works have analyzed how the cycle of crisis attention is influenced by its severity and the news presented in the media, which modify the perceptions of risk, and this directly affects the travelers’ decision making as well as attitudes toward the disease ^{(Villacé-Molinero et al., 2021)} .

It is worth pointing out that global tourism has been exposed to a wide range of crises in the recent past ^{(Gössling et al., 2020)} . Despite pandemics entail a grave problem for society and leisure industry, they also offer the chance of studying the coverage of several crises over the years. ^{Downs (1972)} speaks of a systematic attention cycle that modifies the attitudes and behaviors of audiences toward most issues; it comes from the way the communication media interact with their audiences. The main stages of the crisis attention cycle ^{(Downs, 1972; Hall, 2002)} , also applicable to the stages of the recent health care crisis ^{(Villacé-Molinero et al., 2021)} , are the following:

Also, as regards studies on tourism, authors such as ^{Barrientos-Báez et al. (2023)} analyzed the main publicity campaigns on tourism in a digital Spanish medium, noticing, by and large, that tourist campaigns are a reflection of the citizens’ motivations and underscore their patrimonial or environmental values. In like manner, another study analyzed the treatment of the pandemic in the European press and it was verified that it mainly focused on topics related to health care ^{(Vállez and Pérez-Montoro, 2020)} .

Addressing the agenda setting theory

Agenda setting is one of the most popular theories in communication sciences. According to ^{Ardèvol-Abreu et al. (2020)} , and in line with attention cycles, the underlying concept in this paradigm allows establishing an explanatory model on how communication media define the decision making of the audiences and the way spectators modify their opinion according to the events. ^{McCombs (2006: 107)} clarifies that the effects “are modeled to a considerable extent by the characteristics of the media messages, and to a lesser one, by the receivers’ characteristics. Therefore, the agenda setting enlists the topics with the most influence or space in the media. That is to say, there is research on the importance the communication media have in society and the way public agenda is fixed in the citizens’ discussion.

Over this line, previous studies indicate that the journalists’ everyday conceptions regarding the selection and exposure to news coverage influence the public’s perception on what the most significant topics are ^{(Protess and McCombs, 1991)} . This is due, indeed, to the role of the agenda setting and the organization capability of information in the long term. In a context of media conditioned by the impact of the pandemic, these dramatically increased information regarding Covid-19. Hence, the present research study sets off from a clear premise: analyze the information treatment of the media (in short, digital press) when setting the public agenda on tourism in a pandemic context.

Framing model: general overview

The background of the framing theory dates back to the concept of frame put forward by ^{Goffman (1974)} from a sociological dimension. Later on, and based on ^{Entman (1993)} , the concept of framing consolidates in studies on the information media and their relationship with the audiences. Therefore, a great deal of research works has resorted to the framing theory as a very useful tool to study the media ^{(Entman, 1993}; ^{De Vreese and Boomgaarden, 2003}; ^{Igartua, 2006}; ^{Matthes, 2009}; ^{Muñiz, 2020}; ^{Piñeiro-Naval and Mangana, 2018}, ²⁰¹⁹⁾. On the basis of the definition of the framing concept proposed by ^{Hallahan (1999)} , it is explained that it is a paradigm to examine the messages and possible responses of the audiences via the frames utilized by the transmitters of these messages.

By referring to the definitions of framing theory, ^{Entman (1993: 52)} defines the framing process as “selecting some aspects of the perceived reality and make them more salient in the communication text”. This author also stresses the fundamental functions of framing, which are defining problems, diagnosing causes, producing possible moral judgements, and finally, suggesting solutions to justify the treatment and foreseeing the outcomes of any given issue. In other order of ideas, the concept of news frame is underscored to refer to the way the producer (journalist) frames a topic and fixes a repertoire of attributes on this. Thus, it is possible to elucidate that:

A news frame refers to the angle, framing, perspective or treatment of an information item that is expressed in the election, emphasis or importance given to the various elements and, particularly, the way in which these elements covary more or less emphasized in a text. By means of covariation or correlation analysis between emphasis and importance given to each item in information texts, it is possible to extract the news frames as indices that allow grading or qualifying an individual message or a system of messages ^{(Igartua et al., 2005: 158)}.

In order to identify the frames in the papers, the way the frames in news programs are designed according to the object of study is examined. By and large, academicians have stated their support for the application previously defined and concise operationalization of the frames in content analyses. To do so, following ^{De Vreese (2005)} , after several studies on news framings, the typology of frames to perform a methodological approach on the news was examined. For instance, ^{Semetko and Valkenburg (2000)} have studied the general frames commonly utilized to study news programs and are a-priori variables that are of great importance in journalism studies; this is, conflict, responsibility attribution, economic, human-interest, and moral frames.

The notion of framing has gained notability in communication disciplines, oriented to research on media contents such as the studies on the relation between media and public opinion ^{(De Vreese, 2005}; ^{Muñiz, 2020}; ^{Piñeiro-Naval et al., 2022)} . In recent years, the framing theory has also been used in research on tourist information, as the media perform an important role in the public perception regarding the dissemination of tourism problems and frame them in specific manners ^{(Dirikx and Gelders, 2010}; ^{McComas and Shanahan, 1999)} . In this way, the study by Dirikx and Gelders (2010) emphasizes the way Dutch and French presses frame climate change via content analysis of the generic frames proposed by ^{Semetko and Valkenburg (2000)} , who verify that the conflict frame was resorted to less frequently in the UN Climate Change Conference.

Using this proposal, it is possible to identify some relevant studies on tourism and their implications in media coverage. Among them, noticeable is ^{Huang et al. (2016)} , who examine the tourists’ intentions as regards the way environmental action is framed. For their part, ^{Clark and Nyaupane (2020)} analyzed the way the communication media frame the phenomenon of overtourism (i.e., massification of tourists) via the content analysis of various articles in communication media, demonstrating that these tend to depict tourism negatively and to simplify the implications of its socioeconomic and environmental impacts. In like manner, ^{Wu et al. (2012)} approached the study of framings to describe, analyze, and explain the creation or tourist policies by means of digital news.

Likewise, ^{Luther and Zhou (2005)} identified the news framings in the coverage of SARS-CoV-2 by newspapers in China and the United States. Therefore, the aforementioned research works give an account of the applicability of the framing theory to studies on tourist information, enabling the understanding how the media perform a fundamental role in the public perception of the phenomenon of tourism.

General results

The information coverage on tourism during the pandemic is noticed in Graph 1.³ In August 2020, it had more exposure in the analyzed digital newspapers (7.1%, n = 37). This means there was an increase in news on tourism over summer vacation; it was followed by May 2020 (6.5%, n = 34), two months after the state of alarm was decreed. Therefore, it had a significant increase in a period of preparation for summer vacation. Conversely, in 2021 there is a higher number of mentions of items related to tourism in February (6.3%, n = 33). Later on, there is a slight increase over the vacation term in June (4.8%, n = 25), while by the end of October, the coverage previous to Christmas vacation increases (4.2%, n = 22). In the early months of 2022, mentions in the press considerably drop; though, there was a slight increase in publications related to tourism in March (3.6%, n = 19), exactly two years after the beginning of the pandemic.

On a different note, an analysis of the information attributes of the item within the journalistic converge was run; it was verified that the genre with the most presence was informative with 63.7% of the items on tourism and a lower presence, opinion (13.5%) and interpretative /hybrid (22.7%). As regards genre in function of the country of origin, there was a considerable number of Mexican items encompassed in the informative genre, accounting for 77.8% of the analysis units in the Mexican papers, while 56.6% of the Spanish items. In this regard, Table 1 shows the significant differences between the countries and journalist genre used in the news items [χ² (2, n = 524) = 22.816; p < 0,001].

As for the selection of the news items, economy/enterprise prevails (30,5%), it is followed by national (19.5%); politics (11.8%); tourism and travel (10.3%); cultural (8.4%); opinion (7.6%); society (6.7%); and finally, international (5.2%). Differences defined by country according to the item’s section are displayed in Table 2. It is noticed that both in Spain and Mexico the economic section prevailed, though with no significant differences between the countries paying attention to corrected typified results. By contrast, there are differences in national, more frequent in Spanish papers, and politics, more common in Mexican ones [χ² (7, n = 524) = 35,51; p < 0,001].

As regards the territorial scope of the items, national was the most common (31%); then, local (25,4%); international (22,9%); and finally, regional (20,6%). Therefore, revising the differences in the information treatment according to Table 3, in Spain, the local prevailed (28,7%) as compared with Mexico, which had a larger national scope (43,2%) [χ² (3, n = 524) = 18,824; p < 0,001]. As regards the editorial line of the newspapers: 48,5% of the items is classified as center political ideology (La Vanguardia and El Universal), followed by 30,7% of center-right items (El Mundo and Expansión), and 20,8% center-left (El País and Milenio).

Assessment tone of the items

In this section, a reference will be made to the affective components that determine the judgement on the emotional variation of the news items, that is to say, the positive or negative load presented by the analyzed items. In this way, it was noticed that 41,4% had a neutral assessment tone, v. 30,2% positive, and 28,4% negative, in which the consequences of the pandemic were referred to.

As for the assessment tone in function of the editorial line of the papers, table 4 shows that news items with center-left political ideology reported on tourism affairs in a positive light (27,2%) v. center-right news items, which narrated the events negatively (34,2%). For their part, center political ideology items focused on tourism issues in a neutral tone (54,4%). In this regard, the differences in the assessment according to the papers’ editorial line are merely tendential [χ² (4, n = 524) = 8,624; p = 0,071].

Analysis of the topic agenda

As regards the news topic agenda, it was verified that 44,5% (n = 233) resorts to economic and business topic agenda. Secondly, political, with 20% of the items (n = 105); then cultural, 16,6% (n = 87); health care, 8,4% (n = 44); and sustainable and environmental development, 6,9% (n = 36); and finally, crime and public security, 3,4% of the items (n = 18).

According to data in Table 5, it was verified that over the Covid-19 health care crisis there was a larger economic agenda with a negative assessment; that is, the news items with economic content referred to the repercussions and consequences of tourism, derived from the health care crisis. However, news dealing with culture usually reported with a positive assessment, focusing on promoting the identity elements of the culture. As for politics, the items presented information with no prevailing judgement value [χ² (12, n = 524) = 66.244; p < 0.001].

Well now, as a response to the tourist treatment of the digital papers in function of political leanings, the results made tendential differences in the treatment of the topic agenda and the ideological orientation of the item clear [χ² (12, n = 524) = 18.557; p = 0.09]. In this way, center-right newspapers frequently present tourism from an economic and business standpoint (51.6%), as compared with center-left (50.5%) and, to an even lower extent, center (37.4%). Table 6 presents the breakdown of each topic agenda according to the papers’ political leanings.

Analysis of tourist frame (generic frame)

As a response to H1, it was noticed there is a statistically significant negative correlation [rho (524) = -0,28; p < 0,001] between the assessment tone and the indicator of economic frame, which suggests that to the extent the economic approach increases so does the negative assessment tone of the item. In the same line, it was analyzed whether there are statistically significant correlations between assessment tone and the other indicators of tourist frames:

In order to compare tourist information according to the papers’ country of origin and information treatment on the basis of framings, the Students’ t test for independent samples was utilized and it was verified there were only significant differences between the function of social enrichment framing and country of the paper [t (522) = 2,682; p = 0,008]. This fact suggests that the information treatment given to the items in function of the cultural approach, as well as the way by means of which tourism may enrich the life of the autochthonous and tourists differs between Spanish and Mexican newspapers.

Evolution of frames

Upon reaching this point, an analysis of the variance of repeated measurements was carried out to verify the existence of differences regarding the presence of news framing indicators [λ_w = 0,707; F (5; 519) = 43,343; p = 0,001]. For their part, indicator means are displayed in Graph 2.

However, as this is a longitudinal study as well, it is important to note the way tourism communication has focused over the pandemic. Thereby, as regards H2, the presence of digital press framings was analyzed during the most critical moments of the pandemic (from March 2020 to March 2022). In Graph 3, what is firstly noticed is the accountability frame, focused on the way governments, health care personnel and institutions managed the situation. The highest accountability peak took place in May 2020 (M = 0,37), and the lowest in November 2021 (M = 0,04), tendentially increasing in the early months of 2022.

Conversely, the social enrichment approach, which indicates that tourism is capable of improving the people’s life quality, reaches a peak in May 2021 (M = 0,32), which is associated with the intermediate period of the crisis attention cycle (Realizing the cost of significant progress;), a moment in which the treatment of information focused on the development of communication strategies for the recovery of tourism.

In this same line, the conflict treatment approach had a higher increase at the beginning of the pandemic, pointing at tourism problems from the crisis. In this regard, its culmen is in April 2020 (M = 0,27), a month after the first cases of the disease were notified. Therefore, it is stated that conflict framing fits the stage of “Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm” of the crisis attention cycle ^{(Downs, 1972)} . Following, the economic framing is presented, it experiences considerable growth over the early months of every year: in April 2020 (M = 0,31); January 2021 (M = 0,25), and, January 2022 (M = 0,14). The information treatment of environmental or climate crisis framing, a topic not as recurrent in the media, a slight increase has been observed in September 2021 (M = 0,20); though, it considerably decreases in the following months of the same year. And finally, the human-interest framing does not reflect a significant treatment over the health care crisis.