Critical Discourse Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Participants Representation in Iranian Mass Media

What a person did not consider possible in his imagination was to hear the claim that the emergence of a new virus can change his life and lived experience to such an extent that it can rightly be said that the pre-corona world is a world different from the corona-affected world. The world after Corona. The spread of the disease known as Corona or Covid-19 in the last months of 2018 and the media coverage of its cases in Iran and the world, 2018 represents one of the ancient nightmares of mankind, which reminds of apocalyptic scenarios in the world of cinema or It is the source of writings that, in the form of terrifying stories, present mankind in a dust of illusion and ambiguity of an unimaginable and unforeseeable future. A special situation in which all classes and groups in every land, without exception, threatens everyone and creates an atmosphere full of fear. One of the ways to get a correct understanding of the current trend in society and delving into the effects of this phenomenon, regardless of whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, is through the channel of dominant discourse in digital news media and social networks. Among these manifestations, it is possible to look for the emergence of effects emanating from it in human language and speech (1).In the meantime, the metaphorical use of language with the help of metaphorical expression, which can be rejected in all forms of expression, introduces the origin of the disease and how to deal with it, and portrays the current situation as a classic war, which neglect It can cause irreparable damage to the individual and subsequently to the health status of the society. With this explanation, the present article tries to recognize and explain these cases in the form of an eloquent research, so that the hidden layers of the discourse are used in an obvious and obvious way, these linguistic strategies and their practicality and the effect they try to have on society. It should make the audience aware of the reader (2).According to the above, the importance of the present research can be found in the objectives of critical discourse analysis, namely, the purpose of this type of analysis is to show the relationship between the author, the text and the reader, to showtheinstability of meaning, to reveal the relationship between the text and ideology. Showing the mutual influence of text and context on each other, clarifying the deep and complex structure of text production, that is, the flow of discourse production, which is examined in the form of a corpus. In this research, the collected corpus consists of reports of government institutions and inclusive hashtags that are often sent by the general public in social networks. Based on this, the researcher has found the difference between the expression and the words used, as well as the commonalities in the data, and provides the ground for such discourse analysis explorations.

In order to conduct the present qualitative research, which was conducted using the content analysis method, from among the articles in the period of March 2019, at the same time as the spread of the Corona virus epidemic until the third outbreak of Corona in February 2019, news and official reports of the National Corona Headquarters were examined, and finally, the report news were collected.. To extract the concepts, the following three steps were followed:The first step was done according to the conceptual analysis method of Brown and Clark (2005), which consists of six steps (familiarity with the data, preparation of primary codes, search for concepts, review of concepts, description and naming of concepts, and preparation of the final report). The second step was open coding, where the first stages of coding and recognition of the examined words were examined in the corpus and the similarity of words with each other and each was categorized in separate codes. The third step was to use the tools of critical discourse analysis such as key words, which finally, through this qualitative study, compared and analyzed and categorized the concepts of lexical coexistence in order to determine their alignment or divergence.

In order to integrate the news, Mehr News Agency website was used. All the reports were searched online, and after reading the news text and its definite connection with the research topic, they were copied and collected in the word file, in the order of publication date. The texts all have a specific format including date, time, title, news lead, news text and finally have a news code as a reference. First, the words that have the most associations with the disease of Covid-19 or the corona virus were extracted. Then the frequency of each was included in the body of news reports. The results of the examination of vocabulary and concepts used in the examined editorials in relation to the Corona epidemic are listed separately in the table below.

Looking at the titles extracted from the articles related to the Covid-19 disease during the epidemic of this disease, it can be clearly seen that the participants, including "treatment staff", "causing agent" and "patients" respectively have formed an impression in the mind of the audience that the treatment staff are "soldiers who defend the people against the pathogen as an invader on the battlefield" and at the level of society, hospitals are like a "battlefield" between He is the causative agent and the dead of the medical staff are known as "martyrs". And the pathogenic agent is like a "dangerous and powerful enemy that is constantly attacking", but for the victims and ordinary people involved in this war, as well as for the dead and recovered, the name and phrase of "patient" is enough. While the main participants in the war are the attacker and the aggressor, or the side of the attack (i.e. the pathogen) and the other side are the defenders of health (i.e. the medical staff) who, with reference to "normality" in Fairclough's views, the normalization of the existing conditions from It is inferred from the side of power institutions. And in the meantime, the patient is ignored as one of the main participants and the health system of the country is represented as soldiers who stand up and fight against the pathogen in an unequal war on the battlefield. and naturally, the patient as an active element with a metaphorical title, is not observed and seems to be an objectification that their encounter with the disease is like an object. In short, the media has tried to insinuate that the outbreak of this dreaded disease is like a battlefield that requires a military institution to intervene and bring health to the society.