In health pandemic situations characterized by urgency, uncertainty and information scarcity, news media are highly reliant on information subsidies from public health agencies. This study, based on a content analysis, examines the relationships between the framing characteristics of news releases and subsequent publication to identify the predictors of news release selection for news coverage in the 2009 H1N1 A Influenza pandemic in Singapore. Through the news releases issued by the Singapore Ministry of Health and the resulting news stories in a Singapore newspaper, The Straits Times, this study found that six framing variables significantly predict a news release’s selection for news coverage: theme, episodic vs. thematic framing, emotion appeal, tone, gain vs. loss, and outbreak vs. nonoutbreak situation. News releases are more likely to be selected for news coverage when they focus on a preventive frame, rely on thematic framing, use emotion appeal, have a positive tone, are framed as gain, and are issued during an outbreak situation.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 44 citations exist upstream.