The Italian newspapers' narrative on distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had enormous consequences on the worldwide social, economic and cultural system. In order to contain the spread of the virus, many countries have implemented restrictive measures to limit physical contact, including the temporary closure of educational institutions of all grades and the introduction of distance learning. However, although distance learning has ensured educational continuity, on the other hand, it has highlighted our unpreparedness as a society to use digital tools adequately. In this vein, media play a fundamental role in shaping public opinion about events of interest and can contribute to the development of a better informed public debate. Therefore, studying newspapers' narratives about distance learning can help understand how newspapers reported it and their influence on the readers' perceptions. To this end, we carried out text mining methods and lexical correspondence analysis on four of the most relevant Italian journals included in the LexisNexis news database.