Spectrum analysis of the political print media about the performance of the government during the outbreak of Coronavirus in Iran

This research work is an attempt to investigate the approach of newspapers affiliated with three political factions of Reformist, Principlist and Moderate toward the performance of the government in response to outbreak of Coronavirus by using a hypothetical discourse model to find out more about the classification of the Iranian Political Press and the position of the concerned newspapers within that model. The other goal of this research is to discover the relationship between the way the Iranian Political Press evaluate the performance of the government and their political factions during the said period. This paper also aims to compare the newspapers of various factions (including Reformist, Principlist and Moderate) from the point of their criticism or support of the government’s measures and policies in containing the spread of the Coronavirus. Researchers, by using the technique of quality content analysis, have reviewed the 244 editorials of 6 prominent newspapers of Keyhan, Resalat (Principlist), Shargh and Mardomsalari (Reformist) and Iran and Etelaat (Moderate) in a time span of 3 months (March-May 2020), by classifying them into 8 groups. While setting a discourse model and the position of these newspapers, the research showed that the reformist and Principlist newspapers in comparison to moderate newspapers have been more critical of the government’s policies in dealing with Corona. The reformist newspapers in comparison with Principlist newspapers have been more harsh in their criticism and in one end of the spectrum, we see the Mardomsalari newspaper and at the other end it  Keyhan have published more critical editorial than others and there this research work has classified the investigated newspapers from right to left in the spectrum scale as follows: Keyhan, Resalat, Etelaat, Iran, Shargh and Mardomsalari.