Politicization and Polarization Concerning Science in Global South: Evidence from News Coverage of COVID-19 in India

Abstract

Scientific issues, as documented extensively for the Global North, are increasingly being subjected to various levels of politicization and polarization, often through popular media, in order to influence public opinion that is a key to democratic policy-making. In this article, we have chosen India, a functioning democracy in the Global South and the largest democracy in the world with a very diverse political landscape, to find out the extent of politicization and polarization in news media reports on COVID-19 and related issues. We have considered more than 200000 news articles from 6 Indian newspapers from 2020 to 2022 to measure the politicization and polarization of the issues based on computer-assisted content analysis methods. We have observed a significant and fluctuating trend of politicization of news coverage and polarization among two major political blocs of India over the 2-year time period of the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating the presence of differentiated politicization and punctuated polarization regarding the pandemic. We have also observed that, during this period, increasing levels of politicization were not necessarily accompanied by elevated levels of polarization in India. However, in the long run, the major political parties in India demonstrate a consistent level of polarization.