Reflection of the COVID-19 pandemic in mass media

The paper analyzes the “reflection” of the COVID-19 theme in the mass media of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. Used a corpus of mass media of about 1 million publications and WHO data. Using topic modeling and analysis of correlation dependences, both the similarity and some difference in the publication activity of mass media were established. In particular, in both countries, media activity correlates with the absolute indicators of the number of new infected and the number of deaths. Correlation coefficient is 0.6-0.8. However, mass media take into account the number of positive rate, reproduction rate weaker. Correlation coefficient is 0.4-0.6. In the Russian media, there is a high correlation (0.75) with changes in measures to limit the spread of infection taken by the state, while in Kazakhstan this correlation is much lower (0.4).