A quantitative and qualitative content analysis methodology was employed as ' a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context ' ( Krippendorff , 2018 : 403 ) and to make inferences about media representation ( Deacon , 2021 ) . A coding schedule was based on the previous work of , to allow for some comparison of media coverage between broadsheet mainstream newspapers and the Daily Sun tabloid 's online stories . One thousand fifty stories were found between March 2020 and August 2021 and these were coded manually . This timeframe was selected as it starts with the outbreak of the pandemic in South Africa and the first lockdown in March 2020 and concludes as the ' third wave ' of the pandemic wound down in the third quarter of 2021 . Although the sample excludes the ' fourth wave ' which resulted from the highly infectious ' Omicron ' variant detected towards the end of 2021 , this sample spans three ' waves ' of the pandemic in South Africa as well as various stages of lockdown declared in response to it . The quantitative content analysis was complemented by a qualitative content analysis and close reading of a smaller sample of 130 stories across this timeframe , selected via purposive sampling .