Lost in sensation: comparing fear narratives in Taiwan’s Mandarin and English news

News media play a crucial role in communication during national security and health emergencies, shaping how the public perceives risks. However, few studies have specifically examined how differences in word choice across languages influence fear narratives in news coverage. This paper explores the significance of news reporters’ word choice, with particular attention to how, and to what extent, the use of fear-related words differs in Mandarin- and English-language news articles in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study analyzes 1795 emergency-related news articles published during the declared emergency period by four of Taiwan’s most widely read or trusted newspapers using a large-language model. By considering historical and contemporary factors that shape Taiwan’s news landscape, alongside framing theory and the results of a context-aware sentiment analysis, we argue that Mandarin-language news in Taiwan tends to use more alarmist rhetoric than its English-language counterpart and thus communicate a different narrative to Mandarin readers. Teaser text In times of crisis, news media are an important resource to connect people to relevant policies. of the tools journalists have at their disposal is framing: how they present the message they intend to convey. In crises, ‘fear’ is a dominant choice of frame; in other words, by framing an issue as something to be scared of, news media can shape public behavior. However, no population is a monolith; are news media consistent in their deployment of fear language across languages, even within the same geographic space? The present study uses the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan as a useful case to determine whether journalists use fear language equally across two major linguistic groups in the region: Mandarin and English. By conducting an LLM-assisted sentiment analysis, we found that Mandarin-language news consistently employs more fear language than English-language news, even when covering the same topic at the same time.