These findings support the body of data that already exists. Even during the most influential wave of the pandemic so far, the New York Times continued to frame the problem primarily as a political issue instead of as a medical, economic, or humanitarian issue. This could be a side effect of the framing they started the pandemic with, as multiple studies have shown that in the early months of the pandemic, the New York Times primarily framed the pandemic in a political light (Hubner, 2021; Zhang 2021). Dunwoody (2020) points out that readers of news media assume trustworthiness from established sources because it saves them time to do so. When viewed this way, it could be argued that the New York Times influenced its readership into trusting that the pandemic as a whole was a political issue, and by extension, certain mitigation strategies like vaccinations and masking were to be viewed along partisan lines. 

 

This hyper-politicization of the pandemic and its effects could also be a side effect of broader journalistic norms. In Dunwoody's 2014 article, she makes the case that science stories do not adapt well into episodic, day-by-day journalism. Daily coverage of pandemic happenings by the New York Times outweighed long-form, trend-focused journalism. The latter form of journalism can better encapsulate the message of scientific topics (Dunwoody, 2014). It just so happens that those daily happenings the New York Times was reporting on were more often than not centered around political actions.

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Future studies may choose to focus on how the framing of the pandemic as a whole has morphed throughout two years, including a period when leadership of major legislative and executive branches flipped along party lines. Researchers may also choose to focus on how mainstream media sources chose to frame (or exclude entirely) fringe theories and conspiracies about the pandemic that cropped up in alternative media sources and gained a significant following among the U.S. population.