This study examined the New York Times coverage of the Omicron variant in the U.S. The New York Times passed 10 million subscribers in February of 2022 (Bruell, 2022) and reached 164.2 million online readers globally in 2021 (New York Times). The domain began with articles from December 1, 2021 and ended with articles from February 28, 2022. In total, 202 articles were analyzed. The articles were coded for the following frames:

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Articles could have more than one frame. The articles were chosen from the New York Times search function with the search query “Omicron” published between December 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022. Articles that had no mention of the word “Omicron” in the title, subhead, or first five body paragraphs were then removed from the domain, with some exceptions. Those articles that were kept in but did not have the word “Omicron” in the first five paragraphs had the word at some point in the article and were broadly about the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on society. I kept these articles because I reasoned that the Omicron variant became the dominant variant in the U.S. during this surge, and articles that were about the COVID-19 pandemic at that time were about Omicron inherently.

 

In addition to the frame coding, this study also took note of the sources first quoted in the articles, categorizing them the following way:

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​