The study found that the People's Daily WeChat and Sina Weibo accounts primarily used the human interest frame and action frame in their news coverage of the Novel Coronavirus outbreak involving medical personnel. The responsibility frame, morality frame, and conflict frame were less commonly applied. The human interest frame mainly covered the family relationships and emotions of medical personnel, such as the Sina Weibo post on February 3, "White nurse and firefighter's wedding," and another on April 19, "Forward your blessings! A nurse and her police boyfriend got married." The WeChat article on February 25 entitled "When mom stayed on the front line of the fight against the pandemic, the 6-year-old brother was so strong that he was able to console his brother missing his mother," also falls under this frame. In addition, the human interest frame also reflected the hard work and dedication of medical staff through depictions of their body parts, such as the WeChat article post on February 1 entitled "Heartache! This is the hand of a 22-year-old nurse," and another on March 8 entitled "Beauty can't hide! Comparison pictures of female nurses before and after anti-pandemic fight." The Sina Weibo post "Traces of a mask on the face of Li Lanjuan" on February 20 also falls under this frame. Li Lanjuan is a female academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, an expert in infectious diseases, and a member of the high-level expert group of the National Health Commission whose words and deeds gained widespread media attention during the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus.
The action frame primarily focused on pandemic diagnosis, protection knowledge popularization, patient treatment, and other practical actions to combat the pandemic, such as the June 29 Sina Weibo post "Wu Zunyou said between 10 and 20 million infected persons will be diagnosed worldwide in a much shorter period of time," the June 20 Sina Weibo post "Experts: Beijing pandemic prevention cannot copy the traditional Chinese medicine prescription used in Wuhan," and the February 3 Sina Weibo post "Zhong Nanshan's team laboratory isolated live virus in patient's feces," and the March 2 WeChat article entitled "The lung is not existent anymore, the first case of Novel Coronavirus autopsy report released", etc. Wu Zunyou and Zhong Nanshan were both male medical experts who received widespread media and public attention during the COVID-19 outbreak. Wu Zunyou is the chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who often participated in official press conferences during the Novel Coronavirus outbreak. Zhong Nanshan is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the head of the Senior Expert Group of the National Health Planning Commission, and he made important contributions to the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the Novel Coronavirus outbreak in 2019.
On April 8, 2020, after 76 days of closure, Wuhan lifted its control measures on outbound traffic and resumed external traffic in an orderly manner. Taking April 8 as the boundary, reports on medical staff fighting the pandemic in People's Daily's WeChat and Sina Weibo were divided into two stages. The first stage was from January 1, 2020, to April 8, 2020, and the second stage was from April 9, 2020, to December 31, 2020. It was found that there were significant differences in the choice and use of frames between the two stages of news reporting (see Tables 2 and 3). Compared to the previous period, the proportion of reports mainly involving male medical personnel with action frames in the latter period decreased significantly (WeChat: from 64.7% to 44.2%; Weibo: from 74.4% to 70.5%; Weibo and WeChat total: from 71.1% to 62.1%), while the proportion of reports mainly involving female medical personnel with action frames increased significantly (WeChat: from 16.1% to 22.2%; Weibo: from 18.9% to 41.2%; Weibo and WeChat total: from 17.6% to 31.4%). The proportion of reports mainly involving female medical personnel with human interest frames also decreased significantly (WeChat: from 80.6% to 77.7%; Weibo: from 67.5% to 41.2%; WeChat and Weibo total: from 73.5% to 60.0%). The human interest frames of reports mainly involving male medical personnel did not change significantly (WeChat: from 35.2% to 48.0%; Weibo: from 16.3% to 12.5%; WeChat and Weibo total: from 22.8% to 23.7%). Therefore, the news frames used by People's Daily when reporting on medical staff against the pandemic are not invariable, but changes with the reporting stage and the pandemic prevention and control situation.
The selection and application of media frames exerted a "framing effect" on society and audiences. Experimental studies have shown that frames draw attention to particular aspects of the reality described, which logically means that they simultaneously direct attention away from other aspects (Entman,). As shown in Table 4, the chi2 test found a significant difference in media frames by gender (). Moreover, the proportion of human interest frames used in reporting on female medical personnel (59.2% and 79.6%) was much higher than that used in reporting on male medical personnel (14.2% and 41.7%), while the proportion of action frames used in reporting on female medical personnel (25.9% and 18.3%) was much lower than that used in reporting on male medical personnel (72.3% and 54.3%) in People's Daily's Sina Weibo posts and WeChat articles. The human interest frame was mainly related to two aspects: the role of women in the private sphere such as family and marriage, and the portrayal of women's body parts.
There is a significant amount of content in WeChat articles and Weibo posts that highlight the roles of female medical personnel as wives, lovers, and mothers. For example, on February 3, there was a Weibo post "The wedding in a long distance for a nurse in white clothes and a fireman", and on April 29, there was a WeChat article entitled "The nurse in Hubei who once called out her daughter to do her homework was seriously suffering from cancer. Netizens wish her to be better!". In contrast, there are very few reports highlighting the role of male medical personnel in family and marriage. In all the reports analyzed, "husband," "father," "son," and other identities representing family relationships rarely appear. Whereas cropped hair, indentations on the face, and burned hands may seem to praise women's dedication, they actually imply a deeper connotation of morally judging the body as an esthetic subject. This influences the reader's interpretation of the message, with selfless devotion replacing professional skills as the major criterion for measuring female medical personnel fighting the pandemic, and selfless moral models replacing skilled professionals as their primary image. The Feb. 12 Sina Weibo post "Super valiant! Female medical personnel shaved off the hairs at the back of their heads," to which netizen @fanziyang commented: "For the sake of convenience in work, they have become our female knight-errant instead!" The term "knight-errant" is more of an ethical evaluation of female medical personnel. Furthermore, the reinforcement of the human interest frame and the weakening of the action frame have obscured the professional competencies of female health workers and downplayed their actual and professional actions in the fight against the pandemic. These media frames are influenced by established gender perceptions and further reinforce these stereotypes of both genders.
The study found that Chinese official media displayed gender bias in reporting on female medical personnel. By using different media frames, the news media presents the image of female medical personnel differently from that of men, and the inherent gender cognition of society permeates into the news reports of the media. Given this background, is it possible for women to transcend the gender bias of the media? Beauvoir (: p. 813) pointed out, "It is through work that woman has been able, to a large extent, to close the gap separating her from the male." However, this study shows that the majority of female medical personnel did not really bridge the gap with their male counterparts. In the media reports, they still appeared in a different image from men. Nonetheless, this study also found that the gender media frame did not target all female medical personnel, and the media adopted media frames similar to that of male medical personnel when reporting on some female medical personnel and presented a similar image to their male counterparts.
Taking Li Lanjuan as an example. Li Lanjuan's name appeared in the title of 4 Wechat articles, among which 3 articles used action frame (75%) and 1 article used human interest frame (25%). When reporting on Li Lanjuan, the WeChat official account of People's Daily used the action frame more frequently than the average male medical staff (54.3%), and used the human interest frame less frequently than the average male medical personnel (41.7%). Li Lanjuan appeared 8 times in Weibo posts mainly involving female medical personnel, among which 5 posts used the action frame (62.5%) and 3 posts used the human interest frame (37.5%). Although the frequency of action frame involving Li Lanjuan was lower than the average of male medical personnel (72.3%), it was much higher than the average of female medical personnel (25.9%). The probability of using the human interest frame when reporting on Li Lanjuan by Weibo was higher than the average of male medical personnel (14.2%), but much lower than the average of female medical personnel (59.2%).
Let's compare Li Lanjuan's reporting frame with Zhong Nanshan's. Zhong's name appeared in the title of 27 WeChat articles, of which 20 used the action frame (74%) and 5 used the human interest frame (18.5 %). In other words, the probability of using the action frame when reporting Li Lanjuan by People's Daily WeChat was equal to that of Zhong Nanshan's, while the probability of using the human interest frame was slightly higher than Zhong Nanshan's.
The above content mainly emphasizes the actual actions that Li Lanjuan took to fight the pandemic, such as the Sina Weibo posts "Li Lanjuan claims that it is not correct that the Corona Virus exists for 20 years in minus 20  C," "Li Lanjuan leaving Wuhan while warning of two great dangers," and the WeChat articles entitled "When can Wuhan be unsealed? Academician Li Lanjuan said like this," "Li Lanjuan: after 'zero increase' in Wuhan's pandemic, two issues still need to be highly emphasized." Chen Wei is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and has made contributions to the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines in China. When people's Daily reported on Chen Wei on WeChat and Sina Weibo, they all paid attention to the progress and achievements of her vaccine experiments.
In our view, the action frame is more conducive to demonstrating the professional identity of medical personnel and their contribution to the fight against the pandemic, while the human interest frame highlights the personal side of medical personnel. In media reports, Li Lanjuan and Chen Wei are fighting the pandemic with their sublime expertize, researching and developing COVID-19 vaccines and expressing their opinions, predictions, and warnings on the pandemic. They demonstrate their image as female scientists with conspicuous professionalism and great contributions to the fight against the pandemic, which is in line with their male counterparts like Wu Zunyou and Zhong Nanshan. Therefore, the gender media frame is not inevitable in news reports, and it is possible for women to be liberated from the gender media frame.