The researcher collected news articles about COVID-19 from three newspapers: Helsingin Sanomat (HS), Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Asahi Shimbun (AS). The data archived at FSD only contain lists of publication information for the articles published in DN and AS, not the articles themselves. The researcher requested the material from Helsingin Sanomat and received all news articles published between 13 March and 15 June 2020 that included the word 'korona' (corona). 13 March was selected as the starting point of the analysis period as on that date many media outlets reported that the epidemic phase was about to begin. 15 June was selected as the ending point as the state of emergency was lifted on the following day in Finland. From these articles, the researcher selected those that contained scientific information or expert opinions on the virus itself. The articles published in DN (295 articles) were collected following the same criteria between 1 March and 15 June 2020 by using the search function on the newspaper's website to search for the keyword 'corona'. The analysis period for DN begins earlier as the epidemic phase began earlier in Sweden than in Finland. The articles published in AS (638 articles) were collected with a similar keyword search between 24 February and 25 May 2020. Here, the analysis period begins a few days before schools were closed in Japan and ends when the last administrative prefectures lifted the state of emergency. Local and foreign news were excluded from the AS data.