South African tabloid coverage of Covid19: .

Around the world, tabloid newspapers are routinely surrounded by a moral and cultural panic. They are criticised for lowering standards of journalism and privileging sensation above substance, diverting readers from serious news to entertainment, or foregoing ethical principles. However, scholarship about tabloids have also highlighted the ways in which these papers are frequently better attuned to their readers' everyday lived experience. In South Africa, tabloid newspapers have also received much criticism in the past for their perceived superficial treatment of important news. This article examines South African tabloid newspapers' coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, focussing specifically on a case study of the national newspaper the . The national newspaper boasts the country's largest circulation figures. Through a quantitative content analysis of 1050 online news stories in the , we found that unlike mainstream front-page news reporting which was largely episodic, negative and alarmist, the majority of coverage was thematic and neutral. Sun news coverage countered Covid-19 related misinformation and provided contextual coverage, with a large focus on the social impacts of Covid-19. The analysis concludes that despite the popular discourse of the reporting, reporting on Covid-19 provided readers with access to information and a focus on the micro aspects of the pandemic versus broader political issues and the views of political or scientific elites.