| COVID-19 has been a mega-destruction that changed human being’s life. In particular, digital communication has been a profound area shaping the lives of many people. As a result, the massive impact of technology disruption has changed the landscape of discourse, creating a new-born discourse, called digital discourse (Franch & Blitvich 2019, p.10). Previous studies had implemented Van Dijk’s model (microstructure, superstructure and macrostructure) but not discuss further about the ideological discourse itself as properties to see ideological variations of underlying context models, event models and social attitudes. The present study provides an analysis of a development of ideological discourse structures of COVID-19 throughout five years (2020-20204) , as observed in the development of representation and the strategies used by the writers in scientific popular news forum, The Conversation, particularly in health domain, in fifteen texts. The two criteria in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by Van Dijk (2006) was adopted to collect the data: (1) COVID-19 theme in health domain, (2) COVID-19 theme with society involvement, Van Dijk’s model (2000) and Four Ideological Square by Van Dijk’s 2009. The findings indicate that there are sixteen ideological discourse structures that was found in fifteen texts of COVID-19 from The Conversation during 2020-2024. The development of ideological discourse structures of COVID- 19 shows that the ideological discourse structures of COVID-19 is not static throughout five years. Five ideologies discourse structures (lexicalization, consensus, implication, irony, vagueness) were consistently used in all texts during 2020-2024, with the representation of COVID-19, which are: (1) outbreak, (2) pandemic, (3) evolution, (4) airborne, (5) a public health emergency of international concern. The ideologies in fifteen texts, representing the COVID-19 discourse strategies are: (1) negative labelling, (2) evidentiality, (3) hyperbolism, (4) victimisation, (5) depersonalisation. This study is expected to bring insight to all scholars, researchers, applied linguists, educators, teachers, learners, journalists to be more critical see texts, essays, news and others in digital discourse particularly in the representation of COVID-19 in the digital discourse and implementing strategies to write essays, journals and others. |