Cross-Border News Framing of Social Issues in India and Pakistan’s English Dailies

Abstract

This study analyzed cross border news coverage by India and Pakistan’s English dailies (The Times of India, The Hindu, Dawn and The Nation) from 1^st June 2014 to 31^st May 2018 by focusing on Social indicators such as religion, culture and social structure which are further sub-divided into issues. The research design of the study implied quantitative and qualitative approaches. The author analyzed the content of 4480 news headlines and sub-headlines from front, back and international pages with their directional analysis and tested by two sample proportion tests as per the significance and association of variables. It was found that more coverage was given to the religious news than other social indicators. Cultural indicator was given most positive and religious news most negative coverage among the indicators while Hindu-Muslim issues was given most negative coverage among news issues. It was observed that 62.20% news stories were framed negatively, 19.74% positively and 18.06% neutrally. Indian newspapers covered Pakistani social issues more negatively than Pakistani newspapers. Times of India and Dawn framed cross borders social issues less negatively than The Hindu and Nation respectively. The content of the news is observed to be direct announcements, attacking proclamations, biased and partial pronouncements, patriotic statements and denoted war rather than peace journalism. This study recommends professional and peace journalism to promote neutral opinion about culture and especially religious thoughts among people from both sides.