Framing Victims: A Comparative Framing Analysis of Yemen and Syrian Conflict Victims in Pakistani Media

Abstract

The current research scrutinizes how political proximity plays a vital role in the portrayal of conflict victims, happening in Yemen and Syria. Through the content analysis research demonstrate the victims of the Yemen conflict are more tinted than the victims of the Syrian conflict. In both the conflict, all the actors are having equivalent religious bonds with the reporting media of Pakistan. This study demonstrates the political proximity between the media of reporting country and actors of the conflict, direct strong effect on the framing of the conflict victims. The result demonstrates that Saudis is having a strong political relationship with Pakistan therefore in the Yemen conflict Yemen government (backed by Saudi Arabia) is demonstrated as more positive and Houthis rebels as negative. On the other side, Syria does not have a strong relationship with Pakistan so the Syrian war is demonstrated as the confusing war between different groups where no one is positively portrayed. The result demonstrates closer the political proximity between reporting country and conflict actor, the greater the chance that the actor will have highly empathized and opposite side framing will be highly brutalized.