Pakistani News Research Articles

Rhetoric of Violence in Political Discourses: A Comparative Study of Pakistani Politicians’ Speeches

Language plays a significant role in determining what goes on in an individual's mind. Politicians use language insidiously and persuasively to impart their ideologies and to win the consent of the general masses. Moreover, they also use certain lexicons to otherize the others. Speeches are delivered by politicians for positive self-representation and negative others representation. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of political discourses. For this purpose, the speeches of three Pakistani politicians, namely Imran Khan, Maryam Nawaz and Bilawal Bhutto, have been analysed from Sept. 2021 to May 2023. It is analysed how they exercise political rhetoric using different linguistic spins. The theoretical framework, including Paul Chilton (2004) Discourse Space Theory, is employed for this study. The data is taken from the YouTube channel of Pakistani news channels, namely ARY and SAMMA TV. The findings reveal that politicians make use of various discursive spins and rhetorical strategies to others.

News Media Performance of Intelligence Oversight in Pakistan: A Discourse Analysis of Dawn, The News, The Nation And The Express Tribune

Aim of the Study: The aim of this study is to analyze the oversight role of Pakistani News Media in relation to Intelligence Agencies of the country, during the Abbottabad Raid of 2 May 2011, an intelligence failure, while assessing applicability of normative model of Claudia Hillebrand in our local context. In new democracies like Pakistan, this effective watchdog role is a must yet ironically has become extremely difficult. After the GWOT this informal oversight of civil society, media being part of is the only hope, which must deliver, especially when formal oversight by the parliament or legislature has not been effective or existent. Methodology: This study conducted analysis of news reports of The Dawn, The News, The Express Tribune, and The Nation, in light of OBL hunt by US Special Forces. Due to the nature of high context culture of the country/media, the qualitative method of discourse analysis of Teun .A Van Dijk was used to analyze the media text, press reports or stories. Findings: The study results presented a dismal position of media in the enshrined role of oversight or monitoring. The deficiencies identified are of capacity, resources/expertise, will, and precedence. Conclusion: Security lapses and Intelligence Failures have been inevitable even to world powers, but their continued neglect can easily lead to National or Collective Failure, which all countries must try to avoid at all costs.

A critical discourse analysis of narrative discrepancies in Pakistani news channel headlines

A critical discourse analysis of narrative discrepancies in Pakistani news channel headlines

Analyzing the Portrayal of Political Leadership in Leading Pakistani News Channels : A Critical Analysis

This study focuses on the framing theory as a lens to analyze the coverage and frames of political parties by two prominent news channels, Dunya News and Geo News. A comprehensive content analysis spanning over three months was conducted to assess the frequency, story types, frames, and tone of news coverage related to political leaders from 1st Sep 2023 to 20th Dec 2023 through purposive sampling. For this purpose, five themes, party manifesto, and plans, leader’s character, past performance of the party, voting worth, bias, and victimization were designed to explore the study’s objectives. The findings indicate a notable disparity in the salience given to political parties, with both news channels showing a higher emphasis on PMLN compared to PTI and PPP. Furthermore, the results reveal that Nawaz Sharif, received more favorable coverage from both news channels, followed by Imran Khan. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari receives comparable coverage to Imran Khan on Dunya News but notably less on Geo News. Additionally, the majority of the stance from these news channels leans in favor of PMLN leader Nawaz Sharif, while PTI leader Imran Khan tends to receive a more negative stance across both channels. A frames-wise analysis uncovers that Dunya News provides a more diverse range of perspectives when portraying political leaders, encompassing frames such as party manifesto, party previous performance, and voting worth, in contrast to Geo News, which maintains a more consistent distribution of emphasis across different frames. Findings also revealed that Nawaz Sharif’s frames prominently centered on the manifesto category. On the other hand, Imran Khan received coverage under the attributes of leaders’ character while party performance was a common attribute covered related to politicians.

Pulwama Attack: A Content Analysis of Media Framing in Indian and Pakistani News Papers' Websites

The coverage of media about the attacks by the terrorists plays a vital role in shaping the masses' understanding of the issue. The Pulwama attack is one of its kind, which opens the door for researchers to study various aspects. The incident was carried out on February 14, 2019. This attack is known as a major and big horrific violent attack in the context of Indo-Pakistan relations that provoked a record-high amount of tension between the two countries. The tension between the two countries escalated right after the attack and it jeopardized the whole aspect of peace and prosperity between the two countries. The media of both countries played a great role in setting their own perspectives among the masses.This study mainly focuses on analyzing the content about the attack, published in the print media. The study includes the analysis of framing the attack differently by both the countries’ respective print media. In order to examine the coverage of the attack, the researcher selected one of the topmost newspapers of both states. Daily Dawn from Pakistan and Times of India from India. The researcher studied the content of the stories published from February 14, 2019, to March 31, 2019, and then analyzed them through a qualitative content analysis strategy.This study seeks to evaluate the attack in order to find the answers to the basic research objectives. The main objective of the study is to examine the coverage of the Pulwama attack in Dawn and Times of India and how they both differ in framing the attack respectively. Another objective of this research is to identify the sources and references used by both newspapers in reporting the Pulwama attack. The findings of the study show that the Indian print media covered and present the clashes of both neighboring countries in a negative and provoking manner whereas Pakistani media neutralize the incident and focused on facts only. The frames chosen by Indian media promote sensationalism in the audience.

Understanding Media Functions Through Belief into Action Scale: A Case of Islamabad-based Pakistani News Reporters

The current research focused on exploring the inclination of Islamabad-based news reporters to get influenced by their religious beliefs while performing different media functions of civic, service, loyal-facilitator, disseminator-interventionist, watchdog, and infotainment as part of their professional roles. The study adopted the “Belief into Action Scale to deploy a quantitative cross-sectional survey and collected data from 310 news reporters serving in various print and electronic media organizations in the Federal Capital. The findings of the study revealed that the influence of religious beliefs varied between gender groups, with male news reporters being more influenced than their female counterparts. Similarly, older news reporters were more influenced by religious beliefs as compared to younger colleagues. Moreover, this influence also varied among the news reporters performing different media functions, with Loyal-Facilitators, Disseminator-Interventionists, and the ones who performed service and civic roles scoring higher on the variable of Religious Beliefs and Practices.

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Pakistani Journalism: Navigating Challenges and Future Paths in TV Newsrooms

This research investigates the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) integration in Pakistani journalism, exploring perceived benefits, challenges, ethical considerations, and the overall outlook on this transformative process. Drawing on interviews with industry professionals, the study contributes theoretical insights to the Diffusion of Innovations theory, unveiling varying degrees of AI integration awareness and perspectives within the Pakistani news industry. A human-centric ethical perspective is introduced, emphasizing concerns about job displacement and the evolving role of journalists. The delicate balance between AI’s efficiency gains and ethical considerations is explored, with practical implications highlighting the need for targeted education, transparent communication, and cost-effective solutions to overcome barriers and foster widespread AI adoption. The research underscores the significance of continuous adaptation to technological advancements for seamless integration. As Pakistan cautiously navigates the AI landscape in news production, this study lays the groundwork for theoretical frameworks and practical strategies, providing valuable insights for the ethical, efficient, and responsible integration of AI technologies.

Unraveling the Dimensions of Child Sexual Abuse Portrayal by Web Based Media Channels: Pakistani News Framers’ Perspective

This empirical work is based on the partial phased findings of a colossal PhD work done with core objective of highlighting the role of TV web channels in representation of dilemma-oriented aspects, pertaining child sexual abuse reporting and such news’ psychosocial impact on media consumers. The research strategy was mainly exploratory and was based on qualitative research design. This was targeted that major stakeholders in child sexual abuse news, need to be consulted in order to shed light on the menace of child sexual abuse’s media reporting as this is being catastrophized due to misrepresentation of over- exaggerated aspects of abuse. Those professional reporters, news framers and news producers (15 from each category) who reported that they have been reporting on such matters in past five years or more were targeted as potential participants’ of current research. Interview protocol guide was employed in this regard. The findings revealed that sexual abuse news content stakeholders reported that they had limited skills, technical insight, personal emotional issues, emotional exhaustion and burnout, limited insight regarding experts in dealing sensitive matters and diffusion of responsibilities due to which such news content was handled by them inapt ways. They also reported as having individual, familial, contextual and cultural factors that caused them hurdles. The emerging themes revealed that relevant education paucity not only stand out as foundational deficit rather also makes us turn into debilitated state of dismay. Furthermore, lack of relevant training in framing of such sensational news, fear of consequences and professional burn out are emerged as other main themes

Immediacy and Journalistic Authority For Reporting Environmental Disasters: Case Study Of 2022 Floods Of Pakistan

Real-time journalism is informing the public about the pace of the event that is happening. The story changes as time passes. It is playing with the nerves of the people as at that time the media is the only source of information and people are compelled to believe it. In the case of flood reporting and the reporting of the flood-affected areas makes the people of that area attentive and ready to take action upon the instructions of the media. In such a situation, as and when any single news channel tries to break the news of any emergency. Panic has been created in the target area and the people of that particular area try to escape from that area because they don’t know the volume of water coming in in such a situation many lives have expired due to the panic situation. The more dangerous is that the other news channels also follow the first line and start exaggerating the activity of that area and this becomes more dangerous because the people of target areas get frightened, and this makes their lives miserable. For this research, we have selected five Pakistani news channels during the 2022 flood in Pakistan. We will analyze the one-month highly flood season news reporting of these channels i.e. July 16 to August 15, 2022, how much news they break, and whether there was a need to flash that news as breaking news.

Portrayal of Rape Cases by Pakistani Electronic Media: Analysis of Ethical Dimensions

The paper addresses the violation of ethical guidelines by Pakistani Electronic Media while portraying rape cases. Following the qualitative approach, content analysis was made of a total of 275 news stories on the most highlighted rape cases happened in Pakistan. Based on their target rating point, news stories of the top five Pakistani news channels were examined. Framing theory was used as analytical tool to identify the factors which result in violation(s). The findings reveal that media confirmed an infringement of ethical guidelines, as the stories contained a greater number of unethical practices. Meticulously, the infringements include disclosure of the identity of the survivor, the survivor's family, and accused persons before conviction. Findings also confirm that addresses of survivors and incidents were shared whereas judgmental language was also used. Besides, CCTV footage was aired without considering its sensitivity. Thus, the researcher recommends developing organizational guidelines alongside defined ones for portraying rape cases.

The Manipulation of Pakistani News Media Using Deletion in News Reports of Rape Cases

This study aims at investigating the manipulation strategy of Pakistani news media coverage by using ‘deletion’ from macrostructure for promoting victim blaming in rape cases. The study uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model of Van Dijk to examine the data collected from the most prominent Pakistani newspapers such as Dunya News, ARY News, Geo News, Dawn News, and The Express Tribune. The data was collected from their official websites. The study examined the impact of news media in reporting rape cases by using Van Dijk’s macrostructure model of CDA. The findings of the study revealed that the news media consciously uses ‘deletion’ as one of the four elements of macrostructure to conceal the truth in reporting the rape cases. One the basis of findings, the study recommends certain measures to minimize the issue of biased media coverage and victim blaming in Pakistan.

The Influence of Leadership Styles on Employee Retention in the Electronic Media Industry: A Mediation Model Examining the Role of Job Satisfaction

Aim of the Study: The basic objective of this empirical study was to observe the impact of leadership style on the job retention of media workers of Pakistani news channels. Methodology: A questionnaire was administered to 435 media employees, from 12 different news and current affairs channels, required to respond about their leaders’ style of leadership and about their job attitudes satisfaction, and retention. Data from 349 complete and appropriate responses were selected for the study. Findings: Study results proposed that transformational and transactional leadership both styles have a positive and significant relationship with job satisfaction and retention. The relationship of Laissez-faire with job satisfaction was not significant but retention is weak and positive. Conclusion: This analysis elaborates impact of transformational leadership is overall high on job retention through the job satisfaction of media employees. Finally, the study suggests to media leaders adopt the more appropriate style for the enhancement of satisfaction and retention of subordinates.

Analysis of Pakistani Advertisements under Grice’s Cooperative Principles

Language when used as a verbal medium carries variety of significant meanings. The cooperative principle is one of the major foundations for a comprehensive and smooth conversation. Language when used as a verbal medium carries variety of significant meanings. The cooperative principle is one of the major foundations for a comprehensive and smooth conversation. The research in hand aims to focus on the advertisements in relation to Grice’s Cooperative Principles. The thought-provoking observation is that advertisers target their audience by creating idealistic taglines which usually deviate from the cooperative principles of communication. Electronic media language can either form a conversational bond with the audience or can sway them in opposite. The data for the said purpose was collected through the advertisements being aired on Pakistani news channels and Pakistani drama channels at prime hour. The analysis covers the implications of maxims of the cooperative principles over the tag lines of these advertisements and the influential meanings that hid under their discourse. By using the analytical method and qualitative approach the researcher tried to emphasize the meanings of conversational implicatures with and without following the cooperative principles. These taglines are significant in capturing the mind of the population and so they are made attractive and memorable keeping this as a prime foundation. The implication of maxims resulted in understanding the influential meanings both apparent and hidden as well as led the researchers understand various ways of flouting of maxims that happens while creating the tagline ideas. Though maintaining the integrity to not to manipulate the audience rather convincing for a second thought.

MEDIA COVERAGE AND PAK-US RELATIONS: ANALYSIS OF TV NEWS FRAMING DURING PTI’S REGIME

Foreign relations of Pakistan (Pak) with the United State of America (US) have a very long history of Ups and Downs and remain central to the politics of Pakistan. Pak-US relations also remain part of political and public discourse during elections and during the tenures of different political parties in the Government. Political parties in power or in the opposition are discussed with reference to their approach to foreign policy towards the US. The current study aims at examining how Pak-USA Relations were seen through the lens of media coverage, during PTI Government, taking into account the issues of Military Cooperation; Afghanistan Situation; Regional Disputes; War on Terror; and CPEC. The study is based on the news coverage of Pak-US relations in primetime TV news bulletins of two eminent Pakistani news channels GEO and ARY. The Descriptive Content Analysis method is used as a tool of analysis. Data was collected by watching the news bulletin of GEO and ARY news from August 18th, 2018 to January 18th, 2018. Agenda Setting and Framing approaches have been employed to analyze the news bulletins. All hypotheses are proven statistically by using the “t” test. The finding of this study is that both news channels Geo and ARY give positive coverage related to Pak-USA relations. These news channels have almost the same frames used regarding Pakistan and USA relationships in their 9 pm news bulletin headlines. In these frames, GEO and ARY news channels show that the relationships between Pakistan and the USA were very good during PTI’s regime. Both countries were working bilaterally during this selecting time period. Keywords: Framing, PAK-USA Relations, News Channels, PTI, GEO, ARY

The growing norm of sexual harassment in Pakistan’s mainstream and ethnic news media

Across time, in a variety of forms and spaces -from homes and workplaces to digital domains of social media- women have become victims of sexual harassment. Over the last couple of years, the world has witnessed appalling cases followed under the #MeToo campaign that has inspired an increasing number of women to share their experiences of sexual harassment in different contexts. Nevertheless, social and family pressures may discourage female journalists operating in conservative societies to express their concerns and experiences. The case of Pakistan is noteworthy. While women constitute a major proportion of the Pakistani society, the country’s men hold power in all major sectors and institutions. Sexual harassment can hinder women’s professional lives in any sector. However, female journalists’ experiences of sexual harassment are hardly documented in the academic literature about the Pakistani news media. Thus, informed by the framework of postcolonial feminist theory and intersectionality, this study aims to contribute an analysis of how sexual harassment is experienced by the Pakistani female journalists in the country’s mainstream, as well as ethnic news media. To achieve this aim, this study uses qualitative methods of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions and offers a thematic analysis of data.

Pre-Election Political Campaigns Covered by Pakistani TV Channels: A Content Analysis

This research analyzes the political coverage by Pakistani News Channel before the general election 2013. The prime time of the channels for one month was selected for supervising, examining and organizing determinations of coverage of general elections under the code of conduct and procedure of coverage set by regulators. The researcher conducted content analysis of prime time which includes headlines of news bulletin, talk shows and issued addressed in program content broadcast on TV channels. Results of the study showed that all news channels failed to fulfill the fundamental obsessions of impartial balance and reasonable reporting. Because of the indistinct and insufficient necessities of ECP regarding rules of ethics for media, the portion of airtime on electronic media was exceptionally discriminating. In this study as the analysis showed the conduct of the elections, though having eminent place in the state news plan, it devastatingly explained the major political parties.

Negative Projection: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Women’s Portrayal in Pakistani News Channel

The main purpose of this research is to highlight the news discourse about women’s depiction in Pakistani broadcast news. Women are still depicted in traditional roles in broadcast media. The research is qualitative in nature. Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of CDA was applied to effectively evaluate how women are portrayed in the news Representation of women in Pakistan was analyzed by collecting news items from the official news channel “Geo News”. Sampled news items were analyzed by identifying the lexical and grammatical choices, interpreting in the local context of Pakistani society, and then lastly checking the ideological position. The results show that women are portrayed as weak, lacking freedom of movement, and subjugated because of the patriarchal culture in society. This study highlights the pessimistic aspects, the future researchers can explore the bright side of women’s discourse by focusing on the achievements, rights, and honor gained by modern Pakistani women.

Newsworthiness in the Reporting of Donald Trump’s Presidential Victory: Linguistic Analysis of News Values in Pakistani News Channels

The win of Donald Trump in the 45th Presidential American Elections has perverted the World’s political views. This study focuses on the analysis of News Discourse presented in the reporting of Donald Trump’s victory by the two Pakistani News channels-PTV and Geo News. The study employs Bednarek and Caple’s (2017) Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) which investigates how news values are constructed through linguistic devices; therefore, empowering judgments into shared news and adding linguistic focus to the news studies. Results reveal the use of news values such as Consonance, Eliteness, Impact, Negativity/Positivity, Personalization, Proximity, Superlatives, Timeliness, and Unexpectedness in the data sets; residing with variation in the ‘preferred’ norms specific to the organization. Moreover, the results highlighted the larger contribution of Consonance, Eliteness, Negativity, Proximity, and Superlatives in comparison with other ones. The findings also reveal Positivity in news discourse, while the impact of the event seemed to be highlighted.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Pakistani News Channels: A Depiction of Society and Linguistic Devices

In this modern era of rapid communication, media works wonder and plays role in analyzing people. Things are seen and evaluated by the perception of media. This study aims to analyze the Pakistani News Channels GEO, ARY and BOL Headlines through Critical Discourse Analysis. News headlines have great importance because they represent the issues and facts tersely. These also present the importance of every major and minor issue in the society by highlighting them in a sophisticated and presentable manner. This research critically analyses the news headlines taken from three Pakistani news channels. The chief concern of this research is to discover the role of news headlines in highlighting the society, to find out the figurative devices, and to evaluate how these channels report and transmit the same issue in a different way according to the need of their respective interest.

Fake news detection on Pakistani news using machine learning and deep learning

Fake news causes a huge impact on the reader’s mind, therefore it has become a major concern. Identifying fake news or differentiating between fake and authentic news is quite challenging. The trend of fake news in Pakistan has grown a lot in the last decade. This research aims to develop the first comprehensive fake news detection dataset for Pakistani news by using multiple fact-checked news APIs. This research also evaluates the developed dataset by using multiple state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques. Five machine learning techniques namely Naive Bayes, KNN, Logistic Regression, SVM, and Decision Trees are used. While two deep learning techniques CNN and LSTM are used with GloVe and BERT embeddings. The performance of all the applied models and embeddings is compared based on precision, F1-score, accuracy, and recall. The results show that LSTM initialized with GloVe embeddings has performed best. The research also analyzes the misclassified samples by comparing such samples with human judgements.