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Title Representation of rape crimes in Pakistani English Newspapers: A framing analysis

Author(s) Farah Bano

Abstract The reports on rape crimes often tend to project the event of rape in ways that influence peoples’ processing of information given in them. The aim of this study is to investigate the representation and coverage of rape stories is Pakistani press. Since the reports in Pakistani media employ framing and representation strategies, the analysis is substantiated by framing theory. The study is qualitative in nature and analyzes reports that focus on the dreadful crimes of rape in Pakistani society. The current study pursues the reports of five Pakistani newspapers, i.e. The Dawn, The News, The Nation, The Daily Pakistan Observer, and Pakistan Today. Content analyses of fifty reports published from 2020 to 2021 is executed in the study. More specifically, the research discovers how the prevalence of four news frames: gender, culture, crime and identity coexist and support one another in the news media. The findings of the study comprise: i) in gender frame, most of the rape cases subjugate female gender; ii) in culture frame, majority of rape victims include teenagers who were reported to be victimized by family members—in those cases, the perpetrators were cousins, neighbors, or family friends; iii) in crime frame, teenager girls were gang-raped and slain too; and iv) in identity frame, victim's identity is revealed much too often in the reports of rape cases i.e. the writers of these reports hardly follow ethical and moral codes. Thus, this study has presented findings concerning the important role played by the various frames used by Pakistani newspapers and the significant difference in how news is covered by selecting the source and analyzing the frames. Keywords: Rape representation; content analysis; news media; framing analysis

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2023-01-09

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