Portrayal of National Action Plan in Pakistani Newspapers

A Content Analysis of the coverage in the 'Daily Dawn' and the 'Daily Jang'

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2016 in the subject Communications - Mass Media, grade: A, , course: 2 years, language: English, abstract: The research study aims to measure the portrayal of National Action Plan in the leading Pakistani newspapers 'Daily Dawn' and 'Daily Jang'. National Action Plan is an action plan that was established by the Government of Pakistan to counter the terrorism. The study is based on framing theory but the social responsibility theory and agenda setting theory also correlate with this study. For this study the researcher adopted content analysis as quantitative methodology. The duration of news coverage has been selected from Dec 16,2014 to Feb 16,2015. For this purpose content analysis of Front Page news stories about National Action Plan published in 'Daily Dawn' and 'Daily Jang' has been undertaken. The data was collected through coding sheet from Dec 16, 2014 to Feb 16,2015. Through Content analysis positive, negative and neutral coverage of both leading newspapers were analyzed. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. Two hypothesis related to the topic were formulated and then tested, where all hypothesis were accepted. The result confirmed that both the newspapers portrayed the National Action Plan as whole. The findings of the study verified that the selected newspapers gave positive and neutral coverage pertaining to National Action Plan rather than negative press coverage. The findings of the study accepted the hypothesis that both the newspapers portrayed the national action plan as positive. However, the findings also accepted the hypothesis of the study that was assumed as 'Daily Jang' portrays the National Action Plan more positively as compared to 'Daily Dawn'.