Abstract
Understanding mass communications through the concept of framing has become increasingly common, whether in the fields of social psychology, public opinion, or media studies. Since the 1970s, framing as a theoretical and research approach has proven useful in understanding what factors influence media coverage, the existence of ideological forces behind news reporting, what principles dominate public debate, the problems involved in the effects of media coverage and the demonstrations about how media emphasises on certain concepts or issues affecting public opinion and perception of the socio-political environment and ultimately, what elements prevail that impact public policy. Framing defines how an element of rhetoric is packaged so as to allow certain interpretations and rule out others. With this it causes message recipients to generate cognitions in line with the corresponding news frame.
The following paper deals with the concept of media framing in connection with the Haneef issue of 2007 which rocked the diplomatic relations between India and Australia. Media played a pivotal role determining all the actions and reactions involved in the issue. Dr Mohammed Haneef, a 27 year old physician was arrested on July 2, 2007 at the Brisbane Airport, Australia on suspicion of terror-related activities. He is the second cousin of Kafeel Ahmed and Sabeel Ahmed the operatives in the 2007 Glasgow International Airport terror attack. Haneefs ensuing detention became the longest without charge in recent Australian history, which caused great controversy in Australia and India. Public outcry over the incident was further increased when the Australian Government denied Haneef the presumption of innocence, along with the Australian federal government actions in his case. Haneef was released when the Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew its charge on July 27, 2007, whereby his passport was returned and he departed Australia voluntarily on July 29, 2007.
There was a considerable difference in the coverage of this issue in Indian and Australian media. In this study, two newspapers from both the countries were studied to find out the differences in both the quantum and the content of the coverage. Two newspapers from Australia, The Australian and The Age and two newspapers from India The Times of India and Deccan Herald were considered for the content analysis that was both qualitative and quantitative. The articles of the four online services were retrieved from the archives of each news service, using the same key word “Dr Mohammed Haneef”. These key terms ensured that the major focus of the story would be Dr Mohammed Haneef. Only news articles were selected for the analysis. Editorials, opinion pieces, etc. were excluded. The categories of this content analysis were designed to capture both objective characteristics of the articles like date of publication and page number and more subjective characteristics like presence of positive, negative and neutral frames. Interestingly, considerable difference in the coverage of newspapers was observed leading to an interesting discussion on media framing.
KeyWords: Media, Newspaper
View PDF