Awarding ofCitizenships to Afghan and Bengali Refuges: A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan's Print and Social Media Frames

Abstract

The current research was conducted to focus on the framing of Afghan and Bengali refugees in the mainstream print and social media, as a result of the announcement made by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, lmran Khan, for award of citizenship to the Afghan and Bengali refugees. A comparative analysis was drawn to explore the cross-media examination of print and social media framing, regarding the respective issue. The results of the quantitative content analysis revealed that the social media adopted more pro-citizenship frames to portray the refugees as compared to the print media, which employed more anti-citizenship frames. Furthermore, the research highlights that the social media adopted more humanitarian and legal framework topics to lay emphasis on the suffering of refugees. The Urdu newspapers framed the Afghan and Bengali citizenship issue in a more pro-citizenship manner, as compared to the English newspapers. The mainstream print media employed more unfavorable frames to accentuate the refugees as economic burden, as compared with the social media. The political apprehension and burden on economy is the foremost rationale for the aversion to grant the citizenship rights to the refugees. The research concluded with the theoretical implications and future suggestions.