Media and Audience Agenda on National Issues of Pakistan

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the agenda of national newspapers on framing of national issues such as i) power (energy) crisis, ii) water crisis, iii) economy, iv) corruption, v) political instability, vi) health, vii) education, viii) unemployment, ix) law and order, x) civil rights, xi) ethnic and xii) sectarian issues and how far the agenda of newspapers on the mentioned issues were correlated with audience agenda. Two major newspapers of Pakistan were analyzed for this study. It is concluded that although media and audience may show correlation in their agendas on certain issues (law and order, political instability, economy and corruption) because of media salience, there are some issues where the audience shows more interest as compared to media because they have direct effect on the lives of the people (power, water, health, education, unemployment etc). Also, the calculated media frames on government while covering national issues are quite different from how they are perceived by the audience (majorly because of alternate media options).