Mediatization of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM): A Case of leading Pakistani Newspapers of English Language

Abstract

After the 2018 general elections, Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) formed government. It was unconventional as it went against the two-party system that had long been prevailing in Pakistan. Ultimately, more than 10 parties formed a united front titled Pakistan Democractic Movement (PDM) to oppose PTI narrative. Enough research has been dedicated to evaluate populism in PTI’s public discourse. Little work was done to measure how mainstream Pakistani newspapers treat PDM. Hence, objective of this study is to fill this gap and evaluate editorials of newspapers to measure the manner and volume of editorials written on PDM. Using empirical method of content analysis, editorials of Dawn, Pakistan Today, The News, The Express Tribune and Daily Times from September 2020 to September 2021 were put in positive, negative and neutral categories. We found that Pakistan Today framed PDM as 29 (59.18%) positive editorials, followed by Dawn, The News, Express Tribune and Daily Times. We are convinced that more research needs to be conducted on this topic as a content analysis always opens avenues for further research.