Elements of pathos and media framing as scientific discourse: A newspaper perspective on Rohingya crisis

Afzal, Naeem

International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences

Int. j. adv. appl. sci.

EISSN: 2313-3724

Print ISSN: 2313-626X

Volume 3, Issue 10 (October 2016), Pages: 89-99

Title: Elements of pathos and media framing as scientific discourse: A newspaper perspective on Rohingya crisis

Author(s): Naeem Afzal *

Affiliation(s):

Department of English, College of Sciences and Humanities, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia

https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2016.10.014

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Abstract:

Media framing should remain a legitimate device of social criticism and an aid to people’s decision making by an influence on their perceptions about a given issue or a social crisis. Ever since the Rohingya crisis erupted as a human rights issue, media has framed this crisis with different perspectives : a refugee crisis, a citizenship war, a political battle of survival, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim racism, issue of ethnic minority and similar other frames ascribed to the crisis. Media accused the government of genocide since it had refused to accept Rohingya as a historical, bi-cultural ethnic group. All such framing indicated the sole objective of refusing citizenship to the Rohingyas and resulted in significant reactions from international fora– each trying to shape the worldview about the Rohingya crisis. This research paper aims at studying framing strategy as a scientific discourse which has brought the international media stand face to face against the ruling elite of Myanmar on the Rohingya crisis. This study shall make an attempt to investigate how the editorial opinions of Pakistani, American and British mainstream newspapers covered the Rohingya Muslim crisis and to what extent kept the audience closer to the events by appealing to emotions or pathos. Through a scientific content analysis, this research explores how the Buddhists/Brumes government’s treatment of Rohingya crisis was portrayed by the mainstream English language newspapers in a Muslim majority country (Pakistan) and outside the Muslim world by the Western media (Britain, USA).

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: Rohingya crisis, Newspaper editorials, Framing strategy, Emotions

Article History: Received 3 June 2016, Received in revised form 18 October 2016, Accepted 22 October 2016

Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2016.10.014

Citation:

Afzal N (2016). Elements of pathos and media framing as scientific discourse: A newspaper perspective on Rohingya crisis. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 3(10): 89-99

http://www.science-gate.com/IJAAS/V3I10/Afzal.html

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