Abstract
International conflict reporting and national media discourse of warring nations continue to dominate existing scholarship on media–conflict relationships. The literature on the subject lacks significant consideration towards understanding the relevance of local and sub-national media narratives in conflict situations. The existing literature on the media–conflict relationship in the conflict territory of Kashmir shows that the issue has been largely studied from the perspective of national news media in India and Pakistan. This study while engaging with the local news media in the Kashmir region, draws empirical evidence from the local newspapers in the context of the 2014 State Assembly election campaigns which took place amid unprecedented political polarization in the region. The findings from the content analysis revealed that the contested political issues between the political parties found higher resonance in the campaign news while the deliberation regarding the conflict in the region and its resolution had the least prevalence in the news discourse. This not only confirms the significant relevance of local news media and internal political dynamics in redefining the media–conflict relationship in the Kashmir conflict but also suggests the further need to engage with local and regional news narratives in conflict situations.
Introduction
The media–conflict relationship in political conflicts has been conventionally studied from the standpoint of national and international media narratives. Several studies have analysed the media’s relevance in major political conflicts across the globe from the perspective of ‘setting an international agenda’ (Aday, 2010; Bajraktari and Parajon, 2007; Griffin, 2004). The local media’s relevance in covering internal political narratives in a conflict situation has largely been ignored (Mac Ginty, 2011). Gilboa et al. (2016) have demonstrated the need to understand media narratives in conflict situations at multiple levels such as national, international and local media ones. The patterns of media narrativization in conflict situations vary across ‘hybrid media environments’ in which media at different levels play an equally important role in shaping perceptions about the conflicts (Mac Ginty, 2011). Given the contextual significance of local media in covering the internal dimensions of a conflict situation, it is important to analyse the local media’s role in order to get a more nuanced understanding of the media–conflict relationship. At the same time, little is known about the media coverage of election campaigns within the conflict situations in a non-Western context. Vladisavljevic (2015) argues that the internal political dimensions of a conflict situation turn vibrant and political contestation becomes ‘institutionalized’ during elections. Elections in a conflict situation therefore provide a unique entry point for understanding political contestation over issues and framing of issues because the interpretation of ‘competing’ political narratives becomes critical (Norris et al., 2003).
This article, by analysing framing of political issues in local news media in a conflict region, not only brings together the literature from these two fields but also provides important insights into the understanding of a media–conflict relationship in a non-Western context. Does conflict continue to remain as ‘news value’, as confirmed in the case of national media by Lee et al. (2006), or is it sidelined by campaign news and rhetoric? In order to provide an empirical understanding of these questions, this article analyses the local news coverage and news framing of the political issues during the 2014 State Assembly elections in the Kashmir region, which is often referred to as the most militarized conflict zone in the world.
The studies on news coverage and framing of the Kashmir conflict (for example, Lee and Maslog, 2005; Lee et al., 2006; Sreedharan, 2009) have exclusively focused on the political discourse between India and Pakistan, thereby ignoring the relevance of internal politics in the region. The relevance of local newspapers in mediating internal politics in the Kashmir region, although significant, has been overlooked and the studies mentioned above have focused on the representation of the Kashmir conflict in national newspapers in India and Pakistan.
The local media coverage of regional election campaigns in 2014 in Indian-administered Kashmir, a conflict territory, provides a relevant context for understanding the local media narrative of internal politics. This article focuses on the dominant issues that shaped internal politics during the election campaign in the region and subsequently examines their framing in the local news media. The study might reveal significant divergences between regional and national political parties, and their association with the political issues in the news discourse during the campaign. These findings would make a significant contribution towards understanding the news media’s coverage of the two existing political domains in the region, i.e. the national (Indian) and the regional. The dual narrativization of the Kashmir conflict across these distinctive political lines finds its reflection in the news media. Moreover, given the diversity of the Indian media systems that are influenced by the dominating political ‘regionalism’ existing in the country (Chakravartty and Roy, 2013; Neyazi, 2017), it becomes imperative to focus on the regional and local media in order to understand the nuances of the coverage of issues during a political event.
Strong political regionalism has been a fundamental feature of the politics in Kashmir region since 1947 and the local news media, while adapting to the regional political tendencies, have embedded themselves in the socio-political ethos in the region. The origin of local news media in Kashmir dates back to the pre-1947 nationalist movement in the state and its evolution through the decades of intractable conflict and tumultuous regional politics has consolidated it as an essential part of the political discourse. The local press has been the primary source of political information for the people in the region. Since the beginning of the political dispute in the region, local newspapers have been catering to the regional political aspirations by reflecting on the ‘pro-people’ mobilization in the region (Singh, 1995). The ‘regional’ discourse that shapes internal politics in the case of Kashmir can be best understood from the local newspapers as the Indian national media mostly perceives it from a nationalistic standpoint revolving around Indo-Pak diplomacy and its contentious relationship. The national media discourse is considered unionist in approach, exclusively toeing the line of Indian nationalism and national security whereas the local newspapers, with their predominant position in terms of readership in the region, have continued to provide more comprehensive coverage of the internal political discourse (Joseph, 2000; Khalid, 2016; Nazakat, 2012; Singh, 1995). The existing scholarship on news framing research has mostly remained obsessed with the external and nationalistic narratives of conflict situations (Camaj, 2010; Fahmy, 2010; Gruley and Duvall, 2012). Unlike national and international media, local media are recognized as part of their society and usually have a profound understanding of the existing political structures and stakeholders in a conflict situation (Kuusik, 2010). The theoretical framework outlined for this study largely draws on the existing literature on the media–conflict relationship and the political relevance of local media in the region, which justifies this study. The theoretical framework discussed in the section below helped in identifying the research questions that guided the analysis of selected local news media in the conflict region of Kashmir.
This article is organized into four sections. The first section outlines the ‘theoretical framework’ which justifies and builds the conceptual basis for this study. The second section provides a ‘background’ of the conflict in the region, introduces the local media and explains the context of the 2014 State Assembly elections in the region. The methods utilized in the study and the subsequent findings are provided in the third section. The final section of the article discusses the implication of the findings and their contribution to the larger area of media–conflict relationships.
Theoretical framework: Framing, conflict and elections
The news framing in media effects research has emerged as a growing area of interest for communication scholars in the field. The frames found in news media refer to ‘the process by which people develop a particular conceptualization or reorientation of thinking about an issue’ (Chong and Druckman, 2007: 104). The frames have been defined as ‘interpretive packages’ (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989) that influence and contextualize ‘cultural morals and values’ (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997), while in a media–politics relationship, news framing effects constitute the ‘particular definitions and interpretations of political issues’ (Shah et al., 2002: 343). The media framing in a conflict situation becomes more dynamic and the interpretation of critical issues becomes more contested ‘as there are at least two contrasting definitions of the same truth’ (Norris et al., 2003: 71).
In a conflict region, the media, while mediating the crisis, transcend into a ‘central arena for political conflicts’ (Wolfsfeld, 1997: 2) and as a principal tool for the political players in a conflict situation (Gilboa, 2002). The media is assumed to be a potential accomplice towards resolution of a conflict (Lynch and Galtung, 2010) while some scholars argue that it aggravates the violence in a conflict region (Hamelink, 2015). However, both arguments confirm the media’s powerful role in shaping and mediating the political discourse in a conflict situation. The dynamics of internal politics in a conflict region are cultivated by the fundamental positions of opposing political institutions and the issues are ‘mediatized’ and framed by the media while attributing various interpretations to the contested issues in the political discourse (Cottle, 2006).
In the scholarship already available on the subject, there is a disconnect in understanding the relevance of local news media in framing politics as researchers have mostly focused on locating the news frames of crises through the perspective of conflict reporting in international media or the national media of the warring nation states. In a conflict situation, ‘regional and local media dynamics’ are equally important (Gilboa et al., 2016) and local media’s relevance, in particular, has often been ignored in the framing of politics. The seminal work by Thompson (1999) on the local media’s role during the Yugoslavian conflict confirmed its crucial participation in the grounded mediation of conflict with considerable control over the fundamental issues in the conflict.
The dominant discourse on the conflict in Kashmir has largely viewed the issue as a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan, which has confined communication scholars to examine the national and international media operating in both countries. The media’s role in framing the Kashmir conflict has been viewed with an exclusive focus on the propaganda and war rhetoric between the two countries (Lee et al., 2006; Sreedharan, 2009). Lee and Maslog (2005), while examining the newspaper coverage of conflicts in Asia, have examined news frames in the Kashmir conflict while adopting Galtung’s (1998) classification of war/peace journalism. These scholars have perceived the media–conflict relevance in the Kashmir conflict through the Indo-Pak binary while the internal political discourse in the region and the significant role of local media covering the conflict on the ground have been overlooked.
Elections are considered to be a crucial process for understanding the ideological interplay between the political actors in a given political conflict. In Israeli–Palestinian conflicts, media through its ‘dynamic representation’ played a significant role in structuring political discourse during Israeli elections (Shamir and Shamir, 2007). The political behaviour of politicians, their reactions to the media and the media itself tend to follow an unconventional logic during election campaigns (Walgrave and Van Aelst, 2006: 96). The studies conducted on the news framing of the US presidential elections revealed the predominance of a strategy frame (Patterson, 1994) while the framing studies in European politics (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000) found the importance of political contextualization with attribution of responsibility as the dominant frame. As discussed above, the 2014 State Assembly elections in the Kashmir region witnessed polarization between regional and national political narratives of politics and the discussion in the theoretical framework also suggests the need to understand the relevance of local newspapers in covering the conflict in the Kashmir region. In the context of the highly political contestation of dominant issues among political parties during election campaigns, the prevalence of political issues and their framing in local newspapers would contribute towards a further understanding of media–conflict interactions in conflict situations.
The conclusions from the related body of literature as outlined in the theoretical framework above substantiates the arguments put forward for this study which seeks to understand the relevance of local news media in a conflict situation. The empirical approach towards this enquiry analyses the prevalence of political issues and the news frames in the selected local media in the Kashmir region, a conflict territory. In particular, this article seeks to empirically answer the following questions:
RQ: What was the frequency of the important political issues in the local news media during the election campaigns?
RQ2: How prominently were the main political parties associated with the important political issues in the campaign news?
RQ3: What was the frequency of the selected news frames and how were the important political issues framed in the news discourse?
Brief background of the Kashmir conflict
The political conflict in the Kashmir region is an ‘unresolved question’ of political identity which traces its origin back to the British decolonization and historic partition of the Indian subcontinent between India and Pakistan in 1947 (Mukherjee, 2014; Wirsing, 1998). For almost three quarters of a century, both India and Pakistan have been claiming the territory while, most importantly, there has been a massive mobilization of people on the ground with strong inherent aspirations for the demand of the right to self-determination which has been amplified in the form of statewide violent protests in recent decades, particularly since the late 1980s (Bose, 2009; Schofield, 2003; Snedden, 2013).
The pre-1947 territory of Jammu and Kashmir State constitutes three main regions: Jammu, Kashmir Valley and Ladakh on the Indian side, while ‘Azad Kashmir’ and Gilgit-Baltistan remain on the Pakistan side. There are also 14,380 square miles of the state’s territory – Aksai Chin is under Chinese control and the dispute over this area resulted in the India–China war of 1962 (:Snedden, 2013). The religious and ethno-linguistic diversity is one of the fundamental characteristics of the Jammu and Kashmir state that has played a crucial role in determining the historical and political circumstances since the beginning of the regional conflict in 1947. The Pakistan-administered part of the state, including the northernmost region of Gilgit-Baltistan, is almost entirely a Muslim populated region with diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. In contrast, the diversity of religious identities on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir (IJK) – Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh – shape the internal dynamics of the conflict in the region. The communal divergences and regionalism that define the identity politics in IJK are considered to be one of the main reasons for the complexity of the intractable conflict in the region (Bose, 2009). The three regions in the Jammu and Kashmir states do not just possess religious and cultural diversity but also reflect diversity in terms of geographical terrain and historical roots. The Indian-administered Kashmir valley with a predominantly Muslim population has been the focal point of the conflict with a strong base of separatist groups who guide the mass mobilization and armed militancy in the region. On the other hand, the Hindu and Buddhist communities are largely concentrated in the Jammu and Ladakh regions, respectively, with significant populations of Muslims in both regions. Although the Hindus and Buddhists have been in the majority in their respective regions, they still perceive themselves to be at the margins in the larger context of the Muslim majorities of Jammu and Kashmir states and Kashmir-centric power politics (Chowdhary, 2010).
The Indian-administered Kashmir region with a predominantly Muslim population of 96.40 percent (Election Commission of India, 2014), has been a bone of contention ever since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the countries have confronted each other in three wars (1947, 1971 and 1999) in an attempt to consolidate control over the region. India faced armed rebellion in the late 1980s when massive demonstrations erupted in the region against the alleged ‘rigging’ by the government of India in the 1987 elections (Jha, 1996). The public resentment of decades erupted, leading to the outbreak of pro-Pakistan and pro-independence militancy in the region, eloquently supported by Pakistan (Hussain, 2006).
In 2000, the then US President Bill Clinton called Kashmir ‘the most dangerous place on earth’ (BBC, 2000). The United Nations Security Council intervened in the conflict and passed Resolution 47 (UNO, 1948) to resolve the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Over almost seven decades, the intractable conflict in Kashmir still haunts conflict analysts who believe it could lead to serious geopolitical repercussions as the region continues to remain contested between the two hostile nuclear powers (Margolis, 2002).
The Kashmir region has been declared the ‘most militarized region on earth and the longest pending territorial dispute’ by the CIA (2013) and the territory still has the highest number of armed forces stationed in any conflict region in the world (Batool et al., 2016; Singh, 2016). The region has witnessed a documented history of gross human rights violation in the form of continuous civilian killings, enforced disappearances and fake encounters by security forces under the impunity of the controversial AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) (Amnesty International report, 2015). The perpetual statewide demonstrations against the Indian state and the continuous civilian killings in recent years have once again caught the whole region in the grip of a vicious cycle of violence.
Local media in the region
In the Kashmir region, the local newspapers, which thrived after the outbreak of militancy in the early 1990s, have continued to remain as the primary source of political news for the local masses. These newspapers have survived through the peak of violence, facing wrath from state and non-state actors, and the journalists in the region have been reporting under persistent threats and intimidations (Tekwani, 2008). In the absence of local independent television news media, the state-owned broadcast television Doordarshan (DD) which is being operated by the Indian Information and Broadcasting Ministry, continues to have a monopoly with the exception of some limited evening news bulletins by private Indian news channels. The local cable news channels had started operations in the region in the early 2000s. However, in September 2010, the state government issued an order to ban any news telecasts from the local cable channels stating that they broadcast provocative speeches by secessionist elements which are dangerous for law and order in the region (Greater Kashmir, 2010). So the local newspapers in the Kashmir region continue to be the main source of political information and of high importance in covering internal politics.
The context of the 2014 State Assembly elections in the Kashmir region
The 2014 State Assembly elections in the Kashmir region were held in a highly polarized political climate and led to an unprecedented level of mobilization influenced by various political actors. The discourse during the political campaign was quite aggressive for the first time in the state (Chowdhary, 2015a). The contestation over issues in the midst of robust campaigning by political parties was followed by a record voter turnout (65.23%) for almost three decades, despite consistent boycott calls by separatist groups operating in the region.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the largest right-wing nationalist political party, often identified with the Hindu majority in India, had an unprecedented victory in the 2014 Indian Parliamentary elections. In order to shed their image of being a conservative party and expand their social constituency among the Muslim minority, the BJP made an all-out attempt to clinch or at least share the political power in the Muslim-dominated and conflict-ridden state of Jammu and Kashmir. This was evident from the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself addressed four election rallies in the region prior to the state elections. Mr Modi held a rally in the capital city of Srinagar on 8 December despite a shutdown and curfew in the region, which received overwhelming media attention.
The debate on Article 370 of the Indian constitution, a controversial law which was drafted in 1950 to provide special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the Indian dominion and maintain accession with India as a conditional agreement, became one of the most contested issues throughout the campaign. The Article is considered a ‘solemn compact’ and it is constitutionally impossible to unilaterally amend or abrogate it as enshrined in the terms of the Article (Noorani, 2011). The BJP had been unequivocally demanding the revocation of Article 370 and was now in open battle with the regional parties who had been claiming to safeguard the Article to preserve the political autonomy and identity of the region.
The four main political parties in the 2014 State Assembly elections in the Kashmir region were the National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as the main regional parties, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) as the main Indian national political parties. The election witnessed heightened religious as well as regional polarization within the state. The main regional political parties NC and PDP focused on the Muslim-dominated ‘Kashmir Valley’ while BJP mobilized voters in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region which led to communal polarization and resurfacing of ‘identity politics’ in the state (Chowdhary, 2015a: 5)
The concept of communalism has been an integral attribute to South Asian as well as Indian politics, denoting the construction of divisive religious and ethnic identities, and inciting violence between different religious communities (Chandra, 1984). The BJP’s idea of nationalism based on majoritarian Hindu collectivism shapes the larger fundamental conceptualization of communalism in India (Anand, 2005; Chowdhry, 2000). The BJP’s campaign and the sharpening polarization between the two constituent regions of the state – Jammu and Kashmir – made the issue of communalism one of the most important ones during the election campaigns in the region. Moreover, the region had witnessed prolonged spells of violent statewide demonstrations in the years 2008, 2009 and 2010 against human rights violations, leading to a vicious cycle of violence and civilian killings at the hands of security forces who were accused of shielding themselves with the controversial AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Forces Act, 1990). This cycle of violence led to the persistent debates on human rights violations and the revocation of the AFSPA which was quite resonant during the election campaign, with parties accusing each other of non-sustenance of the Act. At the same time, the region was partially devastated by massive floods in September 2014, just two months before the elections. The floods also brought the issue of rehabilitation of the flood victims in the region as an important issue during the election campaigns. The electoral monopoly maintained by the regional parties NC and PDP in the region prior to 2014 was challenged by the BJP’s ambitious project of ‘mission 44 plus’, an endeavour to win more than 44 seats to gain an absolute majority in the 87-seat State Assembly and form a government of its own. The BJP challenged the hegemonic regional politics in the region which led to vibrant campaigning in the context of polarization and the crisis of identity politics.
Methods
This study involved the content analysis of news stories in the selected newspapers which measured the frequency of selected political issues, news frames and the framing of political issues in news discourse. The content analysis that measured the frequency of political issues in the news discourse was subsequently followed by the framing analysis. The framing analysis was conducted for each story to locate existing news frames and the framing of selected political issues in the news discourse.
The study began with the quantitative content analysis of four prominent newspapers: two English and two Urdu language dailies published in the region. Urdu is the state official language and Urdu-language newspapers continued to have a monopoly in the local media system for decades until English newspapers began publishing in the early 1990s with the outbreak of armed militancy in the region. In the last decade, some local English newspapers have thrived and acquired a significant readership in the region. So, on the basis of popularity and high readership, two widely circulated Urdu and English-language newspapers published in the region were selected for the content analysis. These are Greater Kashmir (circulation: 10, 1718), Kashmir Times (circulation: 74,100) (English) and Srinagar Times (circulation: 48,000), Aaftaab (circulation: 35000) (Urdu). 1 The Greater Kashmir is the most widely-read English newspaper with the highest circulation while Kashmir Times is the first and the oldest English newspaper, and it has maintained a credible position for the last two decades. Srinagar Times and Aaftaab are among the oldest and the most widely-read Urdu-language newspapers having a significant readership across the region.
The campaign period for the 2014 State Assembly elections in the region formed the sample period for this study. The newspaper sample for the content analysis was collected for the period from 28 October 2014 to 20 December 2014. Two postgraduate students of political communication trained in content coding were employed for the content analysis of the newspapers. The hard copies of the four selected newspapers were collected for each day during the sample period with the help of a local news agency. None of the sample newspapers was missed for any particular day during the sample period.
Content analysis
Issues
To understand the local news coverage of the internal politics in Kashmir region, the analysis involved the content analysis of news stories in the selected newspapers which measured the frequency of selected political issues. A total of eight political issues were identified, keeping in consideration the polarized political discourse that prevailed during the election campaigns (discussed in the political context of the elections above). Taking a deductive approach, the issues for the analysis were mainly classified under the two dominant narratives of politics in the region: ‘politics of governance’ and the ‘politics of conflict’ as identified by Chowdhary (2015b). The selected issues – economy and infrastructure, floods, communalism and corruption – pertains to the ‘politics of governance’ whereas Article 370, Kashmir issue, resolution (to conflict) and AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) pertains to the ‘politics of conflict’ in the region. During the election campaigns, these eight issues remained highly contested and debated among the major political parties in the region which made them appropriate for the analysis in this study.
Coding schema
The ‘unit of analysis’ in the coding process was an individual news story. Since this study aimed to understand the local news coverage to the internal politics during the election campaigning, only news stories related to the election campaigns (‘campaign news’) were coded for the analysis. The criteria for the selection of the news story were the news story being ‘campaign news’, i.e. related to the election campaigns during the sample period. All the campaign-related news stories were coded throughout each newspaper, each day. In the process, a total of 1865 news items were coded as ‘campaign news’ in all the four selected newspapers during the sample period. The frequency of the news stories coded in the total sample was Greater Kashmir (N = 578), Kashmir Times (N = 332), Srinagar Times (N = 457), Aaftaab (N = 498). The coders coded 10 percent of the sub-sample for the assessment of inter-coder reliability applying Cohen’s kappa. For the sub-sample of 200 stories, the inter-coder reliability on all variables ranged between the values of .71 to .90 which is acceptable.
The codebook that was formulated for the content analysis contained sub-themes categorized under the eight issues identified in this study. For the issues pertaining to the ‘governance’, i.e. economy and infrastructure, floods, communalism and corruption, the sub-themes were included in consultation with the codebook used by Neyazi and Semetko (2014) for their Indian Election Studies (IES). In the coding process, the coders could code more than one issue per news story. The coders were asked to code up to three issues for an individual news story as variable I1, I2, and I3. During the analysis, the coded issues for each news story were calculated by computing all the three issue variables in the SPSS. Moreover, the four main political parties – National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – were also coded in the news stories either as first, second or third main actor. The analysis measured the association of political parties with the selected political issues in news media through cross-tabulation.
Framing measures
The methodological approach in this study examined the generic frames in the selected newspapers. The literature available on news framing research presents a variety of approaches adopted by scholars while understanding the operational typology of generic frames present in news media. Many scholars have identified different generic frames (for example, Entman, 2004; Neuman et al., 1992; Price et al., 1997; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000; Van Gorp, 2007). The generic frames, unlike ‘issue-specific’ frames, ‘transcend thematic limitations’ and can be identified with ‘different issues in different cultural contexts’ (De Vreese, 2005). The study adopts the deductive approach of framing analysis with five generic frames identified by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000): conflict, economic consequences, attribution of responsibility, human interest and morality. The earlier studies (Lee and Maslog, 2005; Lee et al., 2006) that have studied news framing in Indian and Pakistani national media in relation to the Kashmir conflict have exclusively focused on ‘issue-specific’ war and peace frames in the news discourse. Their ‘issue-specific’ approach of framing in analysing news discourse could not provide much space for establishing a theoretical relationship with the existing framing literature in political communication research. By engaging with the established ‘generic frames’ in the field, this study aims to extend their operationalization to the local news discourse in a non-Western conflict situation. This study, unlike earlier studies on national media coverage, looks at the local news media that largely deals with the internal governance and politics in the region which established the need to engage with ‘generic frames’. The finding from the framing analysis might reveal some interesting revelations regarding the relevance and frequency of these frames in local news discourse in the Kashmir conflict.
The operational definition of generic frames that draws from Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) uses similar measurement scales in the form of questions for locating each frame. The conflict frame captures any kind of conflict or polarization on the issues between individuals, groups or any other actors involved. The economic consequences frame reports events or issues in terms of economic consequences underlying it if pursued. The attribution of responsibility frame reports events or issues to attribute its responsibility to individuals or groups. The human interest frame brings a human face to stories by considering issues and events in terms of empathy or emotional angles towards affected individuals or groups. The morality frame reports issues and events in terms of religious and moral perspectives. Moreover, the other three generic frames included follow the same pattern for measurement scales.
The context of political cynicism that was intensified due to communal polarization and the issue of human rights during the mass mobilization in recent years remained an integral part of political discourse during the elections. This study considered three more generic frames for analysing the campaign news: strategy, threat and human rights, keeping in view the existing political environment in the region. The strategy gained prominence in Western news cultures during the election campaign studies in recent years and its observation in a conflict situation in a non-Western news culture can reveal some interesting findings.
De Vreese et al. (2011:163) argue that the media has a ‘strong tendency to frame politics as a strategic game rather than to focus on political issues’. The scholars have maintained the definition of a strategy frame as problematic, subject to its operationalization and conceptualization. The strategy frame, especially in electoral contexts, has often been interchangeably used with game frame, emphasizing who is winning and losing in political competitions. However, this study follows the dominant interpretation by Cappella and Jamieson (1997) who conceptualize it as tactics essential to position political actors to stay ahead in political contestation. The conceptualization of the ‘production of fear’ in news media put forward by Altheide (1997) is relevant in the operationalization of threat frame here. It may be seen as an extension of a ‘problem frame’ which entails ‘pervasive communication’, ‘symbolic awareness’ and ‘expectations’ that promote a situation in perceptions of danger, risk and fear. The issue of human rights in Kashmir has been the focus of international media covering the conflict in the region which gained further attention due to the resurgence of violence in the last one decade. The persistent human rights violations over the decades have turned it into a shared political interest across all the political ideologies in the region and it always remains a central agenda for the local newspapers (Joseph, 2000). Moreover, ‘increase in human rights violations leads to increased media coverage of those violations’ (Caliendo et al., 1999) and therefore the framing analysis in this article also considers looking into the prevalence of the human rights frame during the campaign.
In the operational definition of the frames for this study, the human rights frame emphasizes denial or violation of human rights in relation to the issues. The threat frame reports issue/problems and events in relation to the fear associated with them or the fear of consequences. The strategy frame emphasizes the tactics and strategies used by politicians through actions or statements to stay ahead while politicking on issues.
To locate the prevalence and the extent of frames in a particular news story, the study developed a coding schema in the form of a questionnaire as adopted by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), where the coders had to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in response to whether the news item was characterized in the aforementioned frame/frames or not. The number of questions asked varied between frames depending upon the underlying dimensions of a frame. As a reliability check, this study applied Cronbach’s alpha to ensure the internal consistency between the underlying items for each frame. The Cronbach’s alpha measure showed significant values as follows; α =.702 for conflict frame, α = .815 for the human rights frame, α = .693 for the economic consequences frame, α = .788 for the attribution of responsibility frame, α = .703 for the strategy frame, α = .773 for the human rights frame, α = .832 for the morality frame, and α = .735 for the threat frame.
Findings
Starting with the RQ1 that looked into the analysis of the selected issues covered by the newspaper, economy and infrastructure emerged as the most frequent issues, accounting for 18.2 percent of the total campaign news (N = 1,865). The issue of Article 370 and floods emerged as second and third most frequent issues in the campaign news with a frequency of 9 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. The issue of communalism had a frequency of 6 percent of the total news stories. The frequency of economy and infrastructure was relatively much higher than the following issues in the order. The Kashmir issue (5.7%), resolution of Kashmir issue (4.8%) and AFSPA (3.8%) emerged with lower frequencies in the news stories. The data analyses showed the issue of corruption (3.6%) as the least frequent issue in the campaign news. Thus, the data analysis reveals the predominance of economy and infrastructure in campaign news which is an important finding, given the fact that most of the conflict regions tend to be economically weak and infrastructure is often impoverished. Table 1 shows the frequency of the issues.
Issues frequency in the campaign news (N = 1865).
Note: N is the total number of campaign news stories coded for the analysis and the numbers in cells represent the frequency of each issue in the new stories.
RQ2, which looked for each political party’s association with the issues, reveals an interesting distinction between regional and national parties. The frequency of political parties reflects on the political context prevailing in the region with regional parties NC and PDP dominating the campaign news while, surprisingly, BJP surpasses INC in terms of news space in the newspapers. The data analysis showed the issue of economy and infrastructure as the most frequently associated issue with NC, PDP and INC in the campaign news, with PDP having the highest frequency (23.8%) (see Table 2). However, BJP had the highest association with the issue of Article 370 followed by the issue of communalism. Both the regional parties NC and PDP had the second most frequent association with Article 370 while communalism emerged as the second most mentioned issue associated with national party INC and BJP. The issue of floods had a relatively higher association with regional parties than national parties. The issue of AFSPA had lesser and almost uniform frequency of association with all the parties. Interestingly, the two ruling parties from the coalition, NC and INC had a lesser association with Kashmir issue – an issue pertaining to the main political conflict in the region. However, main opposition party PDP and BJP had a relatively higher frequency of association with Kashmir issue. The PDP had a higher frequency of association with the issue of resolution, the theme that represents the solutions to the conflict in the region. Moreover, the issue of corruption had higher frequencies of association with regional parties NC and PDP than national parties INC and BJP.
Frequency of the major political parties and their association with the issues in the campaign news (N = 1865).
Note: N is the total number of campaign news stories coded for the analysis and the numbers in the cells indicate the percentage of stories associated with the political parties for each issue.
The analysis for the RQ3 of this article proved that among the matrix of frames adopted in this study, strategy emerged as the predominant frame with the highest frequency. Among the generic frames adopted from Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), economic consequences emerged predominantly in the campaign news. The order of predominance for frames found after the analysis was strategy, economic consequences, conflict, threat, human interest, attribution of responsibility, human rights and morality (Table 3).
Frequency of the news frames in the campaign news stories.
The frequency of different frames with each political issue revealed some interesting trends. Out of eight issues, five issues – Article 370, floods, Kashmir issue, resolution and AFSPA – were predominantly framed as strategy in the campaign news while the remaining three issues – economy and infrastructure, communalism and corruption had strategy as their second frame.
Among the issues, Article 370 (71.9%) was most frequently framed as strategy. The economic consequences frame, which emerges as the second dominant frame in the campaign news, was most frequently associated with the issue of economy and infrastructure. The frame had a frequency of 289 (85%) with economy and infrastructure, which was the highest among all the frames (see Table 4). The economic consequence frame had the second most frequency with the issue of floods. The conflict frame which emerged as the third most frequent frame in the campaign news had the highest frequency with the issue of corruption, Kashmir issue and resolution. The issue of corruption which remained mostly associated with regional parties was predominantly framed as conflict. The attribution of responsibility showed the highest frequency with the issue of corruption followed by floods and Kashmir issue. The threat frame which had almost the same frequency as that of attribution of responsibility, found the most frequency with the issue of communalism. Interestingly, one of the most debated issues during the campaign period, Article 370 after strategy was mostly framed as threat. The human interest frame had the the highest frequency with the issue of floods (56.6%), followed by Kashmir issue and resolution. The human rights frame found the highest frequency with the issue of AFPSA (45.7%), followed by resolution (32.6%) and Kashmir issue (30.8%). For the rest of the issues, the human rights frame had a relatively negligible frequency. Morality, being the least frequent frame found in the campaign news had a relatively negligible frequency with all the issues except some significance with Kashmir issue (12.1%) and resolution (10.1%).
The frequency of news frames associated with each issue in the campaign news (N = 1865).
Note: N is the total number of campaign news stories coded for the analysis and the numbers in the cells indicate percentage of frames associated with each issue.
Discussion
The focus of the study was to empirically understand the prevalence of issues, association of issues with parties and media framing of issues within local newspapers in a conflict situation during election campaigning. The strategy frame emerged as the most frequent frame in the news discourse which explicates the fact that most of the stories reflected on the campaign tactics and strategies adopted by political parties, a finding supported in other studies in a non-Western context (for example, Esser and D’Angelo, 2003; Patterson, 1994). Economic consequence was the most frequent frame in the campaign news which was most commonly attributed to the issue of economy and infrastructure. The data analysis showed that the issue of economy and infrastructure emerged as a common electoral issue for the parties throughout the campaign and media provided coverage to these issues. As Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) argued that it is the ‘political culture’ in the context that determines the news framing, this study to some extent reflects on the same phenomenon given the fact that conflict frame emerged as overall third most frequent generic frame substantiating the political polarization in the region. This polarization can be explained by the fact that while the regional parties NC and PDP had the highest frequency of association with the issue of corruption in the campaign news, corruption as an issue was most frequently framed as conflict. Conflict being central to politics and reflecting on the clash of ideas remains relevant in the context of polarization (Schattschneider, 1975). The significant prevalence of conflict also confirms that news media during elections tends to include the conflict frame for increased ‘mediatization’ (Falasca, 2014).
While the issue of floods, which emerged as the third most frequent issue in the campaign news, was most frequently framed as strategy, the human interest frame emerged as the second most frequent frame associated with it. Among the other two self-defined generic frames (other than strategy), threat and human rights, threat consequently emerged as very significant, given the context of threat perception. The threat perception regarding dilution of state autonomy, abrogation of Article 370 and communalism was negatively attributed to BJP’s ambitious project of winning the elections by the regional parties as well as INC. The polarized narratives on sensitive issues such as Article 370 were reflected through political scepticism in news discourse as well. The issue of human rights violations which is often attributed to the issue of heavy militarization in the region found lesser resonance in the campaign news. These findings support the argument that electoral discourse through mainstream politics reflects less on the issues pertaining to the underlying dimensions of the political conflict in the region.
The national and regional political narratives were visible in the campaign news in the form of association of parties with the issues during the campaign period. The significant association of regional parties with the issue of floods and national parties with the issue of communalism makes the phenomenon of distinction in the media narrative on the basis of political proximity very substantial. The debate on Article 370 remained one of the contested issues between the political parties. Its coverage as the second most frequent political issue in the news of the campaign substantiates the fact that, during the elections, the news media tend to cover issues that reflect more on the political strategies from various political actors.
The campaign’s news during the elections tends to focus more on political strategies related to politically sensitive issues (Falasca, 2014). This argument finds ample relevance in the findings since, besides economic agenda emerging as the dominant theme, the debate on Article 370 had a second highest association with the political parties in the news discourse. The BJP’s incursion on electoral scene in the region triggered the debate on the Article 370 frame and the same was reflected through BJP’s highest association with the issue in the campaign news.
The media studies on the Kashmir conflict (for example, Lee and Maslog, 2005; Lee et al., 2006; Sreedharan, 2009) have focused on diplomatic and nationalistic discourse in the national media. While examining the media–conflict relationship in the Kashmir conflict, they have examined the external dynamics of the conflict that are limited to the bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan. Gilboa et al. (2016) endorse the need to conceptually revisit the phenomenon of the media–conflict relationship and understanding the relevance at multi-level interactions, especially the role of local media which are ‘better indicators’ in conflict discourse. The findings in this study conclude that the local newspapers in the region are primarily occupied with the internal political dynamics.
The political discourse that evolves between India and Pakistan has been a matter of analysis for the earlier studies on the media–conflict relationship in the Kashmir conflict which have not taken the internal political discourse within the region into consideration. This study, while focusing on the internal political discourse in the local news media, found the proactive role played by the local media in effectively mediating the political context and reflecting on the distinctive political domains in the region. The discourse on conflict and conflict resolution is less recurrent in the campaign news and it is evident from the analysis that the local newspapers proved that they function in a pattern of political contextualization by mainstreaming the issue of governance.
The issues of representation, legitimization and deliberation examined during Israeli elections by Shamir and Shamir (2007) in news media in the backdrop of the Israel–Palestine conflict found the least relevance in the context of the Kashmir conflict. The dimension of ‘representation’ was not visible in the campaign news and the news media were found to be more focused on the discourse pertaining to political institutions rather than the voters or the public opinion. Moreover, as discussed here, the ‘deliberation’ was very low while the idea of ‘legitimization’ was found to be prevalent in the local media coverage of Kashmir elections. The study found the significant relevance of ‘legitimization’ in the campaign news, confirming that the local media inevitably follow the strategies and tactics that candidates and parties adopt to remain relevant in the politically alienated context. The electoral politics therefore demands debates and contestations between the political parties on the benchmark of governance to legitimize their mandate and the local newspapers in the Kashmir region were found to follow the suit.
This study found that in the mainstream political discourse in the Kashmir region, the notion of ‘conflict as news value’ argued by Lee et al. (2006) does not hold ground; however, the findings recognize the findings of Shamir and Shamir (2007), who doubted any serious conflict deliberations during the election campaigns in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the election campaigns, the political discourse in local newspapers in the Kashmir region reflected on the distinctive narratives of ‘politics of governance’ and ‘politics of conflict resolution’. The local media coverage of campaigns showed much interest in the issues pertaining to governance while the debate on conflict resolution had less prominence in news discourse. The results reveal that the contested issues that remained highly deliberated among the political parties found higher resonance in the campaign news and the deliberation regarding the conflict in the region and its resolution was relatively ignored. The news media coverage on the selected political issues in this study tend to follow one of the contingent conditions for agenda setting – ‘eternal issues’ and ‘new issues’ put forward by Walgrave and Von Aelst (2006). The ‘eternal’ issues, Kashmir issue and resolution while supporting this logic, found lesser recurrence in the news discourse. Article 370 which has been a perpetual political issue amongst the political actors in the region was revived during the election campaign due to a threat perception about its abrogation created by BJP’s aggressive campaign that turned it into a renewed electoral issue. The political contextualization evident from the extensive newspaper coverage to contested issues during the campaign period effectively sidelined any significant deliberation on the conflict in the region. Since the electoral politics is perceived merely as a facilitator of local governance in the region, the same was reflected in the media as the political parties were primarily associated with the issues of economy and infrastructure.
The study concluded that the local newspaper coverage reflected on the logic of existing political narratives in the Kashmir region during the election campaigns in 2014. The idea of elections as a tool of political legitimacy tends to be mediated in isolation from the political conflict in the region. The local newspaper coverage of the issues and the framing of election campaigns follow this narrative of mainstream politics. The newsworthiness of issues proved to be a standard for the local news media while coverage of the campaign and news framing adhered to the political culture in the region. The impulsive electoral issues mainly related to the governance dominated the campaign news while the discourse on conflict and resolution has lesser prevalence. Moreover, the local media narrativization of polarized electoral space in Kashmir region is reflected from the predominance of strategy framing in the campaign news that focused more on the contestation between the regional and national political discourse in the region.
The existing studies (for example, Lee and Maslog, 2005; Lee et al., 2006; Shendurnikar, 2014; Sonwalkar, 2003; Sreedharan, 2009) have studied national media in India and Pakistan to develop an understanding of the media–conflict relationship in the Kashmir conflict. While some have focused on propaganda and war rhetoric between India and Pakistan (Sreedharan, 2009), others have adopted Galtung’s classification of war/peace journalism to examine the media framing of the Kashmir conflict in Indian and Pakistani newspapers (Lee and Maslog, 2005). The scholarly requirement for engaging with local news narratives for a more nuanced understanding of the media–conflict relationship has been recommended by Gilboa et al. (2016) and Mac Ginty (2011). Moving beyond the conventional approach of nationalistic news discourse on the Kashmir conflict that the existing studies have adopted, this unprecedented study engaged with local news media and the regional political dynamics in the Kashmir region. Engaging with local news media in the context of elections in an international conflict differentiates this study from the conventional campaign studies that have been trending in recent decades. Campaign studies such as ‘Indian Election Studies’ by Neyazi and Semetko (2014) exclusively focused on national media coverage of election campaigns in various Indian states. The current study followed a distinctive conceptual framework that brought together campaign politics and local news discourse in a conflict situation.
This study deals with the local newspaper framing of mainstream politics through election campaigning in the Kashmir conflict and has not taken into consideration the ‘non-campaign’ news stories, which is a limitation of this study. Also, further media research in the region should aim to study local newspapers’ role in framing the politics of separatism in the region that might reveal the substantial role of these newspapers in deliberating on the conflict in the region. The scarcity of literature on the local news media’s role in the region suggests the need to examine the phenomenon of the media–conflict relationship in Kashmir and one of the suggestions might be to undertake a comparative analysis of media framing of contested political issues by the local media and Indian national media. There is a negligible focus on local media’s relevance in political conflicts which needs to be understood and might be a significant contribution to the broader understanding of the media–conflict relationship. Moreover, the comparative understanding of international, national and local or regional media to understand the hybridity in media narratives would be a significant contribution to the field.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.