MEDIA AND SECURITIZATION

Abstract

This study explains the media process in reporting political communications in the securitization dialogue. Securitization is the process of declaring an issue as a security challenge and requires an urgent and existential cause which is too important to be left to the normal political process and merits to be dealt decisively by the top leaders on priority basis. It explores media agenda, framing practices, and their ensuing effects on the process of securitization of terrorism in Pakistan. Defining the relevance of media in securitization process, it takes the Army Public School (APS) attack in Peshawar of 2014 as a watershed event to examine its impact on media and evaluates its contribution to securitizing terrorism as a threat to the country. Two influential newspapers, English Daily Dawn, and Urdu Daily Jang are examined through content and discourse analysis. A comparison of media framing and agenda setting before and after the APS attack highlights the level of securitization in the country and the role media played in this process. Discourse analysis has been used to make sense of relationship between discursive practice and broader social and cultural developments. The study found that both newspapers treated the terrorist incidents as crime events, focusing more on reporting the event, number of casualties, chaos caused by the incidents, rhetoric of condemnation statements by political elite, inability of law enforcement agencies and glorification of terrorism. Most of the incidents of attack on security forces were framed as battle between security forces and terrorists. Dawn seems not supportive of the official position, while Jang is more supportive of official version. However, both newspapers have not brought the threat of terrorism to the public attention, which requires special treatment at the political level. Both newspapers, considered as opinion makers in the Pakistani media, refrained from highlighting the causes of terrorism due to political reasons and fear of extremist groups. Therefore, there is a need to securitize the issue of terrorism by the media to meet its challenges wholesomely by the Pakistani leadership, institutions, and people.