Framing Taliban in Pakistan's Elite Press: Before and After US Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Taliban have been framed in negative and positive terms by Pakistan’s elite (English-language) newspapers in different periods. The corpus of framing studies has for the most part been myopic about human security frames. It is necessary to identify (1) international and domestic political factors that influence the shaping of the Taliban’s image/s in Pakistan’s elite press; (2) what might be done to rectify the exclusion by framing studies of human security issues in relation to Taliban; (3) to what extent elite media focus on political and security issues at the expense of human security (including rights of women and girls). Data was gathered (1) through a literature review of previous framing studies and (2) from four elite newspapers for the contemporary period. A novel bi-optic framing analysis model, with both security and human security lenses, was developed and used. It found that framing of the Taliban has depended on newspapers, their targeted readership, their affiliation with powerful political parties, and the policy of these affiliates vis-a-vis US actions in Afghanistan. Common to all has been a security orientation that is clearly discernible when numerical values for security and human security frames are contrasted. A detailed discussion of numerical and qualitative values on security and human security weightages in the four newspapers will be useful to policymakers, researchers, and newspaper editors in addressing the imbalance, in order to afford necessary attention to human security and women’s and girls’ rights.