Degree

BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)

Faculty / School

School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)

Department

Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts

Date of Award

Spring 2026

Date of Submission

2026-07-25

Advisor

Yumna Fatima, Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences

Project Type

SSLA Culminating Experience

Access Type

Restricted Access

Keywords

Polarisation, Framing, Selective Exposure, pre-aligning views, partisan

Abstract

This study has explored how media framing affects the perception of voters and the increase of polarisation in Pakistan and whether this effect varies with the perceived trustworthiness of a medium and linkage to their political perspective. In this thesis, various issues have been examined by using the following two methods: survey and semi-structured interviews, with which four themes have been established. The first theme explores the ways in which journalists frame meaning via headlines, words, and images. The second theme demonstrates this, highlighting the fact that this is a framing from an earlier layer of institutional pressure and self-censorship in newsrooms that largely goes unseen in Pakistan. The third theme draws attention to the audiences' active choice of news sources rather than passively receiving information and to the ability of audiences to interpret news coverage in terms of existing trust and partisan identity. The fourth theme builds on the first three themes and gives counter-evidence from the survey and interviews that a significant minority of voters had decided their opinion well before they encountered the relevant media content. These findings together indicate that the hypothesis is somewhat confirmed: for a large number of voters, a tendency to endorse a particular framing suggests that they are predisposed to accept that framing of the media outlet they trust; for others, the situation is reversed, and the tendency to endorse a given framing does not imply that they trust that outlet. This study adds an empirical case study to be added to the literature of media framing and political polarisation, which has been mostly drawn from Western contexts.

Pages

73

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