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Homicide-suicide is a tragic event characterized by multiple fatalities within the intimate relationships, familial bonds, and community networks. Our aim was to explore the extent of coverage of homicide-suicide cases in the newspaper reports delivered in Pakistan during the COVID-19 lockdown (March–August 2020). We conducted a quantitative content analysis of news- reports obtained from eight Pakistani newspapers published in English and Urdu languages and daily reviewed by the authors. A total of 50 news-reports have been selected and analyzed, documenting 107 deaths due to homicide-suicide incidents. The majority of these cases involved male perpetrators within family settings, such as parent-child and spousal/married couples, often attributed to factors such us familial discordance and poverty. Negligibly, reasons for homicide-suicides included mental health issues of the perpetrators. Gunshot wounds emerged as the most prevalent method of homicide-suicide. Given the familial backgrounds in most of cases, it is likely that they occurred within the domestic environments. These findings may suggest the need of specific family interventions across the country in order to prevent family discordances or cope with relevant issues within the families, as both may contribute to homicidal and suicidal incidents, either independently or concurrently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media in a country reflects its policies and priorities. It also plays important role in relations with other states. An analysis of print media in Pakistan shows various aspects, such as political, cultural, economic and strategic, of its relations with Russia. Frequency of themes in Pakistani print media shows mutual interest and improvement in relations. This research, explores dominant aspect of Pak-Russia bilateral relations, through the analysis of five daily newspapers, the Dawn, The Frontier Post, The News, The Tribune and The Nation. Predominantly qualitative method, complemented by Quantitative data has been employed with the framework of Framing Theory. This article attempts to answer the question that how Pakistani print media frame Russia to audience and which dominant aspect of mutual relations is being focused? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study is an effort to analyze the lexico-semantic relationships of nouns in Saraiki newspaper. Although spoken as a first language by almost 20 million people in Pakistan, Saraiki has a limited Corpus in the form of ijunoonSaraiki dictionary (2017). A functional corpus for Saraiki would be helpful in developing a WordNet through which the digital applications of Saraiki can be run. Of the four open class categories included in the WordNet the present study explores the semantic relations found among the nouns of Saraiki. A corpus of 2 million words was created from the Saraiki newspaper Jhoke after POS tagging a list of 1500 nouns was generated and the nouns were semantically categorized for identifying the lexical relationships among them using machine readable dictionaries. Each lexical and semantic relation was quantitatively analyzed using Antconc 3.5.7. The 3A model of corpus linguistics was used for annotation and analysis of Saraiki nouns (Wallis & Nelson, 2001). The results revealed ten lexico-semantic relationships frequently found among the nouns in the newspaper Jhoke, which are essential for the development of a lexical data base such as WordNet. The lexico-semantic relationship analysis showed that the singular / plural relationship was the most frequent among the Saraiki nouns while, synonymy was the least frequent relationship. Identifying the noun relationships of Saraiki are a step towards the development of a Saraiki WordNet that would support NLP and other digital applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media, influences topics of public importance. In academia, the recent crescendo in Pak-China relationship is interpreted variedly, such as economic, political, security/strategic, social and even a section of society conjectures China as the second East India Company. The increasing reputation of China in Pakistan, projection of projects such as CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) and frequent reflection of the same in national media, also triggers the academic discussion. This study attempts to highlight various Dimensions of Pak-China relations under the framework of Agenda setting theory and to find out what dimensions, in particular, economic, political, security/strategic and social, dominate this relation? The methodology employed is mainly qualitative, sprinkled with empirical elements, such as data on Pak-China relations, drawn from print media of Pakistan. This might prove one modicum way to determine the nature of Pak-China relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to investigate the lexical choices used by The Washington Post and The New York Times to portray Pakistan in the editorials. It is based on critical discourse analysis of the newspapers' text to reveal hidden ideologies. The data was collected from 12th September 2001 to 31st December 2016. Total population of editorials of both the newspapers was 274, which were downloaded from Lexis Nexis data base. Fourteen sentences from the population were selected through multistage sampling technique. Fairclough's (1989, 1995) models were adopted to analyze the content by using an inductive approach. The results showed that both the newspapers use derogatory and offensive terms and phrases to portray Pakistan. It was concluded that media of such nature is a gigantic contributor in developing a negative global image of Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies and describes the coverage pattern of first 100 days of Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) government performance in the light of agenda setting and framing theories in two leading English dailies of Pakistan: The Nation and The Express Tribune. The front pages of the newspapers were selected for the duration of 100 days to measure the slant, frame, frequency and placement of news stories related to the performance of newly established Pakistan Tehreek Insaf government in the areas of economic affairs and foreign policy. The results indicate that the two leading English dailies cover the activities of the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) differently. The Nation published 18 news stories related to economic affairs and foreign policy of the government while The Express Tribune published 24 news stories related to economic affairs and foreign policy of the newly established government on their front pages duration the 100 days study period. The language and theme of most of the articles published by The Nation were favorable towards Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI). The language and theme of the articles of The Express Tribune were more neutral and critical towards the performance of Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) government in the areas of economic affairs and foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research endeavor aims at systematically examining the newspapers? coverage of crimes incidents in Pakistan. A retrospective quantitative content analysis of Pakistani print media was conducted for a period of one year i.e. 1st January 2017 to 31st December 2017. Two reputed national level newspapers; Daily Dawn English-language and Daily Jang Urdu-language, were selected based on newspaper circulation ratings and readership. Descriptive analysis of the study highlights those discrepancies in crime reports exist between Daily Dawn and Daily Jang. Urdu-language newspaper gives more coverage and published articles on many types of crimes as compared to English-language daily. Similarly, English daily newspaper reported urban areas? crimes more frequently in comparison to Urdu daily, however, articles on violation against women and child abuse are equally reported in both dailies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Suicide is a social relevant issue and a leading cause of deaths in the world; it has been reported that COVID-19 has significantly increased the rate of suicide worldwide. This study aimed to review media reporting on suicide cases occurred in Pakistan during the COVID-19 lockdown., Subjects and Methods: A content analysis has been performed considering the electronic version of the daily Kawish newspaper reporting suicide cases from March to August 2020 in Pakistan., Results: A total of 213 news regarding suicide in Pakistan during the lockdown period were identified. Suicide committers reported age ranging 19-30 years old, and the majority of them were males (74%). Suicide methods ranged as following: harmful practices (79%) > hanging (37%) > self-poisoning (28%). Factors associated to the risk of suicide were: familial discords (36%), poverty (21%) and joblessness (14%)., Conclusion: Findings of this study have shown that pandemic lockdown in Pakistan have increased the number of factors, such as family issues, unemployment and poverty, leading to suicide especially in young males. The report of suicides may have an impact on the public general opinion and a responsible news-reporting is needed by press agencies and media.

This study analyses the portrayal of Pakistan's first female Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, and Pakistan's only female Oscar-winning filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, in the newspaper coverage of four Pakistan's four leading English newspapers, The News, Dawn, The Express Tribune and the Nation. It is also investigated if the debate on women has changed in Pakistan's patriarchal social system and they are encouraged for their achievements. The study is theoretically linked with framing theory and conducts a discourse analysis of 94 news articles. The findings depict a different image of these women as media appreciated the achievements of SOC while discouraged a debate on HRK due to the profession of both the women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the editorial treatment of pre-election manifestos of major political Parties of Pakistan: PMLN (Pakistan Muslim League-N), PPPP (Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians) and PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) in leading English and Urdu dailies of Pakistan during from March 1st to May 9th, 2013. Content analysis method is considered to analyze the editorials and columns published during the aforementioned time frame. Overall, 280 newspapers have been analyzed by a well established coding sheet to limit the number of categories by carrying framing theory to gauge the manifestos of pertinent political parties taking the favorable, unfavorable and neutral frames. Moreover, significant issues i.e. economic, political, social and foreign have been determined in treatment. The findings of the study reveal that English dailies provided enormous treatment to the manifestos of political parties than those of Urdu dailies. It has been observed that not all parties have been offered equitable treatment in the selected time period. Comparatively, PMLN secured the maximum coverage which comprises the maximum neutral and unfavorable treatment among all selected mainstream parties. Hence, it is inferred that the four selected newspapers have considered the PTI highly significant because the abundant space in terms of favorable treatment during selected time span reflects its popularity and active participation throughout the campaign period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper elaborates how three leading English newspapers of Pakistan, i.e. Daily Dawn, Daily The News and Daily The Nation treated the issue of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Swat. The content analysis of news stories on front and back pages and editorials of sample newspapers for a period of three months after the crisis started in Swat highlights the Frames and Slants used in coverage of the IDPs. The total number of news stories and editorials analyzed was 270, out of which there were 219 News Stories and 51 editorials. The News gave maximum coverage while Dawn gave the smallest space to the issue. The maximum number of stories were having slant 'Unfavorable to Government'. The Frame used in the largest number of stories was 'IDPs as Co-Citizens', the second 'Taliban as Foe', third 'War on Terror as an Issue', fourth 'IDPs as Burden', fifth 'War on Terror as Solution' and the Frame found in minimum number of stories was 'Taliban as Friend'. It is also important to note that coverage was more favorable towards IDPs, as the frame 'IDPs as Co-Citizens' was used in a total of 117 stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While media studies have focused on journalist roles in framing foreign news events for local readers to render them suitable for national audiences, there has been less attention to similar roles played by other social actors in bringing ‘home’ new models about existing realities. Therefore, this paper addresses the question of how a global catchphrase, ‘war on terror,’ acquired a national paradigm status by virtue of its use by multiple actors in the media sphere in Pakistan. We analyse all the articles mentioning the catchphrase in a leading national English daily over two years to unpack how the war on terror turned from being ‘their’ war in America to becoming ‘our’ war in Pakistan. Drawing on media studies of localization, we discuss the rhetorical modes by which the term was embedded in the Pakistani political field to give it a distinct national flavour. We refer to this process as ‘domestication’, by which the catchphrase was adopted in Pakistan by local, interested actors including media professionals. We draw particular attention to the way in which this complex process naturalizes the term by nationalizing it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The objectives of this study were to examine the pattern and magnitude of deaths in road traffic crashes (RTCs) in Sindh province of Pakistan. This cross-sectional study used data obtained from government documents and content analysis of daily newspapers' reports on incidents of deaths in RTCs. Results showed that the total annual number of RTCs, fatal RTCs and deaths in RTCs were 2272 (±293), 1104 (±89) and 1321 (±136) respectively. On average, there were four deaths per day in RTCs. The victims were 85% male and the majority were between 15 and 49 years of age. Pedestrians, passengers, motorcyclists and drivers were most commonly the victims. Deaths in RTCs were double in rural areas compared to urban areas. The most common causes of fatal RTCs were by being hit by a vehicle, breakdown and collision of motor vehicles and speeding. The frequent involvement of the men of working age in RTCs may have serious social and economic implications; therefore, the prevention of RTCs, as far as possible, is imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]