From Discourse to Meta-discourse: A Comparative Content Analysis of Print Media’s Role in Ideological Polarization on Aurat March in Pakistan

Abstract

The role of media in shaping socio-political ideologies of a cultural polity is nothing short of gargantuan in the contemporary world. If analyzed through the theoretical lenses offered by Michael Foucault and Ken Hyland, the media’s role can be explicated in light of the conceptual categories of discourse and meta-discourse. By adhering to this theoretical slant, this study aims to identify the divergent ideological representations of Aurat March discourse by Dawn and The Nation and traces how through agenda-setting and strategic linguistic framing they generate ideologically polarized discourses. The data for this qualitative research has been selected through purposive sampling so that it can be empirically reduced to concepts and themes to interpret the research phenomenon. For this purpose, this research focuses on the selected news reports, opinion articles, and editorials published in Dawn and The Nation in the months of March of the years 2020 and 2021. The categorization of the selected content resulted in the emergence of three themes that determine the analytical schema of the study. These themes are patriarchy, violence and abuse, and women’s rights. If Dawn offers an emphatically radical ideological stance in presenting the Aurat March discourse, The Nation offers an ideological stance that in being evidently conventionalist stands in stark opposition to Dawn’s ideological incline. It seems safe to construe that to a great extent, the ideological polarization of Pakistani society on the subject of Aurat March is an outcome of the role played by the ideologically polarized mainstream media and their power to control the minds of the target audience by strategic use of language.