Representation of the Rohingya People in Bangladeshi Media : A Framing Analysis of Mainstream Newspapers
Uddin, Md Riaz (2021)
Uddin, Md Riaz
2021
Yhteiskuntatutkimuksen maisteriohjelma - Master's Programme in Social Sciences
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2021-05-12
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202104203167
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202104203167
Tiivistelmä
The Rohingya people are the most persecuted minority in the world according to the United Nations. On 25 August 2017, a brutal military operation was launched by the Myanmar Army against the Rohingya civilians in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. Rohingya villages were set on fire, and various heinous crimes like torture, murder and rape were committed by the army as well as the local Buddhist mob. Around 700,000 Rohingyas, a large portion of whom were women and children, fled to the neighboring state Bangladesh to escape persecution. In the immediate aftermath of the violence, the Government of Bangladesh sheltered the refugees and provided humanitarian support. About two years after the crisis, on 11 November 2019, the prime minister of Bangladesh declared the Rohingyas a threat to both national and regional security. This statement indicates a change of pace in the official position of the state regarding the refugees. Since the media play a key role in forming or shifting the public opinion, this research aimed to understand how the Bangladeshi media portray the Rohingya people. Forty articles from the top four newspapers of Bangladesh were analyzed in this regard. At the same time, the securitization framework was employed as an analytical tool. This research finds that the mainstream newspapers of Bangladesh utilize four broad frames to portray the Rohingyas: (i) Human interest, (ii) Attribution of responsibility, (iii) Securitization, and (iv) Conflict. The human interest frame is the most frequent frame across the analyzed articles followed by the attribution of responsibility frame, the securitization frame and the conflict frame. The English newspapers utilize the human interest frame more frequently than the Bengali newspapers. On the other hand, the securitization frame is more common in the Bengali newspapers than their English counterparts. Interestingly, the securitization frame begins to appear in the articles from 2018 onward, meaning there has been a shift in the media framing of the Rohingyas since the 2017 crisis. This research adds to the existing literature by bringing new insights into the securitization of the refugees and the changing nature of media framing in Bangladesh on the Rohingya issue.