News Treatment of Terrorism and Political Instability as Social Issues and Shaping the Public Opinion through Agenda-Setting and Framing by Press in Pakistan

The primary goal was to investigate how media in Pakistan handled terrorism and political instability as social issues and shaped public opinion by setting agendas and framing stories. The study's goals were to examine how two dailies, Jang and Dawn, covered and framed the social issues of political instability and terrorism, to analyze distribution by gender when establishing the agenda and importance of each social issue, to examine public opinion as it relates to media agenda and to comprehend opinions of readers of the two dailies. It was found that Dawn newspaper, public opinion, and media agenda were closely related to terrorist problems but differed on political instability issues. In contrast, there was a strong correlation between Jang Newspaper's public opinion and media agenda on political instability and terrorism. Dawn primarily supported the US strategy against terrorism, whereas Jung primarily opposed the US strategy. On the subject of political instability, both newspapers primarily opposed government policy. In conclusion, Dawn provided greater coverage of the US policy, whereas Jang provided less coverage of it regarding the fight against terrorism.