News Media Framing of the Environmental Issues: A Transnational Comparative Analysis of Pakistan and Britain

Abstract

This study examined environmental issues from framing perspective. It attempts to understand the framing schemes in the purposively sampled newspapers of Pakistan and the UK. Under the constructionist view of framing analysis revealed that environmental communication is massively suffering from hypocognition which resulting the lack of effective framing perspectives and often construct major obstacles in efficient environmental management and policy making. Variability in framing perspectives influence the individual value systems, beliefs, preferences and reactions to environmental hazards in environmental decision-making process. Moreover, comparative approach of this quantitative study within the universe of year 2007 to 2016 sample of 1,139 news stories reflects the significant differences in news framing capacity of Pakistani and British print media while reporting of environmental issues.