The Representation of Imran Khan as an Opposition Leader in Pakistani Urdu Newspapers

Abstract

Media, as significant pillars of society, perform an important role in the creation and preservation of discourses that influence our day-to-day lives and form our knowledge of ourselves and the things around us. Media do not only reveal the communal perceptions but influence the construction and adaptation of public perceptions. Hence, the media reflect, clear and confirm the rival social and political discourses, and contribute to the production of meanings or in other words, in fabricating and launching the reality. The purpose of the research was to examine print media discourse in the Pakistani context and to study the role of media representations in creating, emphasizing and circulating particular ideologies. The data was collected from columns of Jang. The outcomes and conclusion add to the literature regarding the role of representation in Pakistani print media. Furthermore, they provide an opportunity to comprehend the policy of the newspaper and the outlook of the columnists through critical discourse analysis of two hundred and fifty-two (252) columns of the most prominent Urdu language newspaper of Pakistan. The study concludes that the discourse of columns in Pakistani Urdu language newspapers, especially, related to the representation of Imran Khan, is ideologically loaded and does not only mirror but circulates the columnists’ ideologies particularly and of newspaper’s publishers in general.