FRAMING AND APPRAISAL OF POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN MEDIA DISCOURSE

Abstract

Through the representation, the opinion of a populace and the narrative of politics regarding pressure groups is framed through the media. These groups would be either justified in the representation or not and would affect their social acceptance and influence. A lot of study has been done on media portrayal of the pressure groups. Nonetheless, one would still state that the study on the representation of pressure groups in the English Pakistani newspapers is deficient. Therefore within the broader umbrella of the Agenda setting theory the current study was trying to qualitatively explore the evaluative representation of the pressure groups in the selected editorials of the English newspapers of Pakistan in regard to image building of pressure groups in Pakistan. The analysis of appraisal showed that the newspaper editorial presentations were extremely manipulative in its presentation of the pressure groups through the use of the appraisal tools. PTM (Pashtun Tahafuz Movement) has been provided as democratic, rights based movement under the repression of the state whereas BYC (Baloch Yakjehti Committee) is provided as a marginalized people struggling to demand justice but volatile since it utilizes a multiplicity of different appraisal tools in a manipulative manner such as metaphor, negative judgment, negative affect, negative appreciation, judgmental expression, heteroglossia, deontic modality, hedges, proclaimer, adverbial intensifier, up scalar, positive appreciation, positive judgment, monoglossia.