Media Narratives from the Margins: A Framing Analysis of Press Coverage of Conflict-Induced Violence in Indian State Assam

SYED MURTAZA ALFARID HUSSAIN
Assam University, India

Abstract
The northeastern state of Assam in India has witnessed long years of armed conflict waged by the ULFA and other militant outfits against the Indian state, and intermittent identity struggles by different ethnic groups and communities demanding greater autonomy and constitutionally guaranteed privileges. The 2000s political landscape of Assam saw several spectacular incidents of violence, of a scale and magnitude that attracted not only national, but also global media attention. This study examines the press coverage of three such spectacular conflict-induced violent events by four frontline English dailies, in order to draw definitive inferences about how the national and the regional press interpreted, constructed and presented these violent incidents in the country’s periphery, to their readers. The findings clearly establish the ways in which the press constructs issues from the nation’s margins in the way they define events, actors, causes and effects of violent political conflicts.

Keywords: Conflict, cumulative prominence score, media framing, Northeast India

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Dr. Syed Murtaza Alfarid Hussain is a senior assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Assam Central University, Silchar, India. In 2006, Dr. Hussain was awarded with a British Council Fellowship and attended a short-term training programme on conflict reporting at Cardiff University in Wales and Belfast in Northern Ireland. In 2008, he was selected as a Rotary scholar to attend a six-month course on Peace and Conflict Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. His research interest is media framing research and is currently supervising scholar in the areas of social media and political communication, human-computer interaction for development (HCI4D), mediatization, media literacy, and film studies.