Framing the Fray: Evaluating Conflict Frames in Indian Election News Coverage

TL;DR

This study analyzes how Indian election news outlets use conflict framing in 2014 and 2019, revealing that conflict framing is more common in TV media and tends to emphasize opposition attacks over substantive issues.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of conflict framing in Indian election coverage, highlighting media type influences and reporting biases in political event coverage.

Findings

Conflict frames are more prevalent in TV media than print.

Most outlets do not show ideological bias in conflict portrayal.

News under-reports substantive issues compared to speech transcripts.

Abstract

In covering elections, journalists often use conflict frames which depict events and issues as adversarial, often highlighting confrontations between opposing parties. Although conflict frames result in more citizen engagement, they may distract from substantive policy discussion. In this work, we analyze the use of conflict frames in online English-language news articles by seven major news outlets in the 2014 and 2019 Indian general elections. We find that the use of conflict frames is not linked to the news outlets' ideological biases but is associated with TV-based (rather than print-based) media. Further, the majority of news outlets do not exhibit ideological biases in portraying parties as aggressors or targets in articles with conflict frames. Finally, comparing news articles reporting on political speeches to their original speech transcripts, we find that, on average, news outlets tend to consistently report on attacks on the opposition party in the speeches but under-report on more substantive electoral issues covered in the speeches such as farmers' issues and infrastructure.