THE FRAMING OF THE ROHINGYA CRISIS IN BANGLADESHI ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ONLINE NEWS MEDIA: A DIACHRONIC CORPUS-ASSISTED ANALYSIS, 2019–2025

Mostafa Samsul Bary

Abstract


This study examines how Bangladeshi English-language online news media framed the Rohingya refugee crisis from 2019 to 2025, applying Marvin Minsky's dynamic frame theory as its primary analytical framework. Minsky conceptualizes frames as consisting of a stable core that remains constant across contexts and variable slots that are filled with different content over time. Following the methodological template established by Radina and Iakupova (2022), the study conducts a corpus-assisted framing analysis using bigram extraction in AntConc software on a corpus of approximately 250 news articles drawn from three national outlets: The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, and bdnews24. The corpus is divided into three periods reflecting the political trajectory of the crisis: humanitarian emergency (2019–2020), diplomatic strategies (2021–2022), and crisis normalization (2023–2025). Findings show that a 17-bigram stable core anchored in humanitarian vocabulary persists across all three periods, while variable role and event slots shift markedly: from victims and emergency responders in Period 1, to negotiators and repatriation talks in Period 2, to security actors and governance concerns in Period 3. Frequencies are normalized as instances per million words to enable valid cross-period comparison. These shifts are interpreted through Entman's (1993) four framing functions, revealing that problem definition, causal attribution, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation are redistributed across the stable core and variable slots as political circumstances evolve. The study extends Minsky's dynamic frame theory, previously applied only to a criminal-trial context, to a protracted humanitarian crisis, and offers a replicable diachronic template for studying host-country media discourse.

Keywords


media framing; Rohingya crisis; dynamic frame theory; corpus linguistics; diachronic analysis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Agier M, 2011. Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/26229114

Anthony L, 2022. AntConc (Version 4.x) [Computer software]. Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

Baker P, McEnery T, 2005. A corpus-based approach to discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in UN and newspaper texts. Journal of Language and Politics 4: 197–226. Retrieved from https://research.lancaster-university.uk/en/publications/a-corpus-based-approach-to-discourses-of-refugees-and-asylum-seek/

Bateson G, 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chandler, San Francisco, USA. Retrieved from https://books.google.ro/books/about/Steps_to_an_Ecology_of_Mind.html?id=HewJbnQmn1gC&redir_esc=y

Berry M, Garcia-Blanco I, Moore K, 2016. Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries. UNHCR, Geneva, Switzerland. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325763556_Press_Coverage_of_the_Refugee_and_Migrant_Crisis_in_the_EU_A_Content_Analysis_of_Five_European_Countries

Chouliaraki L, Zaborowski R, 2017. Voice and community in the 2015 refugee crisis. International Communication Gazette 79: 613–635. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048517727173

Dunning T, 1993. Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics 19: 61–74. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2477641_Accurate_Methods_for_the_Statistics_of_Surprise_and_Coincidence

Entman RM, 1993. Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication 43: 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x

Esses VM, Medianu S, Lawson AE, 2013. Uncertainty, threat, and the role of the media in promoting the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees. Journal of Social Issues 69: 518–536. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12027

Fillmore CJ, 1982. Frame semantics. In: Linguistics in the Morning Calm, The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed). Hanshin, Seoul, South Korea, pp 111–137. Retrieved from https://brenocon.com/Fillmore%201982_2up.pdf

Goffman E, 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. Retrieved from https://books.google.ro/books/about/Frame_Analysis.html?id=XBpmAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y

Greussing E, Boomgaarden HG, 2017. Shifting the refugee narrative? An automated frame analysis of Europe's 2015 refugee crisis. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43: 1749–1774. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1282813

Heidenreich T, Lind F, Eberl JM, Boomgaarden HG, 2019. Media framing dynamics of the European refugee crisis: A comparative topic modelling approach. Journal of Refugee Studies 32: i172–i182. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez025

Irom B, Borah P, Vishnevskaya A, Gibbons S, 2021. News framing of the Rohingya crisis: Content analysis of newspaper coverage from four countries. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2021.1906472

Malkki LH, 1996. Speechless emissaries: Refugees, humanitarianism, and dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology 11: 377–404. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050

Minsky M, 1975. A framework for representing knowledge. In: The Psychology of Computer Vision, Winston PH (ed). McGraw-Hill, New York, USA, pp 211–277. Retrieved from https://dspace.mit.edu/entities/publication/0eca0164-cb5f-42de-8c86-43f54b23306d

Pupavac V, 2008. Refugee advocacy, traumatic representations and political disenchantment. Government and Opposition 43: 270–292. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/44484135

Radina NK, Iakupova KR, 2022. Media framing and media detectives construction: A case about corruption. Communication Studies (Russia) 9: 800–816. https://doi.org/10.24147/2413-6182.2022.9(4).800-816

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2021. Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2020. UNHCR, Geneva, Switzerland. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/media/global-trends-forced-displacement-2020

United Nations Human Rights Council, 2018. Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (A/HRC/39/64). UNHRC, Geneva, Switzerland. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/FFM-Myanmar/A_HRC_39_64.pdf

Vu HT, Lynn N, 2020. When the news takes sides: Automated framing analysis of news coverage of the Rohingya crisis by the elite press from three countries. Journalism Studies 21: 1237–1255. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1745665




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v9i2.749

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.

Copyright © 2018-2026. European Journal of Applied Linguistics Studies (ISSN 2602 - 0254 / ISSN-L 2602 - 0254). All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.