Abstract
Media coverage of militancy in Swat valley, Pakistan, promotes the use
of militarization as the “only” means to dismantle the Taliban,
ignoring the local civil society and its struggle for change. As
journalists and participant observers in this struggle, we examine the
portrayal of Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in two
leading English dailies, The New York Times of the U.S., and daily
Dawn of Pakistan. We explore how was Malala’s struggle for women
education in Swat reflected in the editorial text of the two dailies and
how did this coverage relate to the overall civil society movement
against militancy in Swat? Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA),
this study finds that both the newspapers make a strong case for
militarization and associate Swat with the Taliban only, thus making
invisible the role of the local anti-Taliban struggle. We argue that the
way media pick a few successful people to present them out of context
as role models for others to follow, have significant consequences in
areas of militarized imperialist conflicts, where resistance to organized
violence, be it state-sponsored or by the Taliban, is rooted in
communal traditions and collective approaches.
Syed Irfan Ashraf, Faizullah Jan. (2018) Militarizing Malala: Global Media and Local Struggle, The Dialogue, Volume 13, Issue 4.
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