Analysis of Newspapers’ Contents and Public Policy making in Pakistan

Abstract

The relationship between media and policy actors has been a significant issue in political & communication research, but the role of media during routine policymaking has rarely been addressed. Moreover, majority of the studies have discussed only one stage of policymaking which is agenda-setting. Subsequent stages of policy cycle i.e. formulation, adoption, implementation and evaluation have considered non-influential, although they are the substantial phases of policy making process, and many of the integral public policy decisions devised during these stages. To classify the influence of media on policy process, the paper aims to examine the contents of print media on the whole policy cycle. For that matter, qualitative research method with techniques of contents and thematic analysis have been employed to analyze the content of English newspapers selected on their high readership graph in Pakistan during a time span of five years (2013-2018). The results show that print media plays a key role in early stages of the policy cycle and strongly influence the policy evaluation, but less susceptible to adoption and implementation stages.