Beyond the haze: Media coverage of smog in Pakistan

Abstract

Smog is one of the major environmental challenges for many countries, leading to various health implications for the public across the globe, especially in the Global South. It has been affecting the most populous province of Pakistan, Punjab. A cross-sectional research design is employed to analyse media coverage of two different episodes of smog (2017 and 2019) in six Pakistani newspapers through qualitative content analysis. Systematic random sampling was employed, which resulted in a corpus of 356 news items. The analysis concluded that Urdu newspapers cover the issue of smog relatively more than English newspapers. Six frames were employed in the coverage of smog: attribution of responsibility, disaster, disaster response, public health, morality and ethics, and human interest. The media dominantly presents attribution of responsibility, disaster and disaster response, and public health frames. Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of environmental communication in the Global South and offers insight for effective reporting on smog.