Research Article Open Access

Representation of News Sources' Gender in Climate Change Reporting in Pakistani Press

Abstract

The news stories’ formations and structures are based on solid reliable sources. The diverse news sources create different shades of perspectives; thus, news stories’ credibility is enhanced. The global studies have found that primary sources used in all sorts of news media are mostly official/government and elite. Journalists and media organizations compromise non-elite or marginalized sources. Furthermore, a few studies have explored gender as a source of news stories and concluded that female sources are insignificantly used in the news stories. This study aims to examine the use of female sources in climate change reporting in Pakistani Press. In this longitudinal study, the quantitative content analysis method is used. The data is collected from three highly circulated dailies issued in the different languages,’ namely Dawn (English), Jang (Urdu) and Kawish (Sindhi). The study has applied the systematic random sampling, and it is based on five significant global climate change events. These are Earth Summit (1992), Rio de Janerio, Kyoto Protocol (1997), Ratification of KyotoProtocol Globally (2005), COP15 (2009) Copenhagen and COP21 (2015) Paris. The findings show that in Pakistani Press use of female sources in climate change reporting at these five significant events was rare. This study recommends that studies of similar nature, extended to coverage of other societal issued should be conducted to know the application of female sources in the reporting.

Rashid Ali Khuhro, Hamedi Mohd Adnan, Mohsin Hassan Khan, Haifa Aljuaid and Zaffar Iqbal Junejo

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