Agenda Framing of Social Issues in Pakistani Press: A Study of Daily Dawn and Daily Jang

Media shape public opinion. As a powerful tool of communication, it prioritizes issues and gives them coverage according through editorial judgment. Agendasetting theory explains how media influences the topics in public agenda. In 1968, McCombs and Donald Shaw studied presidential elections of the United States and established a strong relationship between election issue and media coverage. This study has used their theory of agenda setting to explain how two daily newspapers of Pakistan, Dawn and Jang has covered unemployment and energy crisis on their front and back pages during a time period of one year. Content analysis method is applied to investigate the treatment of news in both papers. Findings explain that Jang gave more coverage to these social issues as compared to Dawn. This study recommends more attention to social issues.