Representation of transgender community in Pakistani English newspapers: a comparative analysis of Daily Dawn & Express Tribune

Abstract

The transgender community is one of the segment of our population, which is socially, culturally and legally less recognized. The media representation is one of the key sources which influence the transgender people regarding their awareness and issues. It helps in changing the perception and behavior of the people towards this community and refers to the direct construction of the gender identity. The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the representation of the transgender people in the mainstream Pakistani English newspapers i.e. Daily Dawn and Daily Express Tribune in a comparative manner. Content analysis has been chosen as study design in order to know the prominence level and the contribution of media for the social inclusion and highlighting the issues faced by the transgender community. Systematic sampling technique has been adopted with the sample size of total news item, articles, editorials and letter to the editors published from October, 2019 to March, 2020. Both newspapers examined and studied in the terms of frequencies, tone and topics. It has been identified that the transgender community is underrepresented in the media. It is revealed that the Daily Dawn published 09 news reports and the Daily Express Tribune published 11 news reports relating to the transgender people in the study period. Moreover, the result shows that most of the published items are coded in terms of tone of the news as positive from both the newspapers. More news placed on the back pages about the transgender community in both newspapers. Comparatively, the Daily Express Tribune has given more coverage to the transgender community as compared to the Daily Dawn.