THE IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OF CORRUPTION IN PAKISTANI AND INDIAN ENGLISH- LANGUAGE NEWSPAPERS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

Corruption has always been the top most continuous challenge to governance, democracy, and social trust in South Asia. While research has figured out the structural and institutional roots of corruption and less attention has been paid to the linguistic and discursive strategies through which corruption is constructed in prominent English-language newspapers. This paper presents a comparative analysis that how these two leading South Asian newspapers—Dawn (Pakistan) and The Hindu (India) ideologically construct and frame the high-profile corruption scandals: the Panama Papers and the Adani Group controversy. The employing of mixed-methods approach which combines a corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. This study explores more than 270 pieces of articles that have been published over 2016-2024. The results show that there is very noticeable and clear distinction between these two newspapers discourse (Dawn and The Hindu). Dawn repeatedly personalizes corruption and foregrounding individual actors such as Nawaz Sharif and using sensitive and moralizing language which frames the scandal as a national crisis and a test of judicial authority. In contrast to that The Hindu adopts a more institutionalized and technocratic perspective which are diffusing agency across regulatory bodies, corporations and systems and prioritizing frames of governance, compliance and reform. As shown in the analysis, these discursive tendencies are reflected in more underlying socio-political realities that are the unstable political culture and history of judicial activism in Pakistan stimulating personalization and crisis framing and India institutional stability and close ties between state and business stimulating systemic and regulatory discourse. This research points to the strength of the media not only to mirror but also to structure popular conceptions of corruption and policy discussions and popular trust. Integrating empirical rigor and critical analysis, the paper not only contributes a development in the field of research on media studies and discourse analysis but also in the field of research on anti-corruption. These findings have far-reaching implications on media literacy and policy as well as journalism practice in South Asia and internationally.