THE FRAMING OF THE ROHINGYA CRISIS IN BANGLADESHI ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ONLINE NEWS MEDIA: A DIACHRONIC CORPUS-ASSISTED ANALYSIS, 2019–2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v9i2.749Keywords:
media framing, Rohingya crisis, dynamic frame theory, corpus linguistics, diachronic analysisAbstract
This study examines how Bangladeshi English-language online news media framed the Rohingya refugee crisis from 2019 to 2025, applying Marvin Minsky's dynamic frame theory as its primary analytical framework. Minsky conceptualizes frames as consisting of a stable core that remains constant across contexts and variable slots that are filled with different content over time. Following the methodological template established by Radina and Iakupova (2022), the study conducts a corpus-assisted framing analysis using bigram extraction in AntConc software on a corpus of approximately 250 news articles drawn from three national outlets: The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, and bdnews24. The corpus is divided into three periods reflecting the political trajectory of the crisis: humanitarian emergency (2019–2020), diplomatic strategies (2021–2022), and crisis normalization (2023–2025). Findings show that a 17-bigram stable core anchored in humanitarian vocabulary persists across all three periods, while variable role and event slots shift markedly: from victims and emergency responders in Period 1, to negotiators and repatriation talks in Period 2, to security actors and governance concerns in Period 3. Frequencies are normalized as instances per million words to enable valid cross-period comparison. These shifts are interpreted through Entman's (1993) four framing functions, revealing that problem definition, causal attribution, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation are redistributed across the stable core and variable slots as political circumstances evolve. The study extends Minsky's dynamic frame theory, previously applied only to a criminal-trial context, to a protracted humanitarian crisis, and offers a replicable diachronic template for studying host-country media discourse.References
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