Azmat Khan | Ohio University (original) (raw)

Papers by Azmat Khan

Media, War & Conflict, 2023

For the last four decades, Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun tribal areas have been in a constant s... more For the last four decades, Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun tribal areas have been in a constant state of imperialist wars. In reaction to this organized violence, a local civil rights movement, the PTM, emerged in 2014 which powerfully challenged the military’s discursive regime that legitimates these US-led wars. However, the military challenged the movement’s call for justice by launching a concerted discursive drive to construct an enemy image of the PTM. This study aims to discover how the military constructs the identity, as well as the cultural and political meanings of the movement. The authors found that the military strategically organizes its discourse to first build a symbolic order in which an enemy other, less than human, is created, and then its oppression is normalized and made invisible. They hope that the article contributes to the current critical scholarship on the increasing militarization of contemporary public spaces and democratic cultures, particularly in the context of South Asia.

Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 2022

Due to the State’s militarized policies in the war-torn Pashtun areas (ex-FATA) bordering Afghani... more Due to the State’s militarized policies in the war-torn Pashtun areas (ex-FATA) bordering Afghanistan, the Pakistan government’s undeclared internet policy in this region has become an obstacle in the way of both exercising the freedom of expression and the attainment of digital access as a basic human right. This is in line with the colonial legacy of keeping this area a buffer-zone, strategically rendering it an information black hole. But the criminalization of digital freedom has also triggered local protests for media-making rights. Based on interviews with ‘tribal’ students, and using critical discourse analysis in combination with Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, we examine how the Pakistani State denies the tribal students their digital rights resulting in the loss of their time and the consequences of this collective loss. We found that the local frustration could not be limited to the lack of internet. Entailing an element of passive defiance, the tribal students are deserting their ancestral land to reclaim their bodies from the goliath of the State, hampering its necro behemoth that is using them as a complicit body in a disabled space.

Pakistan Journal of Media Science, 2022

Having established its economic power globally, China is now also asserting its soft power in the... more Having established its economic power globally, China is now also asserting its soft power in the international symbolic representational realm-largely dominated by the West. This paper critically evaluates how BBC discursively constructs China in its Online English and Urdu News, and discusses its attendant social, political, and economic implications for the Chinese and Pakistani citizens in particular, and for people all over the world. We also discuss how does the West perceive China's efforts to establish a global soft image and what role BBC plays in it. Using a combination of research tools; Framing, Authorship and Sourcing, the study analyzed 115 news stories. The analysis revealed that 'China-Threat' is the dominant frame in BBC's coverage of China. Second, all stories were written by correspondents stationed outside China. Finally, BBC disproportionately cited Western news/expert sources, and also many sources/reports were unspecified (anonymous). The aim of this paper is to prompt readers to question commonly held assumptions of China propagated mostly by Western media.

NUST Journal of International Peace & Stability, 2020

This paper compares the coverage of Kashmir Conflict in four English language dailies: two from P... more This paper compares the coverage of Kashmir Conflict in four English language dailies: two from Pakistan; DAWN and The Nation, and two from India; 'The HINDU' and 'Times of India' by employing Galtung's Model of Peace Journalism (Galtung, 1986; 1998) and Lynch & McGoldrick's (2005) Two-Sided Conflict Model. The study pursues two research questions; is the coverage of these newspaper war or peace-oriented, and do they report Kashmir Conflict through Two-Party (Pak-India) or Multi-Party lenses. For data sources, seven major recent events; Burhan Wani's killing (2016), Uri Attack, Indian Surgical Strikes, Pulwama Attack, Balakot Airstrike, and Abhi Nandan's Capture and Release (2019) were chosen. A total of 56 stories, one lead story and one editorial from each newspaper about every event, were collected. Each story was evaluated according to Galtung's 19 indicators; nine War, nine Peace and one Neutral, and accordingly categorized. The analysis revealed that DAWN had the highest (46.15%) peace-oriented coverage while The HINDU was second with only 23% peace content. In the war category, The Nation scored the highest (100%) while the Times of India was found second (92.85%). No story could qualify for the neutral category. Overall, the coverage of these newspapers was found grossly (81.13%) war-oriented. Moreover, in the coverage of the Kashmir Conflict, the media succumb to the Two-Sided Model, projecting Pakistani and Indian states as the only legitimate parties while Kashmiris are portrayed as mere passive victims. These newspapers also focus only on visible effects and heavily rely on elite positions. The purpose of this study was to examine how much Peace Journalism-being reasonably advocated throughout the last decade in the Subcontinent-has changed the attitude of our media towards peace reporting.

Media, War & Conflict, 2023

For the last four decades, Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun tribal areas have been in a constant s... more For the last four decades, Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun tribal areas have been in a constant state of imperialist wars. In reaction to this organized violence, a local civil rights movement, the PTM, emerged in 2014 which powerfully challenged the military’s discursive regime that legitimates these US-led wars. However, the military challenged the movement’s call for justice by launching a concerted discursive drive to construct an enemy image of the PTM. This study aims to discover how the military constructs the identity, as well as the cultural and political meanings of the movement. The authors found that the military strategically organizes its discourse to first build a symbolic order in which an enemy other, less than human, is created, and then its oppression is normalized and made invisible. They hope that the article contributes to the current critical scholarship on the increasing militarization of contemporary public spaces and democratic cultures, particularly in the context of South Asia.

Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 2022

Due to the State’s militarized policies in the war-torn Pashtun areas (ex-FATA) bordering Afghani... more Due to the State’s militarized policies in the war-torn Pashtun areas (ex-FATA) bordering Afghanistan, the Pakistan government’s undeclared internet policy in this region has become an obstacle in the way of both exercising the freedom of expression and the attainment of digital access as a basic human right. This is in line with the colonial legacy of keeping this area a buffer-zone, strategically rendering it an information black hole. But the criminalization of digital freedom has also triggered local protests for media-making rights. Based on interviews with ‘tribal’ students, and using critical discourse analysis in combination with Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, we examine how the Pakistani State denies the tribal students their digital rights resulting in the loss of their time and the consequences of this collective loss. We found that the local frustration could not be limited to the lack of internet. Entailing an element of passive defiance, the tribal students are deserting their ancestral land to reclaim their bodies from the goliath of the State, hampering its necro behemoth that is using them as a complicit body in a disabled space.

Pakistan Journal of Media Science, 2022

Having established its economic power globally, China is now also asserting its soft power in the... more Having established its economic power globally, China is now also asserting its soft power in the international symbolic representational realm-largely dominated by the West. This paper critically evaluates how BBC discursively constructs China in its Online English and Urdu News, and discusses its attendant social, political, and economic implications for the Chinese and Pakistani citizens in particular, and for people all over the world. We also discuss how does the West perceive China's efforts to establish a global soft image and what role BBC plays in it. Using a combination of research tools; Framing, Authorship and Sourcing, the study analyzed 115 news stories. The analysis revealed that 'China-Threat' is the dominant frame in BBC's coverage of China. Second, all stories were written by correspondents stationed outside China. Finally, BBC disproportionately cited Western news/expert sources, and also many sources/reports were unspecified (anonymous). The aim of this paper is to prompt readers to question commonly held assumptions of China propagated mostly by Western media.

NUST Journal of International Peace & Stability, 2020

This paper compares the coverage of Kashmir Conflict in four English language dailies: two from P... more This paper compares the coverage of Kashmir Conflict in four English language dailies: two from Pakistan; DAWN and The Nation, and two from India; 'The HINDU' and 'Times of India' by employing Galtung's Model of Peace Journalism (Galtung, 1986; 1998) and Lynch & McGoldrick's (2005) Two-Sided Conflict Model. The study pursues two research questions; is the coverage of these newspaper war or peace-oriented, and do they report Kashmir Conflict through Two-Party (Pak-India) or Multi-Party lenses. For data sources, seven major recent events; Burhan Wani's killing (2016), Uri Attack, Indian Surgical Strikes, Pulwama Attack, Balakot Airstrike, and Abhi Nandan's Capture and Release (2019) were chosen. A total of 56 stories, one lead story and one editorial from each newspaper about every event, were collected. Each story was evaluated according to Galtung's 19 indicators; nine War, nine Peace and one Neutral, and accordingly categorized. The analysis revealed that DAWN had the highest (46.15%) peace-oriented coverage while The HINDU was second with only 23% peace content. In the war category, The Nation scored the highest (100%) while the Times of India was found second (92.85%). No story could qualify for the neutral category. Overall, the coverage of these newspapers was found grossly (81.13%) war-oriented. Moreover, in the coverage of the Kashmir Conflict, the media succumb to the Two-Sided Model, projecting Pakistani and Indian states as the only legitimate parties while Kashmiris are portrayed as mere passive victims. These newspapers also focus only on visible effects and heavily rely on elite positions. The purpose of this study was to examine how much Peace Journalism-being reasonably advocated throughout the last decade in the Subcontinent-has changed the attitude of our media towards peace reporting.