Media Representation Of The Legitimacy Of Afghan Taliban

After its unexpected capture of Afghan capital city of Kabul,Afghan Taliban burst into public view through news coverage.The United Nations later confirmed the recognition of Taliban by member states,which directed the focus of this research to what role the international media played and how they presented Taliban in the dynamics of political change among international powers when it comes to the legitimacy of a newly born government.In this research,it was found that international media barely discuss the legitimacy of Afghan Taliban in a direct way.But the idea of legitimacy is always reflected in media representation when Afghan Taliban is the main subject.Although a little bit implicit,routine frames can be detected in news representation.With the understanding of legitimacy from political science,this paper gives an analysis of media reports about legitimacy-related frames in them.As a device of presenting events,framing influences how people perceive and understand the world.Effects of frames are significant,and to this day one can detect frames in almost every news story.A thorough analysis of fames used in media reports can reflect representative features of newspapers and reveal the power relations behind them.Meanwhile,the status of legitimacy or illegitimacy can be affected by news communication.Legitimacy is based on public’s understanding and recognition,and it is the media that connect a government and its people.Thus,news media are important players in the process of winning support of public.If seen from concrete news texts,news media tend to use frames to discuss the legitimacy of a government or organization,through which the media can affect public perception of its government.Based on what has been mentioned above,this paper studies the question of legitimacy of Afghan Taliban in virtue of framing theory.Frames develop over time,and the process of framing can be influenced by different political,economic and cultural backgrounds.Different frames from different media outlets can interact with each other,leading to results of competing frames between newspapers,resonation of frames with each other and dissemination from one to another.On the other hand,as the core concept of political science,legitimacy deals with how rulers and citizens establish a steady relation between them.The status of being legitimate has a broad base of support,including rational,traditional,and charismatic ones.These supports are shaky,and they may be hit by legitimate crises.Besides,when international powers are concerned,legitimacy cannot be established without a consensus.In this way,legitimacy actually amounts to a resource which can be shaped,reconstructed,and competed for by different powers.This feature resembles what has been mentioned above about the interaction between frames from different news outlets.Using framing theory within the boundaries of sociology and the method of content analysis,this research gives an analysis of news texts regarding Afghan Taliban of four newspapers from four countries in the light of 10 hypotheses and 5 research questions come up with along the process.Among them,the feature of frame uses by different media outlets is the main focus.In the process,this paper explores the feature of representation by different media,the similarities and differences between them,and how they interact with each other.Frames used by existing studies are not fit for this study,as a result,new frames and standards of detection are established.With a systematic review of the concept of legitimacy from political science,this paper comes up with 5 frames:Tradition,Rationale,Charisma,Legitimacy Crisis,and International Consensus.Accordingly,5 standards of detection have been prescribed.A deductive way of detecting frames is chosen to avoid the drawback of study being difficult to replicate.The interaction of frames between news outlets is inquired with the statistical analysis of Frame Significance and Mean Time of the date when frames are used,both concepts were proposed by former researchers.This paper studies how international newspapers outside Afghanistan deal with Afghan Taliban after they had seized control of the country for the second time after 20 years of fighting.More than 400 reports from Aug.15,2021 to Feb.15,2022 from China Daily,the New York Times,the Nation,and Tehran Times are coded and analyzed,and Sept.8 is seen as a node and divides this period into 2 phases.This research found that the frame of Charisma cannot be detected in all papers.On the contrary,4 other frames are all involved in their daily news,and these 4 frames constituted all the ways of representation by these 4 papers when it comes to the question of whether Afghan Taliban is legitimate.Among them,the frame of Tradition can be detected occasionally,which means representation of Afghan Taliban in the frame of Tradition is not often used by media coverage.Frame of Rationale is most used by the New York Times to denounce the inability of Afghan Taliban to guarantee Afghan people a safe environment of living.The Nation tends to use the frame of Legitimacy Crisis,in which it demonstrates whether the interim government led by Afghan Taliban is inclusive.At last,the frame of International Consensus appears in most reports of Tehran Times,where the paper is concerned with whether international powers are willing to recognize A fghan Taliban.After testing the Pearson correlation between different frames from different outlets during two phases,this paper found that China Daily and the New York Times,the Nation and Tehran Times,plus China Daily and the Nation,three groups of papers have similar features in using the 4 frames to present Afghan Taliban.The method of textual analysis is applied to further determine that China Daily and the New York Times is the only group of papers that is found to use competing frames to shape people’s ideas about the legitimacy of Afghan Taliban.This paper assigns natural numbers in sequence for frames according to the date when they are used before carrying out an ANOVA test of the mean of the natural numbers that have been assigned.As a result,the Nation is found to resonate with the New York Times in using same frames to present Afghan Taliban.As for the dissemination of frames,significant result has only been found between the Nation and Tehran Times.Following the guidance of the concept of Legitimacy and the method of Frame Analysis,this paper has conducted an inquiry into news reports of four newspapers from four countries,thus introduced how the issue of legitimacy of Afghan Taliban arose and developed in international news media.This study is useful in three ways.First is its way of introducing a new concept from other subjects and using it in frameanalyzing news texts.This may serve as a way to push back the frontiers of framing theory.Second,framing strategies of different newspapers get revealed.And last,it learns to some degree the dynamics of the media interaction.