Pakistan's General Elections of 2018: Representation of Economic Issues and Orientation of Political News Coverage in The Elite Newspapers of Pakistan
In a democratic society, mass media and political system have a strong bond with each other. Big media powerhouses attempt to develop linkages with political parties for economic benefits. These parties' linkages with media houses may have affected news items' representation of issues from both positive and negative reporting angles. An eminent scholar of agenda-setting through McCombs et al. (1997), pointed out that media has great power to set the agenda of public and political parties also actively engages the media houses to advance their elections. This study attempts to learn the news representation of issues during the General Elections (GE) of 2018 in Pakistan. This present study employed a content analysis method to investigate news issues coverage and representation in 10 mainstream newspapers based on readership size. The findings suggest that news items representation of issues among newspapers are highly polarized on the basis of sympathize towards their favourite political parties.