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Media Narratives and State Legitimacy in the Kashmir Conflict: A study of legitimization strategies in Indian news coverage and government statements
Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, HLK, Global Studies.
Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, HLK, Global Studies.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Conflicts over territorial control and identity shape political life in many regions worldwide. In South Asia, the long-standing dispute over Kashmir reached a pivotal moment when India abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution on the 5th of August 2019. This decision resulted in diplomatic breakdowns with Pakistan, months long security lockdown and communications blackout in Indian-administered Kashmir, and India also received much critique from various human rights organizations. The following thesis aims to investigate the discursive strategies through which the Indian Government and leading English-language newspapers frame the abrogation of Article 370, aiming to understand how these narratives serve to legitimize India’s actions by justifying state power and influencing public opinion. This qualitative study employs Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze English-language print-media in India as well as a smaller sample of official government communications. After coding the corpus, the results are analyzed through the lenses of Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of CDA and Edward Said’s postcolonial framework of Orientalism. Analytical findings reveal that both government and media texts make extensive use of value-laden language and high-certainty modals such as “will” and “must” to portray the abrogation as an inevitable, morally good, decision. Furthermore, intertextual references and appeals to authority are made to further reinforce state legitimacy by situating the decision as both lawful and as the fulfillment of India’s postcolonial story of nation-building. By mapping these convergences and divergences, this thesis contributes to our understanding of how state and journalistic discourse interact to produce legitimizing narratives.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 41
Keywords [en]
Kashmir conflict, Article 370 abrogation, Conflict legitmization, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Postcolonial theory, State sovereignty, Media framing, Government communications
National Category
Peace and Conflict Studies Media and Communication Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-68718OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-68718DiVA, id: diva2:1972141
Subject / course
HLK, Social Studies
Supervisors
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Available from: 2025-06-25 Created: 2025-06-18 Last updated: 2025-10-13Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
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Output format
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