The next speaker in this session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town is Sayan Dey, whose focus is on India: how do similar media structures here generate different framing patterns and political legitimacy in this multi-ethnic society? His study compares this for the 2023 elections in the northeastern states of Nagaland and Tripura. Nagaland is mostly populated by ethnic Naga, while Tripura has a mostly Bengali population.
This project builds on framing theory, social identity theory, and governmentality and political economy; it examines media structures at the macro level, framing practices at the meso level, and audience trust and interpretation at the micro level. Sayan collected some 100 newspaper articles from two papers from each of the states; and engaged in interviews with journalists, experts, and voters.
In Nagaland, media frames were strongly identity-oriented, emphasising Indigenous rights and framing Naga as cultural representatives. Audience trust in local media was high, and audiences internalised identity frames. In Tripura, media emphasised development, infrastructure, governance, and progress, and ethnic frames were avoided via strategic silence; audience trust was much lower, and audiences described media as politically controlled and unrepresentative.
This shows that identical frames produce different effects due to contingent structural contexts. This produces different perceptions of political legitimacy for news media. Such observations are likely to translate to many other local contexts in ethically diverse electoral systems around the world.
