INVESTIGATING NEWS FRAMING: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MEDIA COVERAGE ON CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION ISSUES IN MALAYSIA

This study examines how the malay and chinese languagenewspapers in malaysia portray the issue of teaching andlearning science and mathematics in english. comparison wasmade between the two different language newspapers particularlyin terms of framing by analyzing their coverage on two majorincidents related to the issue – rally against the policy of teachingand learning science and mathematics in english (ppsmi),and the announcement of the upholding the malay language,strengthening command of english policy (mbmmbi). thisstudy uses the five generic frames developed by semetko &valkenburg (2000) as the basis of comparison. the five framesare responsibility, conflict, moral, economic consequences andhuman interest frame. the results suggest a congruency in the twodifferent language newspapers reporting, which mainly emphasizethe ‘conflict’ nature of the issue. however, a major difference inframe choice observed between the malay and chinese languagenewspapers in their reports of mbmmbi. while the priorsignificantly reduced the intensity of conflict frame in its reportson mbmmbi as compared to ppsmi, the latter maintain the samelevel of intensity for both the events.