Non-Western coverage of local crises in the societal-security perspective

The article considers a small segment of the non-Western-centric world to understand how a selection of Bangladeshi news media covers the Russia-Ukraine conflict, i.e., the authors focus on the mass media coverage rather than how the Bangladeshi government may influence the news production. The research is based on two questions: RQ1 . How do Bangladeshi newspapers frame the Russian Ukrainian conflict; RQ2 . Which variables seem to impact the conflict coverage by Bangladeshi newspapers. The article begins with a literature review that briefly summarizes the current state of knowledge about the mass media coverage of armed conflicts. The second section presents the theoretical tools used to interpret the collected data on media framing, the third section - the research methodology, the fourth section - the case of the daily Bangladeshi newspapers coverage and framing of the Russian Ukrainian armed conflict. This study of two major daily newspapers in Bangladesh and their coverage of the Ukraine crisis and the Special Military Operation (SMO) represents a Non-Western mass media content analysis. The Ukraine crisis represents a major newsworthy topic in the Global North (the collective West), which is very deeply politicised as a form of information warfare against Russians and Russia’s interests. Therefore, the authors make use of a media framing as a theoretical basis in this qualitative study of the SMO news content of Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune . The results of the study are interesting and controversial: the Bangladesh mass media framing of the news stories resembles that of the Global North. However, there are some specific national features determined by the country’s history and active pursuit of a balanced and neutral foreign policy towards the Global North and the Global South, which creates a nuanced understanding of Russia’s security concerns and dilemma as legitimate, since Bangladesh’s foreign policy philosophy is based on the idea of being no one’s enemy and a friend to everyone. However, this philosophy leads to obvious contradictions and dissonance described in the paper.