From theft to racist brawl: the framing of Low Yat incident by Malaysian newspapers

Abstract

This study aimed to conduct a framing analysis on the coverage of the Law Yat incident, whereby a theft case was escalated into racist brawl in Malaysia. The study compared the coverage of mainstream Malay-, English- and Chinese-language as well as alternative newspapers. The findings indicated that the newspapers reported the incident with different intensity, prominence, news sources, news frames and valence. It was found that the Law Yat incident has been highly racialized by irresponsible bloggers, social media users and politicians in the country. The findings also reflected that race and ethnicity issues remain highly politicized in Malaysia.