Taming terror: domestication of the war on terror in the Pakistan media

Abstract

While media studies have focused on journalist roles in framing foreign news events for local readers to render them suitable for national audiences, there has been less attention to similar roles played by other social actors in bringing ‘home’ new models about existing realities. Therefore, this paper addresses the question of how a global catchphrase, ‘war on terror,’ acquired a national paradigm status by virtue of its use by multiple actors in the media sphere in Pakistan. We analyse all the articles mentioning the catchphrase in a leading national English daily over two years to unpack how the war on terror turned from being ‘their’ war in America to becoming ‘our’ war in Pakistan. Drawing on media studies of localization, we discuss the rhetorical modes by which the term was embedded in the Pakistani political field to give it a distinct national flavour. We refer to this process as ‘domestication’, by which the catchphrase was adopted in Pakistan by local, interested actors including media professionals. We draw particular attention to the way in which this complex process naturalizes the term by nationalizing it.