Philippine E-Journals

Prodigies in News Reports of Duterte’s War on Drugs: A Content Analysis

Maureen D. Aguisando | Karrah Cathrina P Flores | Viannah Angelica C Merquita | Paolo G Sausa

 

Abstract:

This study determined the commonly published news reports on drug wars, the linguistic forms and structures used and also the kinds of framing evident in the news articles. The study gathered thirty (30) articles, fifteen (15) articles from CNN and fifteen (15) articles from ANC. The researchers found out that the most commonly published news report on war on drugs in the Philippines according to the lead paragraphs and contents are the following: news about slain drugs suspects, news about government officials involved in illegal drugs, news on drug lords, news on foreigners involved in illegal drug trade, and the news on drug users or pushers that surrendered. The study also revealed that the news reports contained linguistics structures that might evoke anger to some readers. These were the modifiers used in describing the slain drug suspects and the victims and the utilization of combination of quantifiers and figures as reference to the number of slain drugs suspects, government officials involved in illegal drugs, drug lords that had been caught and killed and drug users and pushers that surrendered. On the other hand, the result of this study showed that majority of the news article used thematic framing since it dwells on the issues that have caused the problem and capture the attention of the public on what is going on with the society.